Still, most of the human race is emotionally chained to government, and it can be helpful to point out that they're in an abusive relationship. So, today I'd like to cover something that I don't recall seeing elsewhere. I'll begin with the what and then move to the why.

Observations

I have observed something over many years and in many ways. And that is this:

The more government is involved with people's lives, the worse those people become.

Example number one has to be the welfare class (or perhaps I should say classes at this point) – people who live more or less permanently on the dole. The worst neighborhood in almost any town is where the highest percentage of people live as government dependents. Sure, some hard-core ideologues will still protest that the poverty came first and the government help second, but that's only true sometimes, and it avoids the far more important truth that making adults dependent degrades them.

Since I'm talking about my observations today, I'll add that I've been in and around ghettos and the permanent dependent class a pretty fair amount. And I've had friends who made it out of some truly hellacious government housing projects. So, I'm not just recycling someone else's opinion here.

Not only is living on the dole degrading, but trying to escape from it is harshly punished. If you're on welfare and you start to work a little, your payments are slashed to nearly zero. So, unless you have a really good job lined up (and how many welfare people ever get those?), forget about leaving the system.

This kind of living undercuts self-opinion, dignity, basic manners, and much more. If you wanted to ruin a group of people, you'd put them on the dole and pack them into high-density high-rises – precisely what was done in my town back in the '60s, by self-righteous do-gooders.

But it's not just the poor. There are millions of middle-class people who are now living on the dole. In the US, we have 94 million people who are officially outside of the workforce. A large percentage of them are on food stamps and/or disability. They are being degraded too.

And it's not just the US; Europe is also a mess that way. Not too many years ago, I lived in a major European city, and it was shocking to see how many fully capable people didn't bother to work, because they had more than enough handout programs. In the neighborhood where I lived, most of the shopkeepers were immigrants, because the old shopkeeping families had left the business.

And living on government money did degrade manners. For one thing, you'd hardly believe how thoroughly the sidewalks were covered in dog poop. It was hard to take a walk. People just didn't bother to pick up their mess. On top of that, there was endemic theft of things like bicycles; I was openly cheated by a "respectable" landlord; and so on. And this was in a "decent neighborhood" in a "world-class" city.

Causes

I'll start my list of causes with this: Living on welfare removes cooperation from our lives. In any kind of actual business, we have to communicate and cooperate with dozens of people. We have to get information and materials from them, get things to them, and so on. They have to rely on us and we on them. All of that builds manners, responsibility, punctuality, integrity, and dignity. It also builds important skills like diction. People on the dole miss all of that. Instead, they get Jerry Springer.

Another major factor is that people aligned with government don't choose; they have their lives dictated to them. That's not how humans are designed to operate. We need to choose and we need to face the consequences of our choices. Government-life eliminates that. And humans simply cannot thrive that way.

We are built to strive and accomplish. Having things perpetually handed to us degrades us, and badly. When we live the life of dependency, we never learn to self-surpass, to become better than we were. In fact, improvement is punished in dependency cultures, and all too often violently.

Even the government involvement of "education" is degrading. That's one of my primary arguments against modern schooling: children are forced into inescapable relationships. And it degrades the children. Ask homeschooling parents; they'll tell you that most of the bad habits their children pick up come from kids in government schools. Forced grouping is simply bad design… at least if we wish for human health and progress.

In the End…

My observation over long periods of time is that the more government is involved with human lives, the worse is the conduct that arises in and from those lives. (And I know I'm not alone in this opinion.)

Are there exceptions? Sure, and probably many thousands of them. Thank God for that. But in the end, this statement is true:

Government help is a curse to those who rely upon it. It makes them worse, not better.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com