The fallacy of state provided security - who exactly is protected?

The world has become a strange and seemingly frightening place–or at least seems so, perhaps because of real-time event reporting and social media.

Perhaps in gentler times the risks presented to humanity on the planet earth were just as potent but isolation contained the wide threat picture to a few affected individuals and preserved individual mental health.

In early time becoming a meal might have been the big risk, followed later by diseases and epidemics with no apparent cause, these days, with those threats by and large contained we now have a new mortal enemy–ourselves.

All over the planet populations quiver in anticipation of brutality as internal or external forces smash their way into positions of control. This is in spite of any particular government promising immunity from such brutal incursions. It seems authorities are woefully unable to deliver any semblance of protection no matter how cooperative the citizens or the sophistication of governments arsenals, tools and strategies, ever larger and more frightening events and circumstances occur–seemingly at the will of the perpetrators of terror and carnage.

It is safe to say – governments cannot provide any more than token safety and protection no matter what steps are taken to the contrary. 

Given the results of recent events… be they natural catastrophe, economic implosion, corporate recklessness, engineering failure or bad guy induced carnage, the individual citizen is totally exposed regardless.

To say governance is ineffective in these cases would be an understatement. The effective way to mitigate risk is through risk avoidance strategies and rigorous oversight with companion penalty for transgressors.

As conditions worsen, we are encouraged to trade in the remnants of personal freedom for the implied benefits of government provided security and protection. One has to question the wisdom of this particular trade, especially when one considers the ramification of becoming a hapless ward of the state — in effect.

So skewed has the “protection” model become, it seems state provided protection is exclusively for the states benefit and and not the citizens. In fact, judging from their behavior the state is more inclined to regard the citizen as the standing threat to the state.


Just the act of stepping outside exposes the common citizen to the potential of public humiliation or worse at the hand of its employee–the civil servant, or worse–the arbitrary forced entry of the “peace-keepers” into an individuals home and sanctuary.

In the meantime and with apparent impunity, corporations routinely loot the economy, protective infrastructure remains untended and in disrepair, significant death traps such as nuclear plants are seeded in high disaster prone areas, food is engineered without understanding effects, water is ruined,while the ability of the individual citizen to self-help is either stunted or abolished.

If it were not for the efforts of amateurs and concerned citizens sounding alerts or whistle-blowing we would have no effective protection at all.


The false choice between security and civil liberties

There is security you see. There is security you don’t see. And suddenly there is a sense that there is no security at all. The last category best describes this terrifying week, which began with two terrorist bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon and ended with a running shootout with the suspects through Cambridge and Watertown.

I recently witnessed four days of diabolical terror where thousands of government sponsored specialists were at a loss to either prevent or swiftly contain two young individuals bent on mayhem and carnage–does this not speak directly to the fact that government of any size or capability is incapable of delivering any level of secured living environment.

Given the ratio of enforcers to perpetrators in this case the projection is obvious. Your state cannot effectively protect you and in the other issues cited seems they have no stomach to even try.

Governance should attend to those things that can be remedied and enable population to preserve their own safety.

We are in short paying handsomely for the illusion of “secured living” in a fast collapsing world… survival will come down to self-preservation, make sure you still have the ways and means to invoke such action when your turn comes.

Resist the loss of personal freedoms, especially the right to survive–loss of that could prove fatal.

Stay tuned…