5. TIMELY FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT

One's orientation or value system defines one's perception of the function of government. The greedy miser thinks government should satiate his money hunger. The religiously devout might argue that government should prepare everyone for eternal life. Among the various definitions, one that encompasses the rest is probably the best. As all problems have a time content, so can all definitions of government be expressed in a value system of time. The miser's money is time. The pursuer of eternal life has time in mind.

A timistic description of government's function is "to divine time rather than to destroy it."*"Divine" has a dual meaning: "to find" (as with a divining rod) and "sacred (deity)". The divine duty of government is to find more time for its citizens.

This definition is central to the analysis of life as a chain of time. As a large temporal process, government should organize the human environment for maximum productivity per capita. For maximum productivity of time, intraflatic and supraflatic activities must end. Such actions involve stealing time from the wrong places: one's fellow citizens or the government itself.

"Time" is central to the less inclusive definitions of government as well. In wanting more money, the miser actually is wanting more time, for currency is the symbol of time. A miserly mentality, however, is willing to weaken the government by cheating on taxes to gain more money.

For the religious believer, government's role in the national pursuit of eternal life clearly involves the concept of time. Unfortunately, the religiously devout sometimes reject the commitment needed to keep the secular world organized and running so they can maintain their devout lifestyle. Many religious orders would lose their free time to practice their faith if everyone observed the strictures of their religion. Often, they do not render unto Caesar that which Caesar needs to maintain economic stability for religious freedom. Many a religion would fold due to a collapsing economic infrastructure if everyone tried to conduct their lives according to the tenets of that religion.

Taxes: A Loan of Time to Solve Problems

Government should solve the common public problems which people cannot or will not solve themselves. Again, time is the common denominator: problems waste people's time. Inflation is the cost of unsolved problems which cheapen currency. Its existence indicates a failing collection of politicians in government.

As a public problem-solving process, a government collects taxes. Again, the concept of time is central to defining government's role. Taxes appropriate your time in the form of currency.

With taxes--your time--the government hires someone to take care of the problems that you cannot or will not take care of yourself. In other words, the government collects a little bit of time from everyone. With this time it hires full-time specialists to solve problems private citizens can't or won't solve on an individual basis.

As an institution designed to divine more time, a government may in fact gain or lose time for its citizens. In effect, taxes constitute lending one's time to government. Like all loans, one wants the principle and interest returned. When one's loan is not repaid by time-savings, one has a losing proposition. Few benefit from our privately sponsored laws, which are in essence legisflated privileges affecting only small groups of taxpayers. Most Americans are not receiving time-savings from the government's taxes on and use of their time.

When both taxes and problems increase, politicians are misusing your loan of time. The government is borrowing more of your time each time they raise taxes. Yet, you suffer greater losses of time: inflation, unemployment and violence. Something is wrong. It is the economic models they use: shortsighted and self-serving rather than farsighted and enlightened.

With the problem-solving benefits of relevant democracy, one can have lower taxes. The elimination of problems reduces the need to borrow time from the citizens to organize bureaucratic problem-solvers.

The Time Loss Behind Corruption and Incompetence

A timistic assessment of government provides insights into the nature of corruption and incompetence. If a politician accepts a $50,000 bribe, the actual time loss is far worse than any insult to one's morality or ethics.* The effects of political corruption and incompetence are evident if one looks at the time content of the briber, the bribed and the innocent public.

No one gives a bribe or a contribution to a politician without expecting to receive favorable treatment, i.e., legisflation. When someone benefits from a special private law, he receives extra wealth for his goods or services. After bribing a politician, he receives more compensation for his existing production time. He has inflated his personal income: more money without increased production.

The legisflator's $50,000 bribe is bad. Yet, the millions of dollars in legisflated losses dwarf it. Special interests receive millions by legally over-charging and price-gouging for their time in producing goods or services. Where do these millions of dollars come from? The dollars come from people who have had their time cheapened. Every piece of legisflation increased the value of someone else's time. Economies are zero-sum systems. There cannot be a dollar of legisflated return without a dollar of legisflated loss and suffering. No one can have his time overvalued without others simultaneously having their time cheapened.

Legally allowing someone to overcharge for their time means others must work longer. The latter suffer a loss in the quality of life. They have fewer moments of free thought. They lose disposable time when the same goods or services are tagged with an inflated price.

The hidden and greater loss behind political corruption is not the one-time bribe. No, the real and larger loss is of many minutes and hours. The price-gouged citizen loses time every day that legisflation is on the law books.

