Is Your Government a Headless Chicken?

By Stephen Cook

Is Your Government a Headless Chicken?

by Stephen Cook

Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

Is Your Government a Headless Chicken?

This article was written in two parts a couple of years ago for the Unite and Win Group and was published here and there on the net under a pen name. I have polished it up and taken out the typos (I hope). There is something missing from every government on the planet. Without it they all run into trouble, both for themselves and, more importantly, their citizens. Here is an interesting observation: what is the PRODUCT of that group we refer to as "the government?" So far as I am aware, it has never been stated or agreed upon and appears at any rate to be unknown by those in government and those on whose behalf government is supposed to be acting ("the people"). Society comprises many thousands of groups. Each group engages in some activity or other towards some end result, some product which is valuable in greater or lesser degree to the other members of society. That product can be some physical thing or some service provided. To be valuable and viable that product must in some way be wanted by and enhance the survival or well-being of the recipient. This applies to virtually any group and by way of example (and you can correct the wording if it does not quite work) I suggest the following: A house-painting company produces painted houses that look smart and are protected from the elements. The product of a school is children possessed of the knowledge and skills that enable them to be an asset to and to flourish and prosper in
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Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

the society. The product of a police officer might be stated as an area free of crime. The product of a food manufacturer might be stated as safe, healthy and nutritious food. The product of a shoe shop might be well-fitted and comfortable shoes on the feet of satisfied customers. The product of a taxi driver could be defined perhaps as customers delivered in safety and comfort to their destination. Okay, so these may not be entirely adequate statements of the products of various groups. Other people smarter than me, particularly those involved in producing the product, will be able to work out a wording that defines it more aptly. The point however is that everyone engaged in some form of production, in some activity for which they receive an exchange from others, is delivering a product. If one cannot define what ones product is, or cannot work it out or does not think that there is one, then the chances are one is engaged in an activity that has no worthwhile purpose so far as everybody else in concerned. If one cannot define ones product, one does not know then what one is supposed to be doing and has no end result for ones activity. Without a product we wind up with a lot of activity for activity's sake. And perhaps one could define a criminal product as a product that diminishes the survival potential, well-being or joy of living of other people. Some food manufacturers are an example of companies that do not know what their product is or who produce criminal products.

Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

Not knowing they are supposed to produce safe, healthy and nutritious food and thinking that their product is "sales" or "profits for shareholders" or something, they produce unsafe, unhealthy, non-nutritious food. In so doing they produce an un-viable, non-survival product that harms the consumer by contributing to obesity and other physical and mental illhealth. Some government education departments do not know what the products of their schools should be. The British Labour government was a case in point. It had some vague notion that its product was "exam passes" or something. As a result, while exam passes rose, actual educational standards in Britain - already low - fell through the floor. And that damaged the survival potential both of the students and of the British nation as a whole a nation does not need people with certificates, it needs people with ability. Government is also a group of people that performs a function in the society but without a clear definition of its product, one has no yardstick by which the government itself nor anyone else can measure whether it is succeeding or failing. A ball bearing factory has the product of perfectly round ball bearings or some such. Perfectly round ball bearings are needed and wanted by others and thus have a survival value (they enable other machines to be built that assist people in the business of survival.) But what if the ball bearing factory did not know that it was supposed to produce perfectly round ball bearings? What if it had only the hazy idea it was supposed to produce small metal objects of some kind? When flat or square ball bearings start coming off the assembly line, and being some kind of small metal object, they are not picked up as flawed or undesirable products and are then passed on to the consumer. But flat or square ball bearings have no value to the consumer. They are of no use in enhancing survival. So nobody will buy them and the factory will fail and go bust as its "products" are unwanted by anyone.

Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

But what if the ball bearing factory were in a position to FORCE others to accept and buy whatever it churned out, even though the "product" was useless or even detrimental to the survival of the purchaser? In essence, that is the position of most governments. A government is a group of people. It engages in some activity or other. Its product is not clearly defined and agreed upon. It is in the unique position of being able to FORCE the consumer to pay for whatever it happens to churn out, even when what it turns out is detrimental to the survival of the consumer. With no clearly defined product, no agreement as to what it is supposed to produce, we wind up with a lot of activity but no-one within government or on the receiving end has any reliable, consistent way to measure governments success or failure. Governments are just sort of "there." They flounder around like a headless chicken, they stagger from one crisis to the next, raise taxes, churn out laws in endless profusion, declare wars in which everybody loses, promise one thing while doing another, lie, intimidate, mess people about - and often to the extent where citizens have to form groups to protect themselves from their own government, throwing government into the status of an enemy rather than an ally - and so forth. Very often governments wind up administrating in the service of one or another vested interest groups such as banking or drug companies. They get the idea they are supposed to keep populations "under control." They work on some notion that they are supposed to just "keep themselves going." They conceive of themselves as a group distinct from or even imposed upon the society of which they are a part and think it is perfectly reasonable to muck their fellow citizens about, educate the young into advanced illiteracy or preside over a decline in the standard of living of some of the richest and most productive nations in the history of the planet. And the governed, none the wiser as to what their governments product
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Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

