Friends are Electric

I recently made some statements about the nature of the public good, which I feel compelled to clarify exactly what I mean, in the hopes of convincing the reader of the nature of society.

First, the public good is a positive populist principle used here to mean what is best for the sum total of the citizens in whatever electoral area we are discussing, be it municipal, provincial or federal. Serving the public good is serving society as a whole, not serving individuals.

For example, socialised medical care is in service of the public good, since society as a whole benefits from healthy people. Safe and modern infrastructure benefits the public good because no one benefits if bridges fall down or if brownouts are demanded due to electricity capacity.

Acting in the interest of the public good is an exercise in rejecting what may be best for you personally in favour of what is best for the whole of society. It is always better for you if you pay less tax, but if government is unable to deliver the services required of it then lower tax is not in the public good.

Acting in the public good is just a matter of doing what is best for society from an absolute point of view, not from an ideological point of view.

Ideologies are an attempt to force society to conform to a pattern, rather than drawing patterns from society and using those. Ideologies of all kinds are inherently Utopian and impossible to achieve. Anyone acting in the public good ignores ideology and focuses on what is best for a specific situation.

For example, although both socialists and conservatives would disagree with me quite extensively, sometimes it is appropriate to privatise a crown corporation or a government service. Sometimes it is appropriate to have government take on a role which was provided by private enterprise. The only question you need to ask yourself in each case is who will serve the public better. If a private corporation is unwilling to serve the entirety of the public with an important or necessary service, then it falls to government to either make up the difference, relieve private enterprise of their role in the area or subsidise services. The same sort of behaviour is required of government in the case that private enterprise is better able to serve the public as a whole.

Anyone claiming that the above is an inappropriate way of looking at things has probably fallen victim to ideology and has a Utopian view, such as the belief that the free market will solve all problems. The market is quite able to solve a large number of issues when it is profitable to do so, but the market is an entirely inappropriate method to deliver services to dispersed populations where profit margins are too low or nonexistent at all.

It is governments role in a democratic society to be responsible to the people. The people are the source of power as it is their vote and their voice which forms government. Since a government is responsible to the people first and only, it falls to the government to promote the public good. This has not happened in recent times. Governments have been ignoring the source of power and legitimacy, the people, in favour of serving private interests of corporations or specific sectors of society.

So this thought came to me while I was outside.  Would a citizen of the Roman Empire, at the time of its decline, realise what was happening?  This has obvious implications to pesimistic views on current affairs, but that is not why I was thinking it.  I am curious as to whether or not a being within a larger organisation can get a real feeling as to the overall health of it without external indicators.