What is the Purpose of Government?

By now you should know the meaning of government. Simply put, it is the combination of institutions that make up the laws and rules that a society follows in order for that society to function in a civilized way. You remember that in the United States, we have three levels of government: federal, state and local, with the federal being national and supreme (that is, stronger than the others). In this article, we’ll go further into the purpose of government.

Abraham Lincoln is famously quoted as saying that

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.

In other words, the purpose of government is to improve the individual lives within a community (whether it be a village, town, city state or nation) by specifically focusing on the areas in which individuals are unable to do so on their own effectively.

Politics is then the disagreement over what those areas are, and what exactly should and should not be the role of government. Does the government merely have the right to regulate commerce, or does it also have a responsibility over education, health care, product safety and national defense, to name a few? Should it serve as a body in which laws are proposed, debated, agreed upon or rejected, or should it also act as a body of oversight in which lawmakers investigate whether large corporations follow rules and regulations? These are the types of questions that have persisted for generations, dozens of presidents and hundreds of Congressional terms.

In general, liberals believe the answer to those questions is yes; that government should play a large role in the economy and society, while conservatives believe government should play only a small and limited role.

Progressives share many of the values and beliefs of liberals, but tend to believe in an even stronger safety net and therefore larger role of government. In fact, one could argue that the ‘progress’ in ‘progressive’ refers to the goal of a transition to the type of social democracy that has been successful in many countries in Western Europe. For example, one goal would be to transition the American health care system from one in which an estimated 45,000 Americans die every year for lack of basic health care (prior to the ACA), to one in which universal coverage (all in, nobody out) is the norm and all Americans are assured quality health care.

Libertarians share in many of the economic beliefs of conservatives, and some of the social beliefs of liberals, while at the same time believing in an even lesser role of government than their conservative counterparts. They believe in contracts and property rights, without government interference and regulation of everyday business practices and conditions.

Regardless of where you come down on these issues, clearly these questions will continue to be asked for decades to come. While one might hope we could all agree on the answers, it’s the ability to weigh these questions that has made the American republic unique, all the while shaping & molding the United States of America into the nation that it is today.

What do you think is the purpose of government and how large of a role should government play in our economy and society? Leave your comments below.

When & Where to Read the News

The following is a chapter from my book Bruh, Read the News: A Teen Guide for Fighting Disinformation, One Critical Thinker at a Time.

As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Just like anything else in life, when it comes to reading the news, find what works for you and stick with it. If you’ve got the time to read the news in the morning, go for it. Maybe you prefer the evenings after school or your part-time job. Just keep this in mind: research suggests you should not watch the news for more than an hour a day as it’ll leave you depressed and deflated, and that’s the last thing I want this book to encourage.

Where to Read the News

Figure out where you’re going to read the news. It’s best to find a quiet place to concentrate, just like anytime you read. Maybe you prefer to read in bed, on the couch in your living room, or at the kitchen table when the dishwasher isn’t running. As long as you’ve got a fairly sanitary process and routine, bathrooms work also.

Can you guess which one’s the best seat in the house?

Not only should you pick a spot, but you also need to determine how you’ll read the news. I’m going to assume you prefer digital media. Will you read it on your laptop or desktop? In either case, create a bookmark folder in your browser for news sources. Compile around 10 trusted sources, with a good mix of the impartial or least biased, like Reuters, and the “highly factual” or at least “mostly factual” (according to MBFC), but with an obvious ideological stance, like CommonDreams.org for progressive news, and NationalReview.com for conservative commentary. The reason I suggest that you read from sources with an ideological stance is because by doing so, you’ll learn about the history, principles and values at the root of the movements on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as discover a lot of the double-speak, corruption and hypocrisy that straight news sources don’t always confront for fear of being labeled “biased” or partial to one side or another.

A Digital Alternative

Another great option is to buy an eReader. I use mine multiple times a day. Even in the evening when I’m sitting on the love-seat in the living room watching basketball and spending time with my wife, I’ve got the eReader beside me for catching up on an array of books and news articles. I recommend a Kobo eReader over Amazon Kindle for a few reasons that aren’t the concern of this book, but one worth mentioning is the fact that Kindle uses a proprietary file type, which means the eBooks from the Amazon store can only be loaded onto an Amazon device. That’s no good for me and a lot of consumers, which is why Kobo is a great alternative as it uses a universal eBook file type known as EPUB.

Besides the great convenience of reading all kinds of books on my Kobo eReader, it also is integrated with the Pocket app. The way it works is this: if I come across an interesting article on my work laptop or personal desktop, I’ll save it to my Pocket account, and then when I open my Kobo later on, the article will sync to the device and be formatted just like an eBook, making the reading experience far more enjoyable and convenient than if I were to read from my computer’s browser.

You can use this to your advantage when it comes to the news especially, and it’ll help you establish a workable habit in terms of becoming informed and remaining so on a regular basis. I suggest that you go to a few of the sites you added to your News bookmark folder and start small: save 3-4 articles to your Pocket account and read them when you’ve got free time later on in the day. There are even articles in major newspapers like the NY Times that’ll compile the most important news of the day for you in one article. Even just reading 10 minutes a day this way will improve your awareness of public policy and the world around you.

