Government becomes the master of civil society, able to mold and shape it.
Until World War I, no government in history was ever able to obtain from its people more than a very small fraction of the country’s national income, perhaps 5 or 6 percent. As long as revenues were known to be limited, governments, whether democracies or absolute monarchies like that of the Russian czars, operated under extreme restrains. These restraints made it impossible for the government to act as either a social or an economic agency. But since World War I—and even more noticeably since World War II—the budgeting process has meant, in effect, saying yes to everything. Under the new dispensation, which assumes that there are no economic limits to the revenues it can obtain, government becomes the master of civil society, able to mold and shape it. Through the power of the purse, it can shape society in the politician’s image. Worst of all, the fiscal state has become a “pork-barrel state.”
The pork-barrel state thus increasingly undermines the foundations of a free society. The elected representatives fleece their constituents to enrich special-interest groups and thereby to buy their votes. This is a denial of the concept of citizenship—and is beginning to be seen as such.
ACTION POINT: Draft a ballot petition for a balanced-budget amendment in your city including a limit to annual increases in property taxes, like Proposition 13 in California. Then go to city council meetings and evaluate expenditures against budget limitations.
Post-Capitalist Society
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker