In our society, many of those that work for the government are known as “public servants,” the idea being that they are selfless, sacrificial people willing to forego the dirty greed of monetary pursuit and offer their services to those who need them. Businesses are often portrayed as evil and greedy because of their cold dedication to the almighty dollar. But, are the ones who are called servants really servants if they disregard the wishes of the people they serve?
Last summer, I worked for EcoShield Pest Control. It was a pest control company in Chicago that did the whole nine yards to make sure you didn’t have bugs in your house; the inside, the outside, all around. They do good work.
I worked as a sales representative. You could also call me a door-to-door salesman. I would go around neighborhoods knocking on people’s doors telling them about the company, our services, and our work in the area. I would talk about people’s bug problems and find out what critters they had been seeing the most of. To be honest, I wasn’t a big hitter; I only made three sales in my three weeks there. I ended up coming back to work in Michigan for the rest of the summer. My ego has healed by now, don’t worry.
Unfortunately, my sales career was short lived. But, I learned a lot. I got some sales experience and learned some customer care skills and I now have a huge respect for door-to-door salesmen and women. A great part of what I got to do was provide a quality service to the three families that did need it! But let’s imagine if the experience for those families were a little different.
One day, a person arrives at your door and identifies himself as the representative of an organization. He explains that the organization is a pest-control service and gives pest care to people's homes. He then tells you that you are one of their customers and you need to pay him for the service or else he’ll take the money from you! You inform him there must be some kind of mistake because you never agreed to be one of their customers. He delightfully clarifies that the organization is special in that it provides its service to everybody no matter what they want and everybody must pay for it. He goes on to say that it is very important to his organization that everybody gets pest control and that it is such a pressing need that they didn’t want to risk leaving it up to the people to care for it themselves. You obviously refuse to pay him and he berates you for being selfish for not supporting him in his service to the people.
Was the man truly a servant? In Lysander Spooner’s "No Treason: the Constitution of No Authority" he states, “No man can be my servant, agent, attorney, or representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me for his acts.” A servant is somebody who respects you enough to listen to your needs and offer you their help if, and that’s a very big if, you want it. If the people who calls themselves servants are able to take what they want from you without your control it is the exact opposite; you are their servant. Would you even trust the type of organization that doesn’t care if you don’t want their help?
Objectively, which is more likely to be trustworthy: an organization that performs a service you are forced to pay for regardless of your wishes or an organization that performs a service only if you give them your consent? Which one is more likely to remain honest? The second has a powerful incentive to give people what they want and to remain honest and reliable. The first one doesn’t have that incentive.
The point I’m trying to make is that the government doesn’t have a built-in fail-safe. It is held as immortal. There is no way to terminate a social contract. No way to remove consent. The question isn’t even considered. Some would say that’s good. But that means that it does not rely on people's express approval to continue operating. It is dangerous to assume that something just has to exist. What happens when a government uses your money to start a war you don’t believe in? What happens when it uses your money to put people in prison for unjust reasons? Why should you be forced to fund those things? The strange thing is that what is good in the case of government is not good in the case of business.
It wouldn't be good for a business to be immortal. There are many reasons for a company to go out of business: corruption, mistreating customers, dishonesty and fraud. And it happens. But when the public finds out there are serious losses that a company takes. If people view a corporation as untrustworthy, they won’t do business with them. A business is entirely reliant on individuals agreeing to it and endorsing it. Their very power comes directly from people putting forth their approval in the form of investment or trade. But the people have the power to withhold their consent and fiscal support of a company whenever they want. If a business makes a mistake or fails somehow they lose money; if a government makes a mistake or fails it increases funding to fix the problem. The incentives are twisted.
Could you see where it is likely that one might end up being more abusive than the other? No doubt governments need some perceived accountability to the people so that they don’t revolt. In Murray Rothbard’s "Anatomy of the State," he pinpoints that “it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature.” Don’t just resign yourself to the idea that government is inevitable. A business would just love everybody to think that it is an inevitable part of life. The same is true for a government.
