The government is the only organisation in the world that doesn’t make its revenue through the voluntary transaction of goods but by brute force. While some government functions are necessary to protect the freedoms of the people, the government tends to become large, incompetent, and even corrupt. It could even lead to the rise of authoritarianism such as the rise of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union in the 20^th Century. People assume that they’ll never be in situations like that, but every inch of power the government gains increases the likelihood of these scenarios occurring again. This is why it is so important to ensure that the government remains small and has minimal power.

The concentrated power of the government in itself, however, is not bad, as long as it is controlled and does not get out of hand. The main purpose of the government should be to protect the freedom of the individuals of the country by preserving law and order, regulating against negative externalities that could occur in free market transactions, and protecting the country from potential foreign threats. The members of a society also have an obligation to help each other in need, so using people’s tax money to provide essential services, such as healthcare and shelters, is also necessary. The government should also aim to provide its citizens with equality of opportunity through education. However, governments around the world tend to have more functions than this.

As the government is not using its own money, but taxpayer money, it has a tendency to be wasteful with its spending. Being efficient takes effort, so why exert effort into solving a problem when you can just throw an unlimited amount of money at it? The goal of government should be to ensure that people have the freedom to do what they want as long as it doesn’t affect anyone else. However, people seem to want the government to solve their problems. The main issue with this is that to solve someone’s problems, the government takes money from someone else to do so. Another big issue, however, is that by helping people in this way, the person becomes dependent on the government. This essentially means that the government controls them.

“I love my country, not my government.” – Jesse Ventura

A fundamental problem of the government is that the people pay the price of its mistakes, and because of that, the government is more careless. Sometimes, the government could even knowingly do things that are bad for the people to benefit themselves. An example of this is the countless wars that have been fought over the centuries. The majority of wars are because of disputes between governments. A fundamental mistake that humans make is believing that the country and the government are one and the same. This leads to the idea that fighting in these wars is for the benefit of the country – an act of patriotism. The truth is that most wars are disastrous for the country because of the excessive taxes that are placed upon the citizens of the nation to fund these military operations. The only people who benefit from these wars are those in power, as they get more land and a larger population to tax. The people in power convince the soldiers that they are fighting for the country by invoking a sense of nationalistic pride in the country’s citizens. Napoleon, Hitler, Alexander, and all of the infamous conquerors of history were all very good at this. Millions of lives have been taken because of their expansionist desires.

Democracy also inherently has some issues. Because of the structure of the system, politicians do not really care that much about the long-term effects of their policies, as they will only be in power for a few years. This is one of the main reasons why most industries should be privatised. A private company will always care about long-term effects, as the private company will pay the price for it. When the government makes a bad decision, such as taking on a lot of debt, the current government is not the one that has to pay it off – future governments do. However, if a company were to take on a lot of debt, the same company will have to pay it off, so there will be greater reluctance to take on debt that may be unmanageable.

Larger governments can also restrict the freedoms of individuals just because they have that power. They can impose a threat on things like free speech. They can also control companies, especially media companies, to benefit themselves. Government leaders may implement policies that increase their power. They may well do this for good reasons and could have virtuous motivations. However, the issue with this is that the power gets transferred to every new government leader who gets elected. How could they know that every person who will get elected in the future will not have terrible motivations?

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” – George Orwell

Once governments are large, they are also reluctant to make themselves smaller. One reason is that, most of the time, when someone is in power, they would not want to reduce their power. The other reason is that cutting the fat in the government would mean firing a lot of people. The majority of government employees would be far more productive in a private company, but firing government employees would definitely cost the government their vote. The publicity of it could also be quite bad, causing the current government to have a bad image.

Governments also tend to hide a lot from their citizens. The people within the country rarely have any idea what the government is spending its money on. It is also illegal to hack into the government. If the government is supposedly representative of its people, do we not have a right to all of the information within the government? So why should one get jailed for trying to obtain that information?

‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction’ – Ronald Reagan

Throughout the 20^th century, we have seen the rise of several authoritarian governments that have led to destruction, famine, and genocide around the globe. However, people do not seem to be reluctant to give governments more and more power. DOGE is doing a good job of cutting down the size of the government in the US. However, the chance of a similar scenario occurring in the UK is slim, and the government will most likely keep getting larger and larger.