Wednesday, December 4, 2013

America's government system is generally unknown

Government in the US is not a hierarchical endeavor entirely. General purpose governments are closer to that but special purpose governments are not really hierarchical at all. And you can owe a fine or go to jail for violating a special purpose government rule just as easily as for a general purpose government.

The judge sitting on the case will piously intone "ignorance of the law is no excuse" when we're talking about a situation where virtually everybody is ignorant. It's a system that cannot survive forever as a rule of law republic and it's visibly breaking down without the tools necessary to take things back under control.

If you know all the governments, you can ask important followup questions like:
How do I get in touch with them?
What do these people do?
Are they doing it well?
Are they doing things that they shouldn't be doing at all?

My county actually runs an amusement park. I would be fairly surprised if a majority knew that or supported the idea. Government is filled with situations like that where they are doing things that simply don't come to the attention of the majority.

On a larger level, the US has a communist style production system with respect to class I pharmaceuticals. To produce them, you need to get a special license from the Attorney General of the US and production quotas are published yearly just like the Soviets did. I would be shocked if 10% of america knew it or understood it and most would not support it.

Given that we have tens of thousands of governments (at the very least) and for a wide majority of US citizens we generally do not even know the names of all of them that claim jurisdiction over where we live, work, and travel on a daily basis, it's inescapable. We don't understand our own governments and have no practical way to escape a rational ignorance of the law.

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