In the previous piece on Dhan Vapasi, I declared that the government must not own any property. The government’s job is to provide a service to the community. Provision of a service does not require ownership of property or even the tools. One could have tools one uses to provide a service — a vacuum cleaner if you are in the house-cleaning business, for example — but you if you don’t own one, you rent one. The government provides governance services and that does not in any way require those in government to own anything at all, let alone owning private property and least of all people. This is not that hard to understand.
Let’s take a very pedestrian example. The school principal provides the service of managing a school. That does not require that he own the school. The teachers provide teaching services to students. That does not necessitate the teachers to own the classroom, much less that the teachers “own” the students in their classes. That would be insane.
So the claim that the government owns the country — or even parts of the country — is clearly idiotic. The government is just a bunch of people who are supposed to provide governance services (what precisely those services are is a topic for a different time) but they should not be elevated to be the owners of the domain they provide services to. The idea that the government owns whatever it governs is–to use a very expressive Americanism–batshit crazy.
Batshit crazy ideas are so common that they are the normal.
Batshit crazy ideas are not a novelty. They are the norm. Nearly all, if not all, popular ideas are batshit crazy. The simple test is that if an idea is popular, then it is most likely batshit crazy. Here’s a simple way to think about popular ideas. If an idea is popular, then it’s batshit crazy. I’m serious about this. Any person who is held in popular acclaim is most likely worthless, and any idea that is popular is likely — not definitely but likely — to be wrong.
The point is that this idea that the government owns the country and also owns the people who reside within it is very popular, and is not surprisingly absolutely batshit crazy. When the population understands that the government does not own the country and nor does it own the people, that would be an awakening a long time in the coming. But don’t hold your breath. The majority are too stupid to realize that they are enslaved by those in government. They are quite OK with volunteering their servitude. They don’t mind being slaves. Whether the people realize that they are slaves or not, the fact is that they consent to be slaves.
Slaves cannot be slaves without their consent. Because the slaves are more numerous than their enslavers.
I am definitely not the first to realize this. This realization is quite ancient. Many of the ancients arrived at the same realization. Lysander Spooner is one of those. Lysander Spooner? Who the hell was he, you may ask. If you care, check out the wiki page on him.
Dhan Vapasi is the simple idea that the people must own what is termed public property. Ownership implies control of the property, and the gain derived from ownership. If the public doesn’t have control, and does not directly benefit from that property, it is not in any meaningful sense owners of public property.
This idea of Dhan Vapasi is not at all a popular idea. That makes it all the more reason that it be seriously examined. That also makes it all the more likely that it will be dismissed by the people. The good and the wise have never been in the majority. If that had been so, majoritarian democracy would have delivered resounding successes instead of crushing poverty as in India.
More to come.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
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