The Role of Government

Philosophos: So what is the correct role for government?

Nomodiphas: I don’t know.

Philosophos: Well, what is part of the role of government? What is something the government does that seems to you to be a valid function?

Nomodiphas: I guess the easiest example would be protection.

Philosophos: Protection? Protection of what?

Nomodiphas: Protecting the people. Protecting them from external enemies by means of war and national defense and protecting them from each other by means of laws and law enforcement.

Philosophos: From where are you making this assumption?

Nomodiphas: For starters these functions of government are given in the Bible. It is the national leader: Moses, the judges, and the kings who were charged by God to make war and protect the people. It was also Moses who gave the laws and the kings/judges who administered and enforced them to protect the people internally. Further, these are traditional functions of government recognized as valid in nearly every single government. In pre-government societies it is every man for himself. When people form governments they cede their right to the government to use force whenever they want. The government in exchange for the monopoly of force that it is granted agrees to protect the people.

Philosophos: So the government protects people’s lives. Could you say that people have a right to live?

Nomodiphas: You mean like in the sense to live and not be killed by another person for no good reason?

Philosophos: Precisely.

Nomodiphas: Yes I would say that.

Philosophos: So the government in protecting people seems to be protecting their right to live. Can you think of anything else the government validly protects?

Nomodiphas: Property, the government protects the things we own.

Philosophos: Ok, so the government protects our right to live and our right to property. What would you say of a government that arbitrarily took men’s lives or their goods?

Nomodiphas: I would call that government unjust.

Philosophos: As would I. So the role of government has to do with protecting rights and these rights are somehow connected to justice. If the government fails to protect these rights, it is unjust. So the role of government is to be just. It is necessary for the government to be just so that people do not take justice into their own hands to defend their rights and engage in private justice, for private justice quickly turns into vengeance and unchecked vengeance leads to anarchy. Does the role of government extend beyond this?

Nomodiphas: I am not sure.

Philosophos: Why don’t we consider another field to help us better understand how government works. What is the purpose of art?

Nomodiphas: To create or to show beauty.

Philosophos: So beauty is the value that art reflects?

Nomodiphas: Yes.

Philosophos: What about business, what is the purpose of business?

Nomodiphas: It is to provide goods and services.

Philosophos: So people, out of benevolence, work hard to produce goods and services and just give them away?

Nomodiphas: No, they produce these things in order to make money.

Philosophos: So the purpose of business is to create wealth for life and wellbeing?

Nomodiphas: Yes.

Philosophos: What about school?

Nomodiphas: The purpose or function of school is to impart knowledge.

Philosophos: Do these purposes ever switch? Can these things have multiple purposes? Can an artist both seek to create beauty and to create wealth?

Nomodiphas: I don’t think so. When art seeks to create wealth the artist must make something with a consumer in mind in order to turn a profit. It is no longer a creative thing and it ceases to be art and at once becomes a product. The same could be said of business. If a business focused on imparting knowledge the way schools do it would become unprofitable and cease to operate in its main function of wealth creation. Doing this not only corrupts the field of business, but the field of education as well. Education would be a commodity and learning would be limited only to things that are immediately profitable, thereby undermining the very purpose of education as a discovery of knowledge. I am going to assume that government operates the same way as these other fields. That government has a set function, justice, and that when it tries to operate in other fields it corrupts itself and hinders itself from being just and in turn corrupts those other fields as well.

Philosophos: Brilliant. Well put. Indeed there are different fields and each field has a distinct function. When these fields expand and take on other functions they corrupt their own function as well as the function of the other. This, in my opinion, is where our government’s greatest fault lies. Our government is one of expansion. It is continually expanding further and further into other fields and taking on their functions. By doing this our government is corrupting its own function as well as the functions of other fields. I want to discuss the other fields: what their functions are and how the government is to interact with them and the consequences of the government interacting wrongly, but first we need to delve further into the nature of justice.