Are we the government ?

[cbc58]

Are we (you and me) the government ?

Or is it a independent entity like a corporation?

[Epic]

Nope. We are not the government. It's a dangerous myth.

[Isaac Bickerstaff]

We're working on it. . .

[easycougar]

We are supposed to be, but clearly are not...

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

[ChaosControl]

Calling the government a corporation is probably the best way to define it as it currently is.

[Annihilia]

I don't think it's comparable to a corporation. It's not accountable to consumers or shareholders and it operates at an enormous loss for the benefit of a relative handful. That sounds to me like government being government.

Maybe a corporation with a monopoly on violence.

[hugolp]

Calling the government a corporation is probably the best way to define it as it currently is.

Its what it is. The goverment is a corporation with the monopoly on violence.

[ChaosControl]

I don't think it's comparable to a corporation. It's not accountable to consumers or shareholders and it operates at an enormous loss for the benefit of a relative handful. That sounds to me like government being government.

Maybe a corporation with a monopoly on violence.

I don't know, that sounds a lot like the corporations that got bailed out last year...

[Epic]

I don't know, that sounds a lot like the corporations that got bailed out last year...

no, they aren't allowed to be violent - only government is given that allowance.

However, they can benefit from the government's coercion.

[morran]

The State is almost universally considered an institution of social service. Some theorists venerate the State as the apotheosis of society; others regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient, organization for achieving social ends; but almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind, a means to be ranged against the "private sector" and often winning in this competition of resources. With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, "we are the government." The useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it to ourselves"; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is "doing it to himself" and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.

We must, therefore, emphasize that "we" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people.[1] But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.[2] No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that "we are all part of one another," must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.

If, then, the State is not "us," if it is not "the human family" getting together to decide mutual problems, if it is not a lodge meeting or country club, what is it? Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion. While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others, the State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet.[3] Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects. One would think that simple observation of all States through history and over the globe would be proof enough of this assertion; but the miasma of myth has lain so long over State activity that elaboration is necessary.

From Anatomy of the State (http://mises.org/EasaRAN/Chap3.asp)

[Danke]

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/28/usc_sec_28_00003002----000-.html

(15) “United States” means—
(A) a Federal corporation;
(B) an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity of the United States; or
(C) an instrumentality of the United States.

[Annihilia]

I don't know, that sounds a lot like the corporations that got bailed out last year...

Maybe those corporations are the government. Something to think about.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to pick up my tinfoil hat from the dry cleaner's.

[ChaosControl]

no, they aren't allowed to be violent - only government is given that allowance.

However, they can benefit from the government's coercion.

I meant this part
It's not accountable to consumers or shareholders and it operates at an enormous loss for the benefit of a relative handful.

[newbitech]

Are we (you and me) the government ?

Or is it a independent entity like a corporation?


yes we are "the government".

corporations have usurped our government by controlling the purse strings of "the state" (the apparatus of a civil government).

[Danke]

http://www.usavsus.info/

[RevolutionSD]

Are we (you and me) the government ?

Or is it a independent entity like a corporation?

No, not even close. It's the people vs. the government. One of these two has to go.

[Anti Federalist]

We the people are not the government.

Haven't been for a long time.

And what is government, if not the people?

Organized crime, that's what.

A criminal protection and extortion racket, nothing more.

We are living in Tony Soprano land.

[Matthew Zak]

The government is an omni-monopolizing corporation looking out for it's own best interests, and is bailed out constantly by the federal reserve.

[Malachi]

No, we are pawns.

[erowe1]

Is that poll about a nation having a right to control its borders the impetus behind this thread?

[cbc58]

no. i was thinking along the lines of the govt. creating all this debt that WE have to pay back. if the govt is not WE, then WE shouldn't be obliged to pay it back.... but they want us to.

[erowe1]

no. i was thinking along the lines of the govt. creating all this debt that WE have to pay back. if the govt is not WE, then WE shouldn't be obliged to pay it back.... but they want us to.

Of course that's true. But the ramifications are much larger than that. If the government is not we, but some other group of people that subjugates us against our will and forces us to fund its enterprises and obey its orders, then not only are we not liable for its debts, but we owe it no tax or obedience at all to begin with. It's hardly different from the Mafia. The borders that exist between land subjugated by one such gang and land subjugated to another are nothing more than their own agreed upon boundaries between the lands they've illegitimately parceled out among each other for their respective spheres of immoral action. Rather than protecting us from conquest, the borders represent the extent of an area that is already conquered.

[LibertyWorker]

TITLE 28 > PART VI > CHAPTER 176 > SUB-CHAPTER A > § 3002


§ 3002. Definitions

(15) “United States” means—

(A) a Federal corporation;

(B) an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity of the United States;

(C) an instrumentality of the United States.

[UnReconstructed]

there is no such thing as government. there are only people hurting other people