This probably seems like an odd topic. After all I’ve been talking about getting clear in our life and suddenly I’m talking about politics. Why?

In my experience political type action is akin to a magician. A magician does something with one hand to distract you and then does something else entirely. When asked he talks in vague terms with high sounding ideals.

Ask your friendly politician, “What is your desired outcome with this legislation?”
Listen carefully to his answer. Does he talk about the good of the country, how the balance of trade will be enhanced, how it stops the bad (add any word here, bad,rich,grasping,tax evading) guy. These words and concepts are vague and make things unclear.

Demand a concrete result. For example, in the United States we have created all kinds of new laws to regulate bank activity. But no one has asked why the last set of rules and regulations didn’t protect us in 2008. The question for legislators is, “What will protect us from the mania of booms?” Very few asked this question before 2008 and those that did were either ignored or forced to resign.

In almost all cases of modern legislation we don’t know what the desired outcome is. What is worse neither do the legislators. The only exception to this rule is the legislators generally know how it will affect their personal ambitions.
In other words the lawmakers and the general public are not clear – at all.

So a final question: What is the purpose of government?

Look for prosaic answers. The stuff you learned in your civics classes is bull.