Free Will versus Dictate of a few: The Contrast between Private Business and Government

For people who have never run a business you probably have a poor model in your mind regarding how business works. All business is like the movie industry.  If the buyers to not like your product then they’ll just simply stay away and eventually you will go out of business unless you respond to their tastes.

The beautiful thing about business is that it does can not pre-suppose your wants.  Businesses must make guesses everyday about what products you want.  News organizations likewise as they are a business too.  Thus while movie goers may have wanted  sex and violence for years if next week if they change their preferences the movie makers must respond.   In all manner of things sold this applies.  This is how progress is made by virtue of consumers reacting to better products and forcing manufacturers to follow suit.  

A way of seeing this relationship is as a husband and wife pair.  Each must react to each other in the relationship.  Each must be sensitive to each others needs lest a divorce be sought.

Contrast this to the relationship of consumers with governments.  If you do not like the product you are paying for and receiving from the government what recourse do you have ?  None.  This is like a Parent – Child relationship.  As a child you were not allowed to divorce your parents if you felt they were doing a poor job.  If its one thing that is generally true the older less flexible people that are parents tend not to react to what could be very legitimate changes in a childs disposition towards a given situation.  

In a truly free democratic society everyone would understand this distinction between a consentual relationship and a compulsory one and thus minimize the role of government in all cases.  To the extent we enslave ourselves is the extent to which our society is not a democratic institution.   Governments are reflections of the society within which they are contained and grow from.   Thus the extent to which people do not understand the true nature of business relationships is the extent to which we are not free.  The extent to which people are anti business is a sad testament to peoples subconscious anti-democratic attitudes and dilluded thinking.  The world would be a better place if we clarified the issues of life by each person realizing that indeed no matter the form of their personal life in the end they are running a business which presents its product daily to the people around us.   If we view what we do ourselves negatively due to poor standards possibly its easier to have negative feelings about business as a basic human process.

For me I choose the consentual route.