What is the purpose of government?
In a previous article we said that the primary purpose of government is to provide the structure for citizens to do what they desire and for those citizens to prosper. There is a secondary purpose of government, and that purpose is to hear and resolve competing interests.
Whenever a group of people get together there will always be competing interests and differing opinions. Key among competing interests are land use and water use. Other common conflicts include: business vs environment, business vs safety, freedom vs safety, and privacy vs security.
A government body must exist to hear all parties on each specific conflict. The government body should then reach a wise decision which satisfies everyone involved.
This government body must also set some basic rules regarding the issues so everyone can work together with minimal conflict.
This government body may be the federal legislature, a state legislature, a government agency, a city council, a regional board, or some other entity. All members of each government body should be elected by the people.
The authority of each body should be clearly defined, so that there is no confusion as to which government body has authority over the issue. However, this is a difficult task, with many factors to consider. (This issue will be explored later in subsequent articles).
A further subset of this government purpose (hearing and resolving competing interests) is the legal system. Competing interests are often on a personal level or company level rather than a community level. Also crimes such as theft and murder are as old as recorded history. Therefore the legal system must exist to resolve these conflicts.
The government can use a variety of methods in the legal system to resolve these disputes. The more informal methods include mediation and alternative dispute resolution. If these do not work then official lawsuits can be filed, where decisions are reached by judges and juries. In any case, a government must create a legal system which can hear and resolve conflicts on a more personal level.
Therefore the secondary purpose of government is to hear and resolve conflicts and differing opinions. This can be at any level: personal, community, state, or national.
There are two systems involved when hearing and resolving conflicts: the council system and the legal system. The legislature/city council system exists to discuss community level issues. The legal system exists to resolve personal conflicts which cannot be resolved the individuals themselves.
