Government is the Problem

I’ve often spoken of how government, regardless of their political stripe, does more damage than good in your life.

Sure, there are things they need to do because they are realistically the only viable option - national defence is one such example. But overall, they usually overreach and that costs us all.

It costs us financially because governments love giving stuff away to rent your vote, but they cannot give you anything for free.

Someone always pays, and while you might think that's fine as long as it’s someone else footing the bill, one day, if not you, it will be your descendants.

Only the genuinely selfish have no regard for future generations.

But government failings cost much more than money. They can impact the collective psyche of a nation and take a terrible toll on individuals.

That was evidenced by a very sobering report released recently by the suicide prevention centre.

Now, this isn’t a column about suicide. If you feel you need help, then reach out to Lifeline. If a friend needs help, ask them if they are OK.

This is my take on some of the most significant risks to suicide rates over the next 12 months and how the government makes everything worse.

According to this report, the following are among the top suicide risk factors.

1. Cost of living and personal debt
2. Social isolation
3. Unemployment
4. Housing access and affordability
5. Environment and Climate change
6. Gender Roles

According to the survey, there are others, but these are significant factors.

Before I go through them individually, I'd like to clarify that the government has created or exacerbated these concerns.

So let’s peek under the bonnet at each of them.

The cost of living is entirely attributable to government decisions. They’ve wrapped us all up in red, green and black tape that impacts everything we buy, sell or build.

They’ve killed off our natural economic moat - cheap and reliable electricity.

They’ve imported millions of migrants, diminishing our service capacity and driving our per capita incomes in the wrong direction.

As to personal debt, that’s a result of an individual's decisions.

However, as successive governments have dumbed down the education system to such an extent that people can no longer comprehend basic maths, let alone calculate interest or opportunity cost, how are they expected to actually manage real money prudently?

Part of the problem is that so many irresponsible individuals have been bailed out by successive governments - whether it be for not insuring their homes or encouraged into high levels of debt by artificially low interest rates….and the false promise of them staying low for years.

That was a trap for young players that's now smashing risky borrowers.

And what about social isolation?

I guess that psycho-trauma has everything to do with the crazy lockdowns and authoritarian demands of government response to the pandemic. Can’t see family or friends, limits on funerals and weddings. The lonely were sentenced to solitary confinement for committing no crime.

It was an abject disgrace, with only the government to blame.

I admit to being baffled by this next one - unemployment!

We’re told that unemployment is around record low levels, and yet, apparently, it’s one of the leading suicide risks. Work that out.

Plenty of jobs are available, and too few are willing to fill them. Maybe people have grown complacent; that's a euphemism for laziness, as they have been conditioned to get money from the government for doing nothing all day.

Or perhaps it's because the government defines employment as one hour of paid work per week. If you can work the appropriateness of that out then you’re doing better than me.

What about housing affordability?

Again, governments have always sought to prop up housing prices because they know the electoral wrath of the homeowner who loses money is much worse than those who want to be homeowners.

That’s why they keep creating lousy schemes to keep prices high.

First home owners grants, renovation handouts, state government land banking and those promises of artificially low interest rates lingering for years.

Now, we get to a couple of my favourite topics.

I wonder what could be causing anxiety and stress about climate change and the environment. It certainly nothing about what's actually happening to the climate.

After all, it's been much hotter and much colder in the earth's history than it is now.

All the predictions of an imminent catastrophe have proved false, and the climate stubbornly refuses to live up to the modelling demanded of it. So why would we be worried?

Maybe it's because politicians insist on scaring the wits out of everyone with a relentless propaganda campaign.

It could be because the government takes the ravings of an unwell teenager as some new gospel to be obeyed. Or perhaps it's because our education system indoctrinates our young people with no scientific rationale.

One example is the claim that 97% of scientists agree that man causes climate change.

That’s a demonstrable lie manufactured by cherry-picking papers and excluding dissenters. And yet, it has been repeated by political leaders worldwide and faithfully regurgitated by a compliant media.

Then there is this doozy.

Apparently gender roles are a high risk for prompting suicide over the next twelve months.

Somehow, I don’t think this is about the traditional societal approach to men and women. I suspect it might have more to do with men who claim to be women and the ladies who claim to be blokes.

Now, there are clearly people who think like that. Just like there are non-disabled people who identify as disabled or the person with anorexia who can only see a fat person in the mirror.

They can’t help how they feel, but we can help them understand the disconnect between their mental projection and reality.

For society to go along with their self-deception is to do them a disservice.

That’s why, in this space, we have traditionally worked to reshape perception rather than the physical being.

Somehow, that has changed when it comes to gender roles in our society. Not in the other areas I mentioned, the transabled and anorexic, but only in the gender space.

That’s been funded and endorsed by governments, and now this report suggests it's harming wellbeing. Who could have guessed that would happen?

So, if you wonder why a lot of stuff doesn’t seem to be working out for our society, I'd posit that it's because we have all taken leave of our senses and put our trust in government rather than our common sense.

Every time the government gives you something, it makes you weaker. When they promise their policies are for your own good, they are acting only in their interests.

There are many great lies in life, but ‘the government is there to help us’ has to be one of the biggest cons going around.

You can read the report by clicking the link below.