How the Wheels of the Bureaucracy Grind
Without government there would be anarchy and the law of the jungle would prevail, which is really more of a catch-phrase than actual law. Despite people's love of nature, it's a pretty violent and dangerous place with animals eating each other and whatnot. To prevent this sort of thing happening between people civilization was invented to organize human activity with rules. Like, no eating your neighbor's food, or your neighbor for that matter. To keep people playing by the rules they instituted government.
Over the centuries many types of governmental systems have evolved. Aristocracy: rule by an inbred class of nobles born to the job. Theocracy: rule by priests, religious doctrine, or in the name of God since God himself is very reclusive. Democracy: rule by the people, or the majority, or the majority that bother to vote. Mobocracy: also rule by the people, but usually with torches and pitchforks. Plutocracy: rule by animated cartoon dogs.
The most common type of government in the Western world is Bureaucracy, rule by nameless, faceless civil servants. Though if you've ever dealt with one they aren't necessarily civil and the service is generally deplorable. Bureaucratic government is a sort-of Rube Goldberg operation devised and overseen by popularly elected politician/lawyers, though lawyers and politicians enjoy very low popularity generally speaking.
Basically, governments are established to get people to behave themselves. Or at least behave the way the government would like them to. People rarely want to do the things the government's way, they don't trust government or politicians even though they elected them in the first place. Or at least somebody put these scoundrels in charge, usually other stupid voters besides yourself. Unless the government isn't democratic which is a whole different animal, and often as not in such cases a vicious beast.
Governments employ two main methods of getting the populace to behave, by force and by bribery. The force branch of government consists of the police, the courts, red tape, taxes, and lawyers. The bribery branch encompasses subsidies, tax breaks, loopholes, entitlements, and more lawyers.
The force branch of government is relatively straightforward and easy to understand. By governments standards anyway. The operative words here are fear and coercion. Fear works from the threat of coercion and is officially called deterrence, which is a nicer, more lawyerly sounding term. For the fearless criminal element there is coercion, which is where they grab you bodily and lock you away, take your property or, in extreme cases, shoot you.
These two go together like ham and eggs, or white on rice for vegetarians. The stricter the threat of coercion the more the fear. If taken too far fear turns into terror, which takes us to a place we'd rather not go. Of course, fear and coercion doesn't matter to basically honest people who'd behave anyway. But there aren't too many of those which is why we have government.
Police are employed to nab bad guys who break the law and to try preventing crimes from happening in the first place. The latter being pretty hard to do because there's a lot more criminals than police. Plus, it's not always easy to spot the lawbreakers from the law-abiding as, unlike the police, they don't wear uniforms with "criminal" spelled out on the back. They also enforce minor crimes by handing out tickets, warnings, or stern looks.
Courts determine if the miscreants arrested by the police are guilty or not and punish them either with jail sentences, fines, probation, or slaps on the wrist. They also settle civil disputes over contracts, marriages, child custody, and problems of folks being stupid and annoying rather than outright criminal.
Red tape is used to tie things up and hamper activity of all kinds, both good and bad. Less total activity, both good and bad, means less bad activity so they accept the trade-off. Red tape also prevents people the government doesn't especially like from doing things that are legal by making it too much of a hassle. This doesn't stop it altogether, but keeps it to a minimum.
Taxes are often levied on things the government wishes to discourage or control by making it expensive, like tobacco, alcohol, and being rich. This is often applied to things the powers that be would like to ban outright, but can't muster up the courage or political support for. This doesn't stop people from doing these things because they like smoking, drinking and being rich. But the government figures it may as well make some money off it all.
Lawyers are employed in all four areas above to insure that what seems like a straightforward system becomes a battlefield of give and take. The lawyers' take being large fees and retainers.
The bribery branch of government is more varied in application and subtler in approach, which is to say harder to figure out. The operative words here are greed and persuasion. Greed, officially called self-interest, is one of those universal human traits that can always be counted on, which explains why the bribery branch is so big. People can be persuaded to do all kinds of things they wouldn't even consider otherwise because greed is an easy sell. So rather than tilt at the greed windmill, government uses it to it's own ends.
Subsidies are outlays, a government euphemism for pay-offs, to get people to do things the government likes that wouldn't make sense otherwise. Or to incentivize, a euphemism for make happy, people for doing approved of things they'd probably do anyways while grumbling about how much it costs. This keeps the griping about prices down, or at least shifts the blame from government overtaxing things to greedy capitalists.
Tax breaks are often used to persuade the same way as subsidies, but instead of using taxes paid by others and giving it to you, they let you keep some of your own money instead. This is a way to make politicians seem generous by giving you a gift you pay for yourself. Oddly enough, this seems to work. A lot like getting a tax refund, which is a return of money you overpaid as withholding to begin with.
Loopholes are pretty much workaround benefits for the clever to avoid the police, the courts, red tape, and taxes. Sometimes they're put into a bit of legislation so a law which is unworkable, or difficult on a lawmaker's friends or constituents, can be gotten around legally.
Entitlements are outlays to, how to put it... unlucky people. Not to get them to do anything in particular, unlike subsidies, but just to help them until election time when hopefully they remember who got them the goodies in the first place. In this last respect, kinda like subsidies after all.
Lawyers are employed in all four areas above to try to make sense of a lot of what doesn't always make sense. They also try to help clarify the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, which usually is whatever coincides with their client's interests.
Speaking of interests, this is where the bribery branch differs from the force branch which is applied equally to all. In theory, anyway. The bribery is conferred and decided by group memberships and/or interests. These are owned and operated by advocacy groups, labor unions, corporations, secret societies, and cabals which each form what's called a PAC, or political action committee. A fancy term for what more or less amounts to a lobby. People don't like lobbyists and insiders, unless they're on their side in which case they're just influential people, or spokespersons.
While bribery going from the government to the people is largely approved of, at least by the recipients, bribery in the other direction is fairly well frowned upon. To get around this we have a system of indirect bribery called campaign finance. The money goes to the politicians who then go to Washington and pretend there's a difference from "donations" to a politician and "pay-offs" to an office holder, even though they are the same person. The difference being largely geographic, one is on the campaign trail the other in the halls of government.
This is where PACs come back into it adding another layer to further separate the voter's personal interest from the special interest of the PAC working against the vested interests of the other PACs so the flow of donations is indirect and fair, or is untraceable so you can't tell. Or something like that.
Then there is a small handful of folks outside this part of the system, the uninterested voter whose only interest is in being left alone. This group is much smaller than you might suppose because many belong to groups that are being advocated for or against whether they like it or not. Come to think of it, considering the number of self-appointed guardians of public interest there are there likely aren't any of these types at all.
Maybe you approve of all this, maybe not. Perhaps you understand it, likely not, especially the way I explain it. The bottom line is, keep your nose clean, stay out of court, try to find work where there's no red tape, pay your taxes and maybe it'll all work out for the best. Even so, while you might not be interested in the government, the government is interested in you. None of us escape the long arm of the law until we're dead and buried. If you consider estate taxes, not even then.
copyright Terry Colon, 2008