Concentrations of Power

The Never Ending Danger

All sides in the political debates blame their opposition, maintaining that disaster will ensue should their own side lose. It reminds me of one of President Carter's economic dudes who said, regarding the poor economic state at the time; “At every meeting I get two thirds of the answer. Business blames Government and Labor, Labor blames Business and Government, and Government blames Business and Labor.”

I think that, to a point, all sides are right. Being concerned about excessively powerful corporations is a valid worry, as is the worry of an excessively powerful government. Being concerned about the possibility of an excessively powerful force would seem to be a more worthwile concern than worrying about this politician or that politician, especially since one can never know anyone else’s true motivations. There is always the concern about shadowy forces not really seen, not to mention known ones. Intelligence agencies such as our CIA worry people, and those types of agencies, which exist in all nations, are worrisome, and the military is everyone’s worry.

In a way, it's not the organizations themselves that worry people, it's the fact that they have a lot of power, and one is well aware that power can be abused. It seems that many on the “Left” and “Right” have the same concerns about power concentrations, they just worry about different ones. Those with power not only try to hold onto it, they will try to increase their own power by increasing that of their organization. And let's not forget that not only does power corrupt, but it attracts the corruptible.

The U. S. Constitution was written specifically to mitigate this problem by putting in checks and balances, to hopefully prevent any one part of the government from becoming all powerful, but the powerful seem to find ways around it.

If we had many more but smaller corporations, as well as small family owned stores, service companies and manufacturers, the power of things like political correctness would be weakened. If your boss is a jerk you just go to a new job.

In our past situations developed in that people would be concerned about the power of large corporations, so they would demand that the government Do Something. The rules and regulations thereby produced made life much harder for small companies than for large ones, who would just fill up a room with lawyers and accountants. (Don't throw me into that briar patch!) This shifted power into both corporations and government. I think we need rules that give the economic advantage to smaller companies, and tend to cause a large company to fission into smaller ones. It also needs to be easy to start a new company; you want to make it easy for a group of bright, young executives and engineers to leave their parent company and start their own, infuriating their old bosses. (I used to tell people that as long as the corporations support the Republicans the Democrats will do their bidding.) The point is that much danger to freedom comes from the tendency of organizations to grow larger, and we might want to push for rules and laws (or the lack thereof) that ensures a bias toward smaller organizations.

President Kennedy is reputed to have said that he wanted to break the CIA up into a thousand pieces, and many think he was killed to prevent that. No doubt he recognized that there was a danger in having the intelligence service combined into a large block, as that would give it to much power. If it went back to the before world war two situation of Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, etc., it would be much safer.

I am amazed at those who are content with the prospect of an immensely powerful central government. The reasons they feel that way are many, basically coming down to the idea of the vast improvements in life if only the the government had the power to do so. I understand the seductive nature of the arguments; a government can get things done that would not happen otherwise. After all, it's hard to see how our highway system would work if it were left to private industry. The worrisome type of mindset is the one where people want to use the power of government to fix all of the problems of the world, and in doing so create an overwhelming concentration of power. Since this type of power is unchecked it will easily slide into mass killing when it reaches a point where it either begins killing or gives up it's power.

It is not only a government that can be this dangerous, any organization that attains a situation where it is not held accountable poses the same danger.

I'm borrowing some thinking from my earlier essay on power versus freedom, which can be read here at the link below.

https://drp314.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-power-versus-freedom

A country is of course made up of many people, my country being the United States of America, and the nature of the culture flows from the nature of her people. If the people desire freedom over power the culture, the laws and the nature of life itself will differ from that in a country where the individual people desire power more than freedom. If we want to live in a free country it may be that the issue is not only things like the Bill of Rights, but what do the people really want regarding freedom. I would posit that many Americans don't actually want freedom, at least not as much they want security, so if you asked them if they want freedom more than power or the power more than freedom they would be perplexed.

Fear has a great deal to do with ones views on the desirability of freedom. Freedom becomes irrelevant in the face of immediate peril since it is useless if you are dead. In order for one to have a desire for freedom one must have a certain amount of courage. While one can work to improve ones courage (If you take the cowardly path you become cowardly, if you take the courageous path you become courageous) as well as ones will, a lot has to with things like family, religion, etc.

It is my belief that those wishing to impose a sort of feudalism on the rest of us are doing what they can to undermine courage and a desire for freedom. If people have a strong family behind them they will have more courage and be harder to control, they will have internal strength. Similarly for religion.

We must all try to raise our children with an overt desire for freedom, and not be shy about supporting it in society. People in America are so used to living in a free-ish country that they don't realize the extent to which it is an anomaly. As such, they don't recognize how easily it can be lost and indeed is under attack. One seldom hears a politician using the words liberty or freedom. How about hearing a journalist questioning a political candidate of what laws he would seek to eliminate? When a new policy or program is proposed, it should be questioned as to what we be the effect on freedom, yet it seldom is.

Though often de-emphasized, a populous possessing and skilled in the use of weapons, and military skills in general, will be less fearful of the powerful, will not so much see themselves as second class citizens relative to them, and be less likely to suffer abuse. During the recent lock-downs the U.S. citizens suffered less abuse than those of countries with more restrictive weapons policies. Some of my thoughts on the issue are:

https://drp314.substack.com/p/some-second-amendment-thoughts

A takeaway from this is that the danger of an organization with great power comes from the people living and working in it. It is they who actually do any evil deeds. We must all ask ourselves if we would do any better were we to find ourselves in positions of great power. As we go through life it's important to try to become more resistant to coercion, less fearful and try to maintain our intrinsic morality. Another past essay of mine is on the importance of wisdom, strength and courage, and I am linking to it below. The lack of any or all of these contribute to the danger of these concentrations of power, and coarsen life in general.

https://drp314.substack.com/p/wisdom-strength-and-courage