You’ll likely miss a day here and there in this hectic world we live in, but don’t worry. The key is to build the habit, and make those “miss days” more and more unlikely. There are Americans walking around right now who, astoundingly, can’t name the vice president, who can’t name the number of justices on the Supreme Court and haven’t read a serious article in a newspaper or magazine in years. Should we really scratch our heads wondering why it feels like the world is collapsing all around us as we scroll through our timelines on social media?

Full disclosure: if you purchase an eReader or related accessories through the link above, I earn a small commission.

The Problem With Conglomerates

The following is an excerpt from my book Bruh, Read the News: A Teen Guide for Fighting Disinformation, One Critical Thinker at a Time, available in-print & eBook through Kobo, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and more.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss who owns the news and why that ownership is bad news for America. America’s largest outlets for news are owned by a handful of conglomerates. That’s a fancy word for a major corporation that owns several other companies in an effort to maximize market share. Here’s a list of the top media conglomerates as of 2022:

Comcast

Alphabet

Walt Disney

Facebook

Apple

AT&T

ViacomCBS

Sony

Fox

You probably recognize almost the entire list, and wouldn’t necessarily associate the companies with the news. These behemoths own cable and home internet service providers, including the largest, Xfinity; film studios like Marvel and Lucasfilm; sports channels like ESPN; CBS, DirecTV, and Sony Music Entertainment, among a myriad of other assets.¹² It’s the fact that we’re expected to assume that the convergence of entertainment (like Marvel movies) and reliably sourced news (like CBS News) is somehow a good fit with a profit motive at play, that should cause anyone to be extremely skeptical.

Here’s a friendly reminder that there are 50 states in the United States of America, with thousands of cities, counties and communities, made up of different demographics and economic needs, supported by a wide range of different industries. The needs of the residents of West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the nation, are vastly different from that of New York, one of the wealthiest.¹³ If the news on the major channels owned by the conglomerates above are so hyper-national in their approach to the news, is it any wonder why the needs of the various communities across the country are not being discussed, let alone addressed?

Unfortunately, the goal for news media conglomerates is centralization, and centralization is about streamlining resources and cutting costs. Throughout the years, I’ve heard friends and family criticize the news for running the same headlines with the same loaded language, which is a reasonable observation, but they approach it as if there’s some grand conspiracy. In fact, it has everything to do with the lack of diversity and extreme centralization of ownership in the media; the fact that so few companies own so much news.

Revenue is an important word to talk about. Just how are these conglomerates generating the money coming in? While selling advertising time and space has long been an important part of the news business, for companies like Alphabet, it represents the vast majority of revenue ($150 billion of $162 billion total). Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google have effectively created detailed profiles of users to serve up the most appropriate advertisements, further incentivizing advertisers to spend their advertising dollars with them, resulting in even more market share and power for just a few major corporations. Many, including members of Congress, have argued they are essentially monopolies: businesses in a market without perfect competition or without true competitors. Outside of public utilities like water and electricity, where monopolies are approved by local governments and prices are regulated, monopolies are bad for consumers. There virtually isn’t a price they can’t charge!

“But Google and Facebook are free,” you might be saying to yourself. Forgive me, but nothing is free. Advertisers are paying those companies for a reason. When a social media giant like Facebook and the apps provided by Google are “free,” it’s not because those companies are charitable, it’s because you are the product.

Corporate Media and a Conflict of Interest

In a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by CNN in July of 2019, Bernie Sanders famously called out the corporate media, specifically CNN, for its revenue generating relationship with the health care industry that lobbies against a humane and equitable health care system like single payer, or at least Medicare for All (publicly funded and privately provided health care for all Americans). After CNN anchor and debate moderator Jake Tapper used, according to Sanders, a “Republican talking point,” accusing Democrats of trying to “take private health insurance away from 150 million Americans”¹⁴ by proposing the health care overhaul known as Medicare for All, Sanders pointed out the glaring conflict of interest.

“They [the healthcare industry] will be advertising tonight with that talking point.”¹⁵

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speaking with attendees at the Clark County Democratic Party’s 2020 Kick Off to Caucus Gala at the Tropicana Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. Attribution: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

As Jake Johnson wrote for CommonDreams.org, “Sure enough, during the debate’s commercial breaks, ads by pharmaceutical giants and industry-backed organizations dominated the airwaves, further vindicating Sanders and other progressives who have raised alarm at the role corporate advertising plays in America’s media coverage.”¹⁶

When there’s so much money to be made from advertising, you can expect the news to cover less of what’s important and engage in less discussion of policy, and during the campaign season which seems to spread its calendar wings a little further every cycle, expect the news to cover the horse race instead of ask why Americans pay more for health care than any other country and still don’t enjoy universal coverage, as guaranteed in Canada, the UK and practically every other country in the developed world. You can expect the news to talk about the latest childish spat between Florida Governor Ron Desantis and U.S. President Joe Biden, rather than ask why college tuition or childcare grows at increasingly unaffordable rates year after year, and you’re all but guaranteed to hear and witness the talking heads of cable news poison the American airwaves with divisive vitriol like the dangerous levels of lead coursing through the water pipes of thousands of communities across the great United States.

That’s the problem with conglomerates.