I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t like jury duty. I get a lot of notifications wanting me to do it because I vote for everything. But I don’t ever get picked; nobody wants me once they realize how opinionated and firm I am in my beliefs. I consider jury duty a privilege, and I always want to do it. I’d do them every day if I could because I love law and think working on our issues of crime and punishment would be one of the highest benefits of any high society. But recently, when I received my latest notification, the whole experience instantly turned me off. Who writes these things, and who do they think they are? When they notify you of jury duty, they are so negative and assume that you will be a problem that they instantly turn toward authority dictatorship to drive compliance with their summons. The first line of their notification to me is, “You are commanded to appear and be available to serve.” Who do they think they are? Deeper into their notification, they say, “Employers are prohibited from discharging or threatening,” and “if a juror fails to attend,” the court may impose a fine. No wonder the government has so many problems. They need to learn some hard lessons about engagement because if that is their default mode, which it is, no wonder they don’t get cooperation from people in a free society. For a person like me who wants to do these things, that kind of language instantly makes me want to go in the opposite direction. Nobody commands me to do anything. The government doesn’t supersede my liberties and cannot compel me to be a part of their ill schemes and detriments.
This is the general problem with the government and the kind of people drawn to work for it. The power to compel people randomly and without thought to incursions into their personal lives is disrespectful at best. To assume that people can rearrange their lives under the compulsion of the court is the wrong approach to what should be willing civil service. People should want to serve on jury duty. They should not have to be compelled to do so. And this assumption that the needs of the court are more significant than the needs of an individual is preposterously horrendous. That basic premise misses the point of all government. Government serves us, we do not serve the government. Notifications like that jury duty utterance show that the government does not know its place and never did. They started wrong and just continued regardless of what sanity said. The assumption that society is a low-engagement enterprise that must be ushered around like children fearful of their parents is the first problem in a long list that always leads to the failures of mass society. The power of government to compel people to do things they would never want to do on their own. Using government power to force people against their will out of fear of punishment is the core of all government trouble. Then, we are supposed to want to pay more compelled taxes toward a government that grows bigger and more powerful with every dollar they steal from us. This whole arrangement with the governed is a rat’s nest of irony. It’s lazy and presumptuous and gives the worst in our society, the most insecure, instant ability with the power of government that assumes it has rights over people it does not have. “You are commanded?” That is the wrong choice of words; the government works for us, not the other way around.
Many studies have been done over the last several years on engagement and why people engage in activity by choice. The cell phone revolution is one of those successful exchanges of how choice motivates behavior. I grew up in a time when nobody had a cell phone. I have watched them become as common as shoes; nobody would have ever thought so when they were first invented. What started as a series of released conspiracies about how the government wanted to survey the actions of all people everywhere with a chip embedded in them, during the 1980s and 90s became cell phones that would track everything we do and spy on us by choice. We take cell phones wherever we go because we enjoy the companionship. These days, I am never anywhere where I don’t see a cell phone interacting with a person even when real people are present. People would rather interact with their cell phones, even during dinner conversations. That is because the cell phone is polite and offers at least some illusions of choice, and people prefer that option over some dictator presentation. Cell phone companies figured out how to get high engagement out of their customers by giving them freedom of choice over a long period. Or at least the veil of choice. If the goal is to track people and spy on their every movement, then cell phone companies figured out how to get mass society to choose for such an arrangement by the illusion of choice. All successful enterprises work out some mix of choices to inspire people to engage with their offerings. That is the key to all advertising, so it’s not like human beings don’t understand the art of engagement.
The government, however, is too lazy even to go that far. Instead, when they want to accomplish something, they must rely on mass collectivism to inspire fear and drive public engagement. Whether it’s a case of eminent domain or the draft, the government leans on force to drive participation, the fear of what might happen to you if you do not participate. But for that to work, they must be bigger and more powerful than you to inspire enough fear that you will be compelled to comply for self-preservation. That is not how civil service should communicate with people about any issue. It should be a privilege that people want to participate in willingly. It’s not something they do because they fear penalties. No wonder so many people want to get out of jury duty. And those who serve are not the sharpest tacks in the box because they have nothing else going on. Who wants to be judged by a jury of their peers when their peers are too fearful to fight back against the compulsion of jury duty? But rather is some brain-dead slug that doesn’t have a complicated enough life to get out of jury duty. And then, they survive the lawyers and get picked for jury selection by a top-down parental government that doesn’t respect their time or individuality. And that all lives must stop for the slow speed of the government. There is a lot wrong with that simple jury notification. I would choose to be on a jury every day if I could. But the way the government asks me to do it makes me want to go in the opposite direction. The government is lazy and relies on force to impose itself on the people it is supposed to serve. No wonder the government is always so screwed up. But it’s by choice, not by science. They could do better if they wanted to. But because of the government’s power over people, they don’t feel motivated to do so.
Rich Hoffman
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