is, tend to go on rather bemusedly supporting it, buying its justifications and excuses. As its conduct degenerates, it renders their world less and less safe and it drives civilisation into chaos and ruin. So what is governments product? Or rather, what should it be? What is a desirable product for a government? We could agree that the product of government is prosperous multinational corporations, or a population that does as it is told or rich politicians or safeguarded banking interests and this might work for the CEOs of multinational corporations, banking cartels and so forth but it does not work too well for millions of the rest of us. What we need then is to agree on a product that enhances and promotes the optimum degree of survival for all of us. Suppose we decide that the product of our government is: A safe environment in which all honest people are able to flourish and prosper free of inhibition to their survival efforts. This is a viable and desirable product for government to work for and deliver so far as both we and government are concerned. There is not much point in our having a government that does anything else is there? A government that actually inhibits our survival does not have much value so far as we are concerned. We can measure governments performance and gauge its competence or incompetence, its sincerity or lack thereof once we know the product we want from it. By their products ye shall know them. Look around. Is the environment safer or less safe? Are we more able to flourish and prosper or less?

Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

Is your government currently producing flat ball bearings?

There is something else missing from government. It is possibly the missing ingredient in every civilization in history that has perished. It is one thing to decide and agree upon the product we want our government to deliver in exchange for the money we pay it. It is quite another to make sure that it does and that it keeps on so doing. There is hardly a government on the planet at this time that is delivering the product. If the environment is being rendered safe for somebody (which I doubt) that somebody sure as hell is not the likes of thee and me. Regardless of whether our government says that whatever it is doing it is making the world safer, our experience is that the environment is becoming more dangerous in almost every aspect and very often the danger emanates from government itself! Take the war on terror for instance. I dont know about you but I dont feel safer. I dont feel any more scared of terrorists than I did but I sure as hell feel more intimidated by my own government in its efforts to make the world safe! Economically I feel less safe. In the unstable, mismanaged mess of my countrys economy, Im poorer and less secure than I once was and less confident of the future and I sure am more inhibited in my efforts to flourish and prosper. Are people more literate, more equipped with the life skills necessary for
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Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

them to be able to flourish and prosper? No, they are not. In my own country, Great Britain, educational standards have dropped through the floor. We need to be able to make correct and rational decisions so as to flourish and prosper. For that we need truthful information and not falsehoods from our fellow human beings, from industry and from government itself. Is our environment then free of the falsehoods that lead to erroneous decisions? No it is not. And it is a deteriorating scene in which we become increasingly bewildered. Governments lie and withhold information and even start wars that get a lot of good people killed based on falsehoods; mighty drug corporations are less than honest about the drugs they try to seduce us into buying; food corporations put stuff in the food that damages our health and hope no-one will notice; the media slants its reports and cannot be trusted, and so on. We are not getting the product of a safe environment in which all honest people are able to flourish and prosper free of inhibition to our survival efforts. What we are getting is the opposite: a progressively less safe environment in which the inhibitions to our survival efforts are increasing. Our governments are not delivering the goods. It is necessary then to correct the actions of government so that it does deliver the goods or at least moves in the right direction towards a safer environment and reduced inhibition to our efforts to flourish and prosper. We would do that with any other group that sold us a lousy product. Indeed any entity that produces something must have some kind of quality control function in order to be able to detect and correct a flawed or inferior product.
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Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

So why not government? But how do we correct the course of government when it moves in the wrong direction and does not deliver the goods? What is required if that is to be achieved, is a quality control function for government. This would be an entity exterior to government and thus able to oversee it. Such an entity would have a clear idea of what the product is supposed to look like. It would be alert enough to spot the flat ball bearings when they appear and the specific errors or malfunctions further up the production line that produced the flawed product. It would also have to be powerful enough to insist that corrections are made so that the product is delivered. So far as I am aware, no government in history has ever had such a quality control function and like any group that does not have the facility to detect and correct goofs, they fail. Does such a quality control entity exist? At present, no. Could we create one? Yes, we could. If all public groups came together and formed a forum, a united front able to speak with one voice, such a forum could exert quality control upon government, probably for the first time in history. It would actively then be helping government deliver its product of a safe environment in which all honest people (including those in government) can flourish and prosper. And then we all win.

Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

About Stephen Cook I am a professional writer, author and copywriter. I have several published books and a newspaper column and have published several hundred articles under various pseudonyms. As well as a writer I have run businesses (okay, I admit it: not very well), worked in human rights and social reform and, currently, in drug rehabilitation (I am a withdrawal specialist and detox specialist). Back in the seventies I was, for a while, a hippy and I have also been in the British Territorial Army (Parachute Regiment) as well as been threatened with murder by London gangsters. I have been happily married for almost thirty years and have three children and three grand children.

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Is Your Government a Headless Chicken? By Stephen Cook

Copyright Stephen Cook 2012

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