Perhaps government is too big? Too expensive?
Perhaps too intrusive?
These days they tap your phones and check your bank accounts (if you withdraw over a certain amount in cash, your bank, by law, has to ‘report your activity’ to Canberra).
We all have mental images of what government actually is.
I often think of it as a tapeworm, which left unchecked will eat away at our insides.
A small benign tapeworm is probably okay, but if left unchecked it claims total legitimacy.
This unfortunately blurs the demarcation limits between what is the limited legitimate role of government and what happens when government runs amok.
Someone once commented that we don’t get all the government we actually pay for. To which a wise observer responded, “Aren’t we lucky!”
By assuming more responsibility for self-government, we can get government to back off a little. We will then maintain better financial health; and a healthy dog can sustain a few bureaucratic fleas.
So, each individual has a responsibility to ‘starve their tapeworm’ to ensure survival of the human species.
That is of course unless you depend on your tapeworm for survival and you live off political favours rather than individual effort.