What have I signed up to?

I'm following the Wikileaks saga with keen interest. From the cables Wikileaks is releasing, to commentary about the Government being "my employees" and so on.

And it's got me thinking. What exactly have I signed up to - or not? In the UK there is no "constitution" per-se. The arguments about Wikileaks seem to go back and forth between whether or not they have the right to release that information that they did not perform an illegal act themselves to get.

The argument from those supporting the US government is along the lines of "it's unpatriotic, it will cost lives". The counter arugments are something like "they don't have the right to withhold this information in the first place, if they don't want to be caught then they shouldn't be doing anything illegal" - though there is also controversy that what Wikileaks is currently leaking is not of significance, just embarassing comminiques between two departments or countries about a third country.

Gadaffi and his voluptuous blonde nurse, indeed.

The core of my question is: What rights do I have? What powers does the government have, and from where and what did it derive them?

We vote in the government, this is true. It's an evolving beast, and of course it would be impossible to have a complete revolution or rethink for every generation. Laws need to change rapidly to deal with new technologies such as the internet, though they tend to be shaped to help the status quo rather than innovation and freedom.

And we live in a much fairer society than we did hundreds of years ago. But with all this new technology it is possible to see how unjust all sorts of things are. Ignorance is, to some degree, bliss.

But here's the thing: laws are shaped by the wealthy, intelligent few. They can then charge vast sums of money to unravel and contest those laws in court. If, say, I decide I want to grow cannabis, or invent something that has a patent vaguely associated with some other thing developed years ago (see the current patent wars involving Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle, the mobile phone manufacturers, etc, etc...) I am *screwed* - as an individual. "The law" or "those companies" can squash me before I can think twice.

They can afford to employ the people who shape those laws. I just want to (insert whatever thing here). I want to buy a derived, out of copyright drug that has been available for years - only to find some company has ever-so-slightly improved it and patented it, and the yearly cost will go from hundreds to tens of thousands of pounds.

"Protecting the investment of the company" - right. Since when has the economic success of the company been more important than the wellbeing of vulnerable individuals?

But of course - business lobbies government for their own good. Individuals, outside of revolution, find that hard to do. And of course, when they do take power into their own hands, tend to do stupid things and not know when to stop.

So here's the question: What, exactly, gives the government the right to impose its will on me - in anything?

All I want from the government is, mostly, to be left alone. I accept some form of taxation is necessary - schools (and ideally University, for those ready to learn - perhaps at 20, or 25, or 30) need to be funded, pavements, roads, and the government itself needs to be paid for. I like having emergency services, and hospitals, and parks, and national parks.

But I have paramount objections to nuclear weapons, the war in Iraq, the way that various levels of government waste money. I object to the fact that the government pays contractors who then use that money to lobby for their industry. I object to the fact that the largest companies employ accountants that enable them to avoid large portions of the taxes that they should pay, where private individuals have no chance of avoiding them.

So where did I sign? Where did I agree to all this - where did I even learn that there was an "all this" to which I have agreed?

There needs to be a lot more "power of recall" for MPs, I feel. Instead of elections every 4 years a system of rolling elections. A combination of average approval ratings that, if they fall too low, triggers a local election, combined with a percentage threshold so that if - just for argument's sake - 50.1% of the people request it in a given week, an election is triggered irrespective of the approval rating.

This combined with a better system of representation and you would have a much closer link between the government and the governed.