I've been reflecting on how much government involvement is too much. Here's an excerpt from Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin.
Joel Salatin, a world-famous organic farmer, has eloquently and tactfully addressed this problem in the following extract.
With the homeschooling movement, many teens are finishing school at 16 or before and are ready to move forward with their lives. Some of them apply for an apprenticeship here at our farm because they want to be full-time environmentally friendly farmers. How devastating it is for us to have to tell them we can't legally take them.
These young people are emotionally and physically mature enough for a driver's license but can't push our lawnmower. The problem with invoking government force to correct every little thing that a culture has determined to be wrong is that once the bureaucracy is in place, the correction always becomes overcorrection. To justify their existence, the government agents cannot be content to solve the initial problem. They continue to push and push beyond the point of reason until the original agenda becomes mired in absurdity.
IF a 16-year-old wants to come here and work, willingly, and we are happy to have him, who is being harmed by his apprenticeship? Why must he wait and spin his wheels for two years? If he comes here and gets the learning experience earlier, he can start down his entrepreneurial way earlier. And don't give me this "we must protect him from himself" business.
IF that were really the duty of government, we could justify putting everyone in straightjackets to protect us from ourselves. I might jab myself in the eye with my toothbrush in the morning. I think we should legislate tooth brushing license before someone can use one. I might burn myself on the coffeemaker in the morning. Better issue a coffeemaker license while we're at it. And don't even get me started on drinking.
Now let's assume that we hire a legal apprentice, aged 18. How do we figure out a legal way to pay him? According to minimum wage laws, he must be paid per hour, plus overtime. But this is an educational experience. At least, that's what we think. But unless it's a bona fide credentialed educational institution of sorts, it's just an exploitive working situation as far as the government is concerned.
The government views what we do as exploitive of labour. But if the labour happily agrees to these conditions, how can it be exploitive? Oh, that's right. How silly of me. The worker is too stupid to know he's being exploited. Workers happily walk to their own gallows.
That's another principle of government agents. They assume that everyone but them is a dolt. An ignorant, non-thinker. Dupe. Does it ever occur to these bureaucrats – not to mention the rest of society that feels compelled to rescue labourers from themselves—that maybe some people enjoy doing what they do? Even if what they do wouldn't make me happy? We are quick to inject our own standards of happiness and satisfaction onto others when we often don't have a clue what's going on in their heads? END
Do we really need a government to unionize every single workplace until employers don't want to and can't afford to hire anymore?
The next time you're tempted to expel the hideous utterance, "the government needs to do something about this," stop what you're doing, and then stop what you're thinking.
It's time for personal accountability and the freedom that walks with it hand in hand. Wishing the government would solve your problems isn't just a gutless abdication of personal responsibility, it's a direct assault on your neighbor. You're asking the government to take away someone's freedom so that you don't have to labour to create goodness and be responsible for yourself.
