My wife and I have two cars. To drive these cars according to government rules, we need six licences: two for the cars, and two each for us (the one car is bigger). It is, however, well nigh impossible to get these licences: the licence departments are unlawfully closed at the times that they should be open; the queues are hours long, and to even be in the queue it is required to get an appointment, but appointments are rationed, and only those in the know can actually get an appointment. To even get an appointment, we have to drive to the next town, or further, and during that drive, we are treated to people flagrantly violating traffic rules.
The system has failed. Every month the standard of driving drops: more people jump red lights, don’t stop at stop signs, overtake unsafely, drive on parts of the road that are not for driving, and the smashes get more and more impressive. Entitled taxi drivers will damage your property without any consequences for them, while their passengers travel in fear of their lives, because they will gladly murder and maim anyone that would threaten their transport monopoly (private taxis, and buses) and harass anyone that looks like he might be competing with them, with threats of death. There is no safety on the road, because there is no enforcement of law and justice, and yet, we are supposed to submit to the ridiculous licence process that promises road safety, and is patently failing to deliver it. It’s a load of stinking rubbish. The officers of the law themselves despise the law, driving with complete disregard of all road rules, but they lie in wait to do just one thing: to check your licence.
A licence is a permission to do something that you can actually do without the licence:
- To hunt, to fish, to mine: hunting licence, fishing licence, mining licence
- To marry: marriage licence
- To drive: driving licence
- To have a car, truck or trailer: vehicle licence
- To have a weapon: gun licence
- To preach: preaching licence
Licences seem to start out with noble intentions. Rather than letting things go bad, a licence process promises to stop a dangerous situation from developing:
- Fishing licences will save our fishing stocks for the locals
- Hunting licences will save our game for actual farmers
- Mining licences will stop strangers come and steal our minerals.
- Marriage licences will prevent harmful marriages
- Driving licences will keep incompetent and dangerous people off the roads
- Vehicle licences will keep dangerous vehicles off the roads
- Gun licences will stop idiots from shooting innocent people
- Preaching licences will ensure that you always have the best preaching
And, of course, they deliver nothing of the sort. The conditions change. The validity of the licence is shortened continually, so that the thing becomes illegal:
- Fishing licences become the state selling fish to the locals, and then also to foreigners
- Hunting licences become the total prohibition of hunting, except at the pleasure of the state
- Mining licences steal all the minerals from land owners, and give them to politicians and the foreigners that bribe them.
- Driving licences keep people at the mercy of the state for transport, and the conditions of this mercy become slowly more and more onerous. Normal people are slowly forced off the road.
- Vehicle licences allow the state to dictate ever-crazier ideas about how cars should work. Slowly they decide for you what purposes you can use your vehicle for, and arbitrarily change fundamental things like what fuels your car may use.
- Gun licences ensure that only criminals have guns, and that there is no protection for innocent people.
- Preaching licences ensure that only the very worst preachers are heard, and that the truth is never heard.
The enforcement of licences goes like this:
- You have a thing
- You use the thing
- Government men come and see you use the thing
- You need to show the paper that said that you can use the thing
- If you don’t have the paper, then you are punished: you lose your goods, or your freedom, or both.
When the government men show up, they are not doing any of the things that licences promised to do. They are simply oppressing the people who have failed to keep up with the ever-changing conditions of the licence. Oppressing people on behalf of government is wicked. The government that demands licences is wicked, and the officials who enforce the licence are wicked.
The licence adds nothing to the thing that it licences:
- The fish don’t bite any better with a licence
- The deer taste the same whether or not you have a licence
- The gold is just as shiny, and the salt is just as salty, whether or not you paid the government a bribe to let you haul it out of the ground, or dredge it out of the sea (yes, they demand a licence for taking salt out of the sea).
- The driving is just as hard and fraught with danger, whether or not the driver has a licence. Licensed drivers vary from completely incompetent to excellent, and even excellent licensed drivers drive poorly when intoxicated.
- The car goes just as well whether or not it has approval from the state. The state is not involved in the physics of the car’s operation at all.
- Guns shoot projectiles without regard to whether government paper exists to authorise them to go pow. Some of the most effective projectiles are shot by guns without the approval of the state.
- Some of the very best preaching doesn’t have a licence. The government or church licence does not cause a preacher to preach any better, neither with regard to delivery, nor content – if anything, it makes it worse.
The solution to licences is simple: END ALL LICENCES. It is not the job of government to tell you that you can do a thing that you can do. If you do harm, and if you do evil, and if you do wickedly, then government has a job to do:
- If you dynamite the fish, government should whip you (or they might not care)
- If you kill deer and don’t eat it, government should whip you (or they might not care)
- If you mine on land that you don’t own, government should make you pay the owner of the property
- If your driving causes damage to property, or injures people, or kills people, government should deal with you according to the actual damage you caused. Maybe they should whip you for being rude on the road too, but if no harm happened by reason of your driving, government should leave you alone.
- If your piece of junk vehicle loudly belches black smoke and throws parts on the road, government should invite you to compensate the people who had to deal with the mess you made.
- If you actually kill or injure someone with a gun, that’s a great time for government to dispense justice. If you just have a gun, or a rocket launcher, or a brick, government should leave you alone.
- If you preach lies … government should make sure that they find and encourage someone to preach the truth louder than you are preaching lies. Giving you a licence to preach what the government thinks is truth is probably a bad idea.
Not one of these licences has any merit. Except maybe one …
The only licence that has any value is the marriage licence: having government men check that a marriage is valid before it begins can be a really useful. Modern government seems to have no idea what marriage is though: they allow people that cannot form a valid marriage to be “married”, and encourage the dissolution of valid marriages for invalid and transient reasons. Neither do they seem to know how to protect marriage against predators. So, while the idea is good, the execution is so horrible, that it might be best that the government leave marriage to people who actually know what it is.
And here’s the conclusion:
As saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand shall not be upon thee.
1 Samuel 24:13 KJV
The system of licences is wicked.
The system comes from wicked people.
People that enforce licences are wicked.
Licences must go.
