After all, personal responsibility is what this is about.

The tragedy of the commons teaches that community-owned resources are not economically or practically sustainable.  That resource will eventually require subsidy, another investment from the community because the original resource will have been abused by members of the community.  Ultimately, the commons, or community property, is welfare that benefits government, its employees, contractors, special interests and abusers and they always leave their dog poop behind for others to clean.

Look at the environmental mess left at the site by the protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline.  Supposedly, they were protesting to protect the environment.  The Obama government, courts, mainstream media, and a significant number of citizens supported these special interests and they claimed to be there to protect a common resource.

A resource that would be sustainable if owned as private property by an individual becomes economically unsustainable when owned as a community resource.  That happens in the due course of business for the government which by law must treat all citizens equally.  Government ends up supporting the lowest common denominator, which is predictably the most expensive way to proceed.  But the owner of private property is free to discriminate and negotiate the best deal for his private property and is incented to maintain his private property to protect its value.  For these reasons, a defense industry and national defense, a common resource, will always be expensive.

For these reasons, government must be a limited resource with limited authority.

We have paid billions of dollars based on a global warming agenda which was mostly based on government-funded mathematical models that do not work.  And those in government and their colluding special interests fully expect that we will pay trillions of dollars more and/or reduce our quality of life to protect a common resource, the environment, even though they have not and cannot prove the environment is in danger due to global warming.  But we already know all that, or should know that, from the lesson of the tragedy of the commons.

Citizens charge their government with oversight and responsibility for minimizing the cost of the defense of the citizens and their property.  Citizens would gladly pay for that.  But governments rarely deliver.  Governments tend to invest in offensive defense systems rather than aggressive diplomacy designed to reduce the need for and expense of defense.  In 1017, state departments are more weapons procurement programs than a system for proselytization for realistic peace;  but they shouldn’t be.  Citizens will gladly pay for outreach diplomacy to tell the American story to the rest of the world.  No pressure.  Non-political.  Truth.  Call it Radio Free World.

Citizens must require as a minimum standard that their government protect individual rights and private property of citizens even more than the government protects itself.  The government must leave itself vulnerable to its citizens and address citizens complaints.  The Fourth Amendment does not go far enough.  Citizens must demand that their government pay for the legal defense of citizens who have been charged with a crime by their government. This is a check and balance between citizens and the legal system and government.  In cases where the government is plaintiff and/or prosecutor against a citizen or group of citizens, then the government must pay all the expenses for the defense of the citizen or group of citizens.

However, nothing is paid by the government when one citizen or group charges or sues another citizen or group with either a crime or a civil damage; the entire cost of these proceedings should be borne by the loser in court.  Otherwise, plaintiffs and their issue, legal counsel and collaborators chase and will continue to chase frivolous and predatory cases.

Surveilling citizens by any means by the government is illegal according to the Fourth Amendment, law of the land, without a properly issued warrant followed by due process.  The Constitution was designed to protect citizens from their government, a government formed by a contract issued by citizens through their elected representatives which authorizes and limits government to do only certain things.  But instead, today in 2017, the government is the hungry wolf watching the hen house … along with corporate enterprises…and citizens are in the hen house.  This is unconstitutional.  The government should be watching itself, not the citizens, and reporting this back to citizens and their representatives.  The government should be the hungry wolf watching the government in the hen house, anxious to report efficiency gains and the outbreak of peace to the citizens.

NSA, CIA, FBI, etc are responsible to protect the privacy, including the cyber privacy, of citizens.  The U.S. government and its elected leaders, contractors, foreign enemies and collaborators should be the proper and dutybound targets of the NSA, CIA, FBI et al.  Instead these agencies of government are invading the privacy of citizens.  How, why and who authorized the IRS to target the Tea Party and conservatives?  The government should be building cyber tools and ethics to protect citizens rather than building cyber tools and rationale to steal from citizens.  Relative to its citizens, governments today believe they are on top, in control and making the rules.  That system is upside down and inside out, and illegal.

Government duty is to be straight up truthful and outside-in transparent to citizens and their elected representatives.  Secrecy in government is not a good or viable policy intended to benefit citizens.  Secrecy in government is mostly protecting secrecy, power and control in government.

We the people, the citizens, must put the government in the hen house and remind it of its duty, that is, surveilling all operations of government …instead of surveilling citizens. The process should run like a fine Swiss watch, but counterclockwise compared to today’s government.  If I as a citizen want to know about a meeting between a President and a Senator, or know beyond a shadow of doubt that Obama was eligible to run for President, or that surveillance of Trump and his campaign was available to then-President Obama, then I should be able to obtain that information in a reasonable time under the Freedom of Information Act.  Citizens will pay for that.  It is a realistic expectation.  It is already in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.