Among administrators there is a parable used as a didactic resource to teach that a professional or a company must know what needs to be done and, mainly, why it must be done. It is said that a railroad worker had been on the job for 35 years and, about to retire, was interviewed to talk about his work. Asked what he did, he replied that his daily task consisted of waiting for the trains that arrived at the station; as soon as they stopped, he took a big hammer, hit the wheels of the wagons and listened attentively to the crackle of the hammer on the wheels. Asked why he did that and for what purpose, he replied: “I’ve been doing this job for 35 years, I’ve never been asked that and I’ve never asked anyone that question either”.
This parable teaches that, from time to time, individuals and society as a whole must ask themselves why they do certain things and for what reasons they do them, as a condition for evaluating the results and consequences of human actions and the acts of the human being. government. To clarify, the reason why the old worker hit the wheels of the wagons was simple: by the sound produced by the hammer, it was possible to recognize a crack in the wheels. That task had a purpose, although its performer performed it out of habit and routine, without regard to ends and consequences. Possibly, by that time, modern train wheels no longer required checking for cracks, as the technology of the materials had overcome that vulnerability.
Subsidiarity is not ignored only when the “minimum state” or “night watchman state” is proposed; in fact, it is more common for it to be run over so that interventionism prevails.
The moral of this narrative can be applied to government and the state apparatus, so it is necessary and useful for politicians, authorities and society to, from time to time, reflect on what the government is for, what functions it should maintain, which you should eliminate and, if necessary, which new tasks should be assigned to you. We know, for example, that there are extreme events whose solution is beyond individual capacity, or even organized civil society, requiring collective action, the presence of the State and the assembly of a public machine. This is the case, for example, of the invasion of the country by a foreign army, in which defense is only viable through the formation of a national army whose costs are paid by the entire nation; or, then, a pandemic, whose overcoming involves coordinating the measures adopted by all members of the community, in order to contain the contamination and stop the process. A more common case that does not involve extraordinary circumstances is that of public security and justice, which require an apparatus for surveillance, policing and repression of acts of aggression among community members, followed by a system for investigating, prosecuting, prosecuting and punishing those responsible for violent acts.
The examples above are taken for granted, but it is worth remembering that there is not only one type of structure of state apparatus and form of government. The public machine and the laws that regulate state activities may be different for the fulfillment of a certain service or function. And, in fact, a State that was dedicated only to guaranteeing law, order, peace, freedom and justice, exempting itself from everything else – the so-called “night watch state” – would be short of what he can do with a view to the search for the common good. The State can and must help society in this search (without taking it all for itself), always within a subsidiary role, which includes the execution of a development project and the encouragement of the flourishing of economic, cultural and artistic vocations; the State thus becomes not the protagonist, but an instrument of society to help it make the choices it makes.
The reflection on the submission of the State, the government, bureaucrats and politicians to their role as instruments of society and to the greater objective of the search for the common good leads to questions and helps to improve the state apparatus and government. Subsidiarity is not ignored only when the “minimum state” or “night watchman state” is proposed; in fact, it is more often trampled on so that interventionism prevails, leaving the state giant free to extend its tentacles, advance in functions that are not its responsibility, create advantages and benefits for those who crew and manipulate it, becoming each and thus suffocating society in financial terms and reducing individual freedoms and rights.
Many are the governments that exploit the members of society doubly: once, charging high taxes to support the expensive and wasteful public machine and, a second time, using the money to suffocate and oppress the population that supports it. It is too contradictory for a government to overload the population with a high tax burden and use the money against the freedom and well-being of that same population. Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela are three current examples of state apparatuses and dictatorial governments that heavily tax their inhabitants while mistreating those same inhabitants in economic, political and social terms. It is the clear achievement of the maxim said by philosopher Karl Jaspers: “The State is a terrible father who, moreover, wants to be loved”.
Brazil has already reached the maximum acceptable limit for a tax burden (the burden actually collected is 34% of national income, but the nominal tax burden is much higher, as there is evasion, default and tax waivers) and, with each election, the The promises of many candidates, if taken seriously, mean taking more money from the population, invariably to increase regulations and reduce economic and individual freedoms. In an election year, the Brazilian people are warned not to allow state gigantism and bad governments to become the executioners and executioners of the people who pay for their existence, their benefits, their inefficiencies and their corruption.
