He Who Pays the Piper
Dear Reader,
‘He who pays the piper calls the tune,’ it’s an old proverb meaning that the person who pays for the service – that is the playing of the piper – has the right to determine what tune is played. More crudely put, the person with the money has the right to determine how it is spent. In the case of society today we are living in a world where Government pays for many things and therefore Government ordains what happens. Many people are thinking that governments across the world have taken on authoritarian overtones to suppress the novel coronavirus outbreak, even democratic governments. Many do not understand that a democratic government is not there to tell you what to do but to protect and advance your freedom to act.
Democracy is government by the community of the people in Assembly, in the UK the people elect representatives (Members of Parliament) to undertake the task, given that the size of the community is so large. Democratic governments are installed by the people, to create freedom for the people from tyranny and subjection to arbitrary rule. Democratic government exists to empower a free people to prosper and so be enabled to fulfil their desires, in the famous phrase from the American Constitution, for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ That our democratically elected representatives are now imposing arbitrary and authoritarian upon us rules (‘for our own good’) speaks volumes of how degraded our democracy has become. The subtle change from empowering a free people, to using the power of the state to fulfil the perceived desires of the people, may seem small but the end result is the diametric opposite of what democratic government is about. A people who hand over their responsibility for their health, wealth and happiness to the government will end up being in thrall to that government. Today our ‘democracy’ is rule by a government drawn from a political class, hand-in-hand with big business and entrenched wealth. Either by ignorance, deception or laziness the people have abdicated their freedom in exchange for a periodic casting of votes and re-shuffling among the master class.
How did this change happen? How was a free people seduced to hand over such power to an elected class? Through promises, taxation and collectivization. A promise was made that by greater taxation and the pooling of money everyone would accrue certain benefits. In short, the creation of the welfare state. By the swallowing of the promises and the handing over of the money the people are dis-empowered. In what other area of life would you entrust your money to someone else to spend in your interest? Only if you are defrauded or mentally unfit do you willingly hand over money in the belief that someone else will spend it better than you can yourself. With the UK government taxing employees’ salaries at 12% and employers at 13.8% for the provision of national health care and state pension, on top of the 20 - 45% income tax, it is dipping its hand deep into your pay packet – could you spend that money better yourself? He who pays the piper calls the tune.
From the surrender of freedom, money and power for national welfare policies there is inevitable progress to authoritarianism. The coronavirus pandemic has seen an astounding move towards authoritarian government among the subverted democracies of Europe and the USA, under the guise of public health. As the left-wing Guardian newspaper put it:
‘Covid-19 has fuelled protectionist and authoritarian trends around the world as some countries take advantage of the pandemic to erode the rule of law, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warns.’ The Guardian, September 1 2020
Here in Britain, with our centralised National Health Service funded out of general taxation, our government has taken on powers unprecedented even in times of war, not to protect the people but ‘to protect the NHS.’ The government is regulating who we can meet, in what numbers and where; even the numbers of people allowed to gather in our homes is strictly limited. Where now is ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle?’ In Wales the teetotal First Minister forbids pubs from serving alcohol and enacts more and tighter lockdowns, despite the previous ones having done nothing more that provide a temporary relief. In Scotland as well as draconian coronavirus restrictions the devolved administration is proposing a law that would regulate speech within homes - how long before an eavesdropping ‘Alexa’ device is compulsory? But we should not be surprised that a people that has handed responsibility for its health care to the government should be required by that government to abide by certain restrictions ‘for the sake of our health.’ He who pays the piper calls the tune.
The abdication of the people from their right to rule has resulted in the diminishment and corruption of society. Reliance on the State has weakened society by diminishing personal responsibility and reduced the need for mutual co-operation and aid between citizens. It is no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of our great national institutions: charities, co-operative societies, building societies, insurance companies, credit unions, trade unions, working men and social clubs, museums, libraries, hospitals, universities, schools, football clubs, were all founded in the era before the State became the nanny of the nation. Before the State became the go-to provider of all the people had the power and initiative to do it themselves. Even today, when the State is out of the way the people step in to do the work - witness the emergence of Food Banks across the nation in the aftermath of the Credit Crunch in 2008.
Handing control to government has caused a weakening of family ties and the collapse of family we see in today’s society. The web of mutual support through kinship and marriage which used to sustain the individual and society has been supplanted by impersonal provision by the State, leaving vulnerable persons isolated and without a ready sense of place and community. The sense of local community has also been diminished as money and power are extracted by centralised power and then grudgingly fed back to the regions as the centre sees fit. Deprived of money by taxation the family and the community are dis-empowered and unable to act to help themselves or their neighbour.
Before the creation of the Welfare State or the National Health Service came the nationalisation of education in 1870 under the Elementary Education Act. I have to acknowledge that the introduction of universal education did a great service to my family, it is from this period that we slowly rose from the class of landless farm labourers to a comfortable educated middle-class existence (in the period when the government paid you to take a degree rather than loan you money at an extortionate rate so you could buy a degree.) But with the expansion of education under government control came control of the curriculum. It may have taken 150 years but it is the government that is pushing the ‘de-colonisation’ of history , promoting homosexuality and feeding anti-scientific falsehoods about ‘genders’ into the minds of our children through the centralised curriculum.
The UK government budget for 2020 was approximately £928 billion, of which some £579 billion was spent on health, welfare and education, the three planks of the nanny State. In all three of these areas it is hard to believe that this kind of money is best spent by distant bureaucrats at the behest of representatives elected every now and again, rather than by the people from whom the money is taxed. By acknowledging government’s authority in these three areas the people not only abjuring personal responsibility and power they are authorising Government’s large scale raid on our finances, yet further dis-empowering ourselves. Does central Government handle our money well? Our NHS service ranks poorly when compared to other economies of a similar size such as France, we have have a National Debt of £1.877 trillion (84.6% of Gross Domestic Product), have only just emerged from 10 years of austerity after near national bankruptcy in 2008 and we are currently in the middle of a Government enforced coronavirus lockdown that is demolishing our economy at the same time as creating unprecedented levels of Government borrowing. Judge for yourself! After just over seventy year of the welfare state our nation is teetering on the edge and the people are all but under house arrest.
In the biblical book of Exodus God delivers the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. They are a freed people and a free people. The Prophet Moses then leads the people to Mount Sinai where he receives the Commandments from God. Having freed the people God instructs the people on how to live freely and create a society in which they can prosper. For 400 years from the giving of the Law at Sinai until the crowning of Saul as King of Israel, the Hebrews lived without a centralised power over them, they lived as a free people under the Law as adjudicated by Judges. At the end of that period, the people were in rebellion against God and demanded of the prophet Samuel that he appoint a king over them. In chapter eight of the book 1 Samuel it is recorded that God considered the appointment of a king as a rejection of His personal rule over them. A free people were voluntarily returning to slavery and Samuel warned the people that a king would tax them, require forced labour, enslave and generally subject them to his authority. Still they persisted in their call for a king, so God and Samuel acquiesced to their command. It requires a freed and responsible people to live freely, alternatively you can trade your freedom for irresponsibility and obedience to an arbitrary authority. What do you choose? Are you up for the challenge of wresting power back to the people, is freedom worth it?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/298524/government-spending-in-the-uk/
C.S. Lewis, ‘Willing Slaves of the Welfare State’: “classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good -- anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business.” http://liberty-tree.ca/research/willing_slaves_of_the_welfare_state
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