State paternalism is a disease – that’s the only way to describe it. The state has a function, to facilitate human enterprise in a harmonious way. The challenge is, a relatively simple mandate gets highjacked by various powerbrokers – powerbrokers with one interest, to control. It isn’t so much the yearning for power that drives them, it’s the omnipresent self-interest that does. There is a coalescence of state power and interest groups which merge the desire for interest groups to secure economic and other interests and the state to secure power (any given government at any given time); this makes state paternalism both powerful and lucrative. The reason that state paternalism is a disease is that it steals freedom, quashes the individual and turns the state away from facilitating liberty to effecting control over people.
For every action there is an equal reaction, one sees this play out often when observing nature, physical phenomena and in human discourse. So, it is logical to assume that when the state offers up a service that there is a reaction, or perhaps a cost. Or, when the state grants monopoly to a group to offer a service via regulation, that there is a reaction or a cost. It is often the case that under the pretence of “public protection” regulatory frameworks come into place that restrict the supply of a service or offer a monopoly to a group for service provision; when this happens there is no competing offering and the cost of a given service rises. There are many examples of this throughout Canadian governance from medical services delivery, agriculture supply management, various professional groups bolstered by legislation – this list is endless. The fact that costs rise is punishment enough, it gets worse though because one's ability to choose whom to associate with is limited, one's choice of how to associate with others is limited and by extension control over your personal life is taken away and put into institutional hands. Please stop and contemplate your life and ask yourself, what part of your daily life is unaffected by government legislation and ask yourself what aspects of your life you retain control of. In British Columbia, even something as personal as medical records are outside one's control, they are in public hands in a manner that fails to protect people’s privacy – with privacy goes freedom.
At some point, we have to limit the power of these monopolies over our lives because everyone knows that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The regionalization of the medical system in British Columbia is a classic example of the undue and unnecessary consolidation of power. Regionalisation puts $13 Billion into the hands of 5 people in the province. Health Regions have become the sole provider of healthcare in areas so large that going to another region for healthcare is very difficult. The health regions are operated by crown corporations that have become very large and very powerful and nearly inaccessible to the average citizen relying on them for care. The health regions are just one example of many government (regional) monopolies. The education system is another; we have a single choice for the provider of education to our children. The CRTC, having been co-opted by the telecoms has effected an oligopoly in the telecom space and as a result, our telecom costs are some of the highest in the world. We have the CRTC allowing policies that erode internet neutrality – the most democratising force to have ever come into play in human history is being challenged.
This trend toward the “totalitarian state” via the institutionalisation of society is very troubling because the “side effect” of the trend is the disempowerment of the individual. This is in no way a call to end government support for people in need or to stop funding, it is a call to defuse power and to bring government to the point of facilitating people – that is to say, to put power where it belongs with the individual. Increasingly, the power structures within these institutions are self-serving and they always seek to consolidate influence.
The trend toward consolidation of influence, if left unchecked, is very dangerous, especially in our legal system, law enforcement and military. The RCMP, for example, is a far-reaching organization in Canada with a rank structure that is antiquated because it concentrates power to an apex of a person, rather than cellularizing or defusing power so that the apex of leadership is a creed.
Most of our institutions preclude the existence of a competing entity and as a result, power concentrates. This reality spills into the “real economy” in damaging ways as institutions pick winners, obstruct access to markets, reduce economic efficiency, increase transaction costs and create a Peruvian like economic structure. A Harvard Business School MBA class decided to do a case study on the Peruvian economy, they discovered it took 125 steps to licence a hotdog stand – turned out it was just easier to give the corrupt cop half your money. We need to avoid this ever happening in Canada – unfortunately, it has; in many cases, when it comes time to do something, obstructive regulations are omnipresent - red tape is the arch-enemy of enterprise and innovation.
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