The time that the average person loses because of excessive, misused taxation does not compare to the time loss due to legisflation. Legisflation has prevented the development of less expensive production and has permitted overcharges and price-gouging. Few goods and services do not have a legisflated component. The legisflated cost forces the buyer to work more to afford the product. Even worse, legisflation eventually denies the buyer an opportunity to use his time at production: unemployment. Legisflation is a cancerous supraflatic process that eventually destroys an economy, for people turn from creating wealth to stealing it through the law-making process.

Legisflation: Time Transfer and Theft, Not Creation

As an arm of government, the function of legislation is to divine more time for the citizens. Expressed in older economic terms, the function of legislation is to promote the creation of wealth. When legislators become legisflators (policy-makers who legalize inflation) they are not promoting the production of wealth. Rather, they are merely regulating the transfer of wealth from the productive to the unproductive. Legisflated transfer payments occur in both the public and private spheres. The fattest sacred cows are in the private sphere.

Expressed in timistic terms, legisflators do not divine more time. Rather, they merely take someone's time. They give it to a special someone else. The taking constitutes a theft, a violation of every moral code that man has devised.

Profits: Mutual Benefit

Wise policy-makers will write laws that promote profitable transactions for all parties. Some say that the marketplace should in its subjective way determine profits. However, an objective assessment is possible. If used, it eliminates overpaid people who cause inflationary suffering for the underpaid victims of unfair business transactions.

To be semantically honest, one must begin with the Latin root of profit, pro esse: to advance or forward being or better time.* Is a business transaction profitable if both parties suffer a loss? No. Profitable, if only one person suffers a loss? No. A profit exists only when both parties advance in the quality of their lives. This is merely another way of stating that legal laws should not allow overpayment for services rendered. Inflationary gains on a one-time transaction return the disadvantaged participant to a lower level of existence.

One's free time quantifies the quality of life. A government should legitimize laws which structure business transactions to be profitable to all parties, in both the short- and the long-term. All parties should have more free time after the transaction.

How can we objectively quantify a human transaction for an ideal profit? People initiate transactions to solve problems, real or pseudo. Problems vary in their time loss, that is, the time lost because the problem remains unsolved. Problems also differ in the time cost to solve them. The difference between a problem's time loss and time cost is the objective profit or loss of the activity to solve the problem.

If the time cost to solve the problem is greater than the time loss, then the transaction is not profitable for one or more parties. The transaction should not be allowed. Sadly, the most unprofitable transactions in the world of the 1990s are the elections of corrupt and incompetent politicians. Each election involves more problems and fewer solutions.

Bill of Rights

A government that does not have a bill of rights is one that will not last. As its citizenry increases, the number and complexity of problems increase. If government denies individuals the right to solve their private problems then the problems grow and become public problems.

The time wasted by unsolved problems becomes an increasing burden on the economy and the government. Eventually the mass of unsolved problems sinks the society and the government. To have fewer problems and more time for itself and its citizens, a government needs a bill of rights. A bill of rights, such as the first ten amendments, allows each person the right to solve his own problems.

With problems solved at the source, the time costs are less. The society is more profitable and can move forward.

Bill of Requirements

A government that does not have a bill of requirements will not last. If individuals are not required to solve their private problems then the problems will grow and become public problems.

To have fewer problems and more time for itself and citizens, a government needs a bill of requirements that requires each person to solve his own problems. We need a convention to develop a bill of requirements, perhaps ten more amendments to the Constitution.

Self-Responsibility and Self-Management

A government will not last if it does not require and reward citizen self-responsibility and self-management. If individuals abdicate responsibility to solve their problems, the ignored problems will grow in cost. The cost is in loss of human time--the time loss factor of problems. The rapidly spreading cancerous mass of problems will destroy the society and government. Self-responsibility and self-management solve the problems at the source.

Freedoms: A Posteriori

A government that does not qualify individual acts of freedom by the consequences of those acts is one that will not last. Any action that enslaves someone to a loss of time, to a gain in problems, or to a forfeiture of freedom is not an exercise in freedom. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is not exercising freedom of speech. Similarly, all so-called a priori freedoms need qualification based on the action's result.

If the action leads to a loss of time or to an increase in problems, then the action was not a constitutional or human freedom. The purported freedom did not advance or profit anyone. By qualifying the exercise of "freedoms" a posteriori, according to the consequences, a government can teach its citizens to stop and think. Fewer problems will plague the nation.

Help That Helps

A government that helps its disadvantaged citizens in a manner which does not help them to help themselves will not last. In confronting the problems of life, some people have disadvantages by accident or by birth. An enlightened, self-serving government will help these people solve their problems.

Some forms of help, unfortunately, make people more dependent and more disadvantaged. Help that does not help leads to a class of disadvantaged, dependent people who consume more time than they create. Help that does not help eventually destroys a government and a society. A nonproducing class of people increases, which consumes resources.

