Thomas Hobbes: The Four Purpose Of Government

Thomas Hobbes described that life in a state of nature would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In addition, no one would be able to survive in an Anarchy society where there is no order and the safeguard of others is at risk. Therefore, governments require for citizens to surrender some freedom to obtain the benefits of the government. Thus, the government has preserved its two major purposes: maintaining order and providing public goods to the public and an uprising purpose of promoting equality.

The main and oldest purpose of government is to maintain order by establishing laws to preserve life and protect property. If such laws were not established, the strong would take advantage of the weak and human behavior would be similar

To provide such goods as education, sanitation and parks, the government taxes their citizens to afford the public goods. Since the public goods are funded by the taxes of the citizens, then all the citizens have the right to benefit from them. In addition, the government establishes rules and regulations that benefit society in maintaining the environment safe from harm.

Not many governments promote equality, but after gaining prominence in the twentieth century, promoting equality is the third major purpose of government in many different places. With the purpose of promoting equality, the government’s goal is to establish the concept of welfare state, civil rights and equality under the law. Under welfare state, the government provides social services that aid the disabled, unemployed and the poor by taxing citizens. By establishing equality under the law, it will not allow anyone to be above the law and therefore, they all must follow the same laws.

Although there are different types of governments, they all share the first two main purposes of government except for the third purpose since not all government promote equality. As humans, we want order and need an authority to