The QuestionableSource platform articulates our vision of an ideal government consistent with the QS Principles.
Introduction
The New World was a void into which the most ambitious ideas of the Western Enlightenment could be applied without the baggage of European institutions. It was on American soil that immigrants came together and asked the simple question: how can we build the world’s greatest government? Despite their diverse philosophies, divergent economic interests and disparate geographic locations, the founding fathers came together around one issue: limiting government. America’s founders knew that government, like all institutions, loses focus on its founding mission and becomes increasingly concerned with it’s own survival and growth.
Over the course of the last two centuries, the Federal Government has traveled the well worn path towards empire, growing steadily as it pressured Americans to exchange individual liberty for centralized power. This power has been used to make the Federal Government an integral part of everyday life: from business operation to education, health care to recreational choices, our government’s growth would surely frighten the authors of our Constitution.
The intention of our founding fathers was to make sure the American people remained free. The greatest threat to freedom does not come from the threat of violence; it comes from the promise of plenty. When government promises to provide for people, it diminishes the value of the concept of freedom. Why would an individual struggle to find their own path and improve themselves if they could live the life of a fat slave?
The Federal Government isn’t interested in instilling in the American people a love of authentic freedom. Indeed, after two centuries of expansion, it’s clear that the Federal Government wants us all to believe that the concept of liberty is as antiquated as the paper upon which our Constitution was written.
Government: People with Guns
Government is an organization of people who have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This means that the Government has the right to coerce you with the threat of imprisonment or death. Such an organization is perfectly structured to perform the essential task of keeping the peace internally (by administering a system of justice) and externally (by defending the integrity of our national borders) but just as a hammer is too clumsy an instrument to mend people, government is too clumsy an instrument to mend society. The fact of the matter is that we don’t want the people with the guns running our education systems, providing us with health care, certifying our plumbers or performing any task that we could do ourselves.
Community: People with Words
Communities don’t have the right to coerce people with the threat of physical harm, but they do have the right to use the tools of social coercion. Indeed, it was the forces of compassion and social coercion that compelled individuals to self-organize and finance the many thousands of diverse philanthropic institutions (nonprofit, for-profit, religious) that provided countless Americans with health and education services before the income tax was established during The First World War.
The forces of compassion and social coercion have the strength to finance philanthropic health and education services superior to those run by the government, but the government, like any competitive organization, works to prevent competition from entering the market by levying high taxes on the people and creating complex regulations with high compliance costs. These tactics, and others, have successfully prevented private philanthropic services from competing with the government and allowed the government to continue to grow in size and scope. While advancements in technology, especially the internet, have made the dream of privately run universal health care and education attainable, Federal programs continue to expand into the space, preventing that dream from becoming a reality.
QS Platform
The QS Platform presents a set of policy proposals that will allow people to organize themselves so they can provide their own communities with the social services necessary for the existence of a compassionate society. We believe that the internet enables people to organize so effectively that, when properly used, it will eliminate the need for government intervention in our everyday lives. In other words, the internet will allow us to construct the classically liberal society of all our dreams.
We believe that all humans are compelled by nature to self-actualize. We also believe that a perfectly free market operates under the same rules that govern natural evolution. Like blowing wind or surging water, man-made structures can channel the natural, evolutionary force of the free market into unnatural arraignments that transform the liberation of voluntary exchange into a coercive relationship of dependency and oppression. This ‘channeled’ free market is the one critics of capitalism complain about, but these critics don’t realize that only government -only the people with guns- are capable of building structures that channel the forces of the market into inequitable arrangements. Our mission is to liberate the free market from these unnatural structures so that individuals and communities can participant in a perfect marketplace that compels each of us to achieve our full potential.
First Steps
1. Replace the Income Tax with The Fair Tax (consumption tax)
2. Place the Federal Reserve under the authority of the Legislative Branch
3. Provide health care and education vouchers to every American.
4. Enact a Carbon Tax that finances a Green Energy Subsidy
Coming Soon: Positions on the Economy and Taxes, Health Care, Education, Foreign Policy and States Rights.