The philosopher John Locke once reasoned that property is a natural right of man that is created when he mixes his labor with his surroundings. Thus, property naturally precedes government and government cannot “dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily.”
The New York Times reported today that the United States government has delivered over 5 billion dollars of its citizens resources to the Pakistan government since 2002, not including the 300 million dollars that the United States government showers on the Pakistanis each and every year under a separate program. It is now believed that Pakistan has used this money to finance weapons systems designed to challenge India’s dominance in the region. The United States officials in charge of financing Pakistan now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money.
Was there really ever any question what happens when power is vested in the few? This is yet further evidence that a strong centralized government cannot effectively manage the resources of the people it governs. The tax revenues of the United States in funding this waste are generated from the labor of its people and therefore must be used with extreme respect and discretion. Instead, the fruits of our labor are recklessly handled and ill spent by officials that wield more power than any one man should.
A quick calculation suggests that our government has given Pakistan at least $22 for every man, woman, and child that is under the yoke and flag of the United States. If you instead look at the tax paying portion of the population, its nearly double that amount, at about $40 per taxpayer. The federal minimum wage in the United States is only $5.85 per hour. That’s nearly 8 hours of the lives of the most financially burdened citizens of our country that are now gone. That’s 8 hours that they will never get back.
It is absolutely essential for a government “of the people” to respect the property rights of its citizens and to not arbitrarily waste the labor of its subjects through massive and widespread imprudence.
Yet, the solution to this debacle is surprisingly simple. The closer the locus of control of these valued resources to their originating source, the more effectively they will be managed. We need to turn the power pyramid on its head and reallocate the power from the centralized federal government to each of the distributed localities from where the resources originated.
As Presidential candidate Ron Paul advocates: “Those who depend on the land for their health and livelihood have the greatest incentive to be responsible stewards.”
