The mantra from the Peachtree Corners City proponents is “Government Closest to the People is Best”. This sounds good on the surface, but the opposite is actually true. The closer we are, the less we need government at all. As Thomas Paine argues in “Common Sense”, government is only needed when the community is so large that we can no longer get together neighbor to neighbor and business to business to solve our problems. Our world today is rich with technologies that help us communicate and thus shrink our community. Common sense says why go to the expense and bureaucratic inefficiency of establishing a government close to home?
The Peachtree Corners Ballot Committee believes that:
- The best government is one that does only what people cannot do for themselves and governs the least.
- Government is best when it is large enough to do the job with economies of scale and yet close enough to listen to the needs of the people.
Clearly, with today’s means of transportation and high-tech communications, access to those in government by the governed is real time. Distance has no impact.
Government needs to be large enough to provide economies of scale. Otherwise its costs are higher than the benefit they can provide. Government becomes a liability and a nuisance to the community, crowding out the private sector, the real engine driving prosperity. Peachtree Corners City is too small and its focus to narrow to matter. It only offers power to a few and more trouble than it’s worth to everyone else.
In the immortal words of Thomas Paine, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil”
Peachtree Corners is a blessing because we are free of excessive government. Vote No on November 8th and keep it that way.
Posted By: Jose
