Lately, one of the tech world’s buzzwords is the “Cloud”, meaning IT resources that are handled outside of your organization. For instance, I’m currently investigating the possibility of moving my workplace’s email to Google Apps for Education, which is a free service that would allow me to stop running email off of our file server.
I realized while doing my research that America’s founding fathers did much the same thing with our government when they created our Constitution. For instance, many of the basic services that we associate with governments- police, fire, courts, and so on were designed to be provided by the “Cloud”. In this case, the “Cloud” was the state and local governments, as well as the people of those states and communities.
Other services, such as banking, food production, and manufacturing were also intended to be cloud-sourced. It might have been a coincidence that both the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations were both released to the world in 1776; but, the two had a synergistic effect. After all, they were both products of the Enlightenment, a philosophical revolution that focused on the growth of human beings based on logically derivable principles.
One of the major tenets of the Enlightenment was the belief that all human beings should rely upon their intellect to guide their lives. This contradicted millennia of moralistic thinking in which an absolute dogma was intended to circumscribe the life of every person. Indeed, the Age of Enlightenment led, over time, to the fall of virtually every absolute monarchy on Earth. This is because absolute monarchies have to rely upon the “Mandate of Heaven” or some variation thereof. If some powerful, supernatural force is not commanding people to slavishly obey a king, human beings seem to stop doing it after awhile.
As a result of all of this enlightening and philosophizing, a whole bunch of people, including many of the founders of our country, starting asking seriously deep questions about the nature of government, the nature of Man, and how to make the two play nicely together. After all, if it is the nature of government to control, why is it that so many people get ticked off at their government when it does exactly that?
Well, the some of the Enlightenment thinkers, like John Locke and Rousseau, asked something that in retrospect seems like an obvious question- “why have a government in the first place?” They argued that human beings in a “State of Nature” enjoy absolute freedom but also suffer from absolute responsibility. One man by himself with no “social contract” might prosper for a time, but if he gets sick or injured there is no one to help care for and protect him until he gets better. Furthermore, that one man faces a strong competitive disadvantage if a group of people acting in concert decides to challenge him. With no one to stand beside him in mutual defense, he is likely to be robbed or killed.
So, from this core example, the Enlightenment thinkers spent an awful lot of time thinking about what the proper role of governments should be. Many of them wrote about this concept of a “Social Contract” in which individual persons traded certain freedoms for certain mutual protections. For instance, we exchanged our animalistic “freedom” to kill other people for no reason for assurances that other people would try to protect us if somebody decides to kill us for no reason. Similarly, we gave up the “freedom” to take whatever we could steal for assurances that other people wouldn’t try to steal from us.
These sorts of trades were generally viewed as good civilizing influences. In essence, our governments were intended to be the stewards of a gigantic “roommate agreement” that allowed us to mutually cooperate without getting too bogged down in each others’ business. If you go back and read the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the various Federalist and Anti-Federalist writings it is clear that the people who created our country wanted this kind of system. They disagreed on the specifics, but the general goal was a government that was minimally intrusive.
At the most basic, fundamental level, this system is based on cloud-sourcing. For instance, let’s take the example of promising not to kill on a whim in exchange for a promise of protection. The government, being nothing more than an agreement, an idea, cannot protect anyone. Some person has to be willing to step in. Before you say, “oh, that’s the police,” remember that in 1787 they didn’t have police like we have today. They had a sheriff and a handful of deputies, but the “beat cops” were people like you and me that the sheriff could call upon in need. If you’ve ever heard of a “posse”, that’s short for “posse comitatus”- the common law principle that allows sheriffs to temporarily conscript people to help keep the peace and arrest criminals.
Our nation is built on a social contract in which all of us are expected to be the government. People talk about “doing our fair share”, but the founders of our nation weren’t talking about paying taxes- they intended that “doing” part literally!
Sure, monetary taxation is an important part of a system of government; but not to anywhere near the extent that we assume today. As far back as human history goes, taxation consisted largely of labor, forced in the case of slaves and serfs, volunteered freely in the case of a democratic republic like the United States. It’s only in the 20th Century that taxation became mostly about paying money to get someone else to do the work.
That’s not to say that we don’t need to have a few professionals around to make sure the “i”s get dotted, but we’ve gone way beyond the level of efficient centralization. When people are seriously worried about the economic impact of cutting government spending, then government spending is too large of a chunk of our economy. Why is it that most Americans spend a third or more of their income on taxes?
Because we are paying someone else to be citizens on our behalf.
Our founding fathers intended that most of the work of protecting, sustaining, and growing our civilization would be conducted directly by private citizens like you and me. Instead, we are abrogating that responsibility and whining when we lose the freedom that accompanied that responsibility. No responsibility, no freedom.
The philosophers from the Age of Enlightenment were clear on that point. Freedom is a product of the “State of Nature” in which we live alone and carry total responsibility. When we give up responsibility, we automatically lose freedom. This is a Natural law, a cause and effect as consistent as letting go of an apple and watching it fall.
If you value your freedom, and I certainly value mine, then it’s time to start cloud-sourcing our society again. The more that we, as individuals, support each other, respect each other, protect each other, and care for each other… the less reason there is to pay some government mercenary to do it for us.
While I certainly encourage you to run for public office (I’m on my eighth campaign), that’s not the only way to be a good citizen. The whole political process is difficult and confusing for many people. It also represents only a tiny fraction of the stuff that needs to get done to keep our society running smoothly.
Just today, I saw a woman at the grocery store struggling to tie a toddler’s play set to the roof of her car. I offered to help her with it and together we got it lashed down. Alone, she might have succeeded in securing it, but she would have been left feeling unsupported- a little like living under the “Law of the Jungle”. That kind of emotional abandonment, no matter how small, encourages us to feel isolated and in need of a system to take care of us- a “nanny state” in political jargon.
Instead, by offering to help and doing so, I encouraged that woman to seek solutions from “the Cloud” rather than from some centralized edifice. As Ben Franklin suggested, and Robert Heinlein popularized- “paying it forward” is a great way to do a lot of good with a very small investment.
I don’t always succeed at living up to that ideal. Indeed, some days I struggle with it- especially when I’m feeling rushed, insecure, or just plain tired. For every time that I help someone just to be nice, there are probably a dozen or more opportunities that I miss or pass up. I’m not happy with that, but right now it’s about the best I can do.
The key, as I’ve said before, is to do the best we can with what we have, and then to resolve to do better. I hope that you will join me in resolving to “do a good turn daily” as the scouts used to say. I know that the more of us there are in “the Cloud”, the easier it will be for each of us to get through the day.
