Can you see it?

Allister Heath gave an observation into something quite important for us all on the Telegraph website the other day with his observations of something that is wrong with our healthcare system and how that ties to our debt.

In reality though he alludes to the real problem from something of a tangent and even then only scratched the surface of the much wider problem.  One that we should all open our eyes to because if we don't the consequences are very real.

That same problem not only centres around our health care system, but our policing, taxation, retirement,banking and a whole host of other things that affect us. If you look you can see it and you should look because it seems too many are not seeing it

In all of these cases we are getting an ever dwindling return or service as individuals. There are all sorts of reasons. At the heart of many though is that they are bureaucracies and as C. Northcote Parkinson famously observed, the bureaucracy will not univent itself.  That phrase in itself is quite telling.  Bureaucracies begin to administer a service but it does not take long before they begin to morph into something that acts every day to do nothing more than feed itself.  It never looks to dismantle itself.   Far from it. It invents things to perpetuate its existence.  This leads in turn to another problem - complexity.  Many of the problems in our national structures are due to their complexity and complexity in general.  There are just too many things they are trying to solve especially things they were never designed to tackle in the first place thanks to political meddling.

Added to this is lack of accountability.  So many organisations work each and every day to detach themselves from accountability from their actions and cases of ineptitude.  Take the recent story of the businessman who went through the nightmare of court cases following the winding up of his business, thanks to a stupid clerical error - all of which could have been resolved with little fuss had the bureaucracy not decided it was not answerable in any way.  I too have my own experiences, along with others. We can all tell our own story and that illustrates the problem we are facing.

The private sector fares little better, especially financial services.  Of course they're private enterprises designed to make profits for themselves and shareholders.  What we are seeing in too many cases though is straight out corporate greed.  The dynamic in a free market society is supposed to see private money go into these businesses on the basis of a fair exchange of goods and services. Those businesses are supposed to grow via innovation and growing investment and return of profit.  What we see is many of these businesses taking the line of least resistance by plundering the assets already in place to feed itself.  Pensions are a prime example of this.  So many people facing retirement are only now learning that their years of investment are proving ultimately worthless, because of the endless application of increasing administration fees or sloppy short term investing that seems to be more about boosting staff bonus pots.

I could go on, but it would take me away from my point.

We become victim to these problems because we have shackled ourselves to them.  We have become conditioned to let ourselves think all of these things will take care of us.  I understand that I really do.  Partly the reason we have, is because we were told we could and that such things were there for us.  It may have been true at the start, but the modern reality is very different. The result of that new reality is if we continue to hand over our lives to them we will be at the mercy of whatever they choose to dish up when we come to rely on it.  Unfortunately we could end up paying that price with everything we have, including our lives.

There's no evidence that any of this will get better but could very well get worse as the powers that be offer a one dimensional response to the problem usually involving running away.  We should as individuals prepare for that.  What we need to begin doing is looking to ourselves and getting on with our own business.  I'm talking about self reliance not self absorption.  We need to start freeing ourselves from the potential problems that we face in years to come.  I'm not talking about anything illegal around your tax affairs here or running to the hills  in full societal breakdown mode.  I'm talking about focussing each day on detaching yourself from the reliance mentality.  Take care of your business whatever that may be.  The tools are there for all of us. we should use them. Not only will we increase our own chances but us taking care of our business makes for a more stable country all round, better able to take care of the truly vulnerable.  Our future lies in personal independence.

When I first started out in the world of work, we were all given little desk calendars.  Ours had little pep talk type quotes on each and every day. Of them stuck out.

Trust in God, but row away from the rocks.