Long before the government dies, the disadvantaged people die a spiritual death. The false help enslaves them to a lower standard of living, and denies them the opportunity to become problem-solvers. Such help withholds from them the opportunity to become a better human being. In solving more and larger problems, a homo sapiens experiences and affirms the spiritual being. The exercise of problem-solving abilities makes him more than just another animal on the planet earth. A government owes it to itself and to the citizens to have programs that eventually help capable people to help themselves.

Work Ethic

A government that does not foster and require the work ethic among its citizenry is a government that will not last. On the world stage, the nation with the lowest work ethic will have the highest problem rate. Work is solving problems. Teaching and requiring the work ethic is a tool for fewer problems. Work improves the quality of life.

Time Disappearing

As a collection of people, an economy is the summation of their individual time and freedom. A nation like the United States has a quantity of freedom which reflects the number of unchained minds among its citizenry. A person with such a mind can focus his attention as he pleases, rather than being enslaved by the effects of unsolved problems. On the national level, this degree of freedom changes each day and is quantifiable in terms of time.

Each piece of old or new legisflation decreases the time content of a people. Each unprofitable transaction diminishes the accumulated time reserves. Each failure of the Bill of Rights reduces the time surplus for economic emergencies. Each lack of a Bill of Requirements allows the erosion of time. Each act of irresponsibility eats away America's time to survive. Each false freedom wastes more time. Each instance of help that does not help impoverishes the storehouse of time. The decline of the work ethic is also a decline of time. Devaluation of a people's time lessens the quality of their lives; dehumanization and re-animalization occurs.

America is humanity's greatest achievement. Never had a nation been so conceived in liberty for all. Nowhere had such a diverse people worked so profitably together to achieve a higher state of being and civilization. America is dying. As a timistic entity, it is approaching meltdown and disintegration. Our politicians, entrusted with policing the whole, are responsible for its death.

Balanced Time Acquisition: Non-Cancerous

If a government is to divine more time for its citizens, the government must prevent citizens from preying upon each other and their communities. Cannibalizing one's own kind or economy leads to forms of inflation: intraflation and supraflation. To survive, one must produce more units of time which requires destabilizing and destroying other units of time. The quality of that survival depends on whether these units of time are taken from lower forms of life or from higher temporal entities. For instance, we can kill humans, animals or plants for our protein needs. Which is better for humanity?

Cancerous and cannibalistic survival is a dead-end street in the long run. Eventually it consumes itself rather than organizing itself for mutual long-term existence. On the human level, and by the timistic definition, government must prevent economic cancers and cannibalism. It should not allow segments of the human population to race ahead by cannibalizing the time of other human beings. Banks reporting record income, from high interest rates that are bankrupting manufacturing, is an example of poor government regulation. A government tolerating, aiding or abetting economic cannibalization catalyzes its own collapse.

Inspired with an understanding of time, a government would prevent temporal cannibalism and cancer. Existence is a zero-sum entity: an advance is not without a regression. The closer the temporal destabilization to your own level of life, the greater the unavoidable and hidden cannibalization. The following comparisons of energy sources and free time capture the gist of this statement.

As actual cannibals, human beings eat other people. If cannibalism was legal, how much time would we have for free thought if we were the hunters or the hunted? As beasts of burden, human beings can pull plows through fields. How much free time does a person have who is dead tired after a day in the field? As miners, we provide coal to power steam engines in the fields. As lab researchers, we can harness the cheap energy that fuels not only the stars themselves, but all levels of life. One's overall free time and quality of life increases as one distances oneself from the source of energy (time).

Divide and Divine

Divining more time requires more than promotion of new ways of creating time and multiplication of the old ways. It requires an elimination of wasted time and a conservation of needed time. Between optimal creation and conservation of time, a government can fulfill the ultimate timistic function of divining more time: immortality.

To fulfill the ultimate purpose of government, its policy-makers must observe a few basic relationships. First, the economical "more" precedes the moral "more" which in turn precedes the immortal "more." If people's basic standard of living is declining due to rising taxation, inflation and unemployment, morality will also decline.

Secondly, the divining of more time requires the dividing of time: specifically, the divisioning of people's time with an eye to ruling themselves through relevant democracy.* This divisioning of subunits' time to promote more time for the whole and its parts echos the Kreb's Cycle in the body of a farmer. Good laws encourage and reward people to divide their time between solving both private and public problems. Only through such a democratic divisioning, with appropriate power and responsibility, can people expect to rule time-wasting problems out of their lives. In theory, adequate solving of time-wasting problems should bring immortality.

Warning: Anyone found stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards of Better Democracy and Capitalism.

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