1800-snitch-line

One of the most pathetic things happening right now in this country is the proliferation of snitch lines. These things are everywhere! From natural resource violations for those who have the audacity to build on crown land, to doping allegations of professional athletes it has never been more convenient to rat out your fellow man. There are even snitch websites such as www.nopiracy.ca or the temporary foreign worker abuse snitch tool at Service Canada online. There are phone banks where you can call in about immigration fraud and terrorism.  You can even report CRA employees. Okay that last one might be a good idea.

So what's the problem here? Well ever happened to the right to privacy?  What ever happened to minding your own damn business? Do we really want to turn into a Soviet style state, where citizens are encouraged, nay forced, to rat each other out in order to curry favour with the ruling class? Do we really want to emulate 1984?

There is a role for snitching in our society. If someone is going around hurting people or stealing stuff, then absolutely, rat them out. Turn them into the police.  Lock them up and throw away the key. But the problem is there are so many unnecessary, even outright evil laws that it is virtually impossible not to be a criminal. So someone is here illegally or overstayed their visa. So what? The whole notion of borders is absurd anyway. They're just arbitrary lines in the sand drawn by people who want to control us. Someone is illegally pirating movies? Big deal! Torrent websites are a tremendous improvement over the outdated physical distribution of media. Think of all the resources which no longer need to go into the production of dvds, cds, vhs tapes, etc. We can do all it all through the magic of the internet. Those resources can be put to better use making other material goods.

At some point we have to realize that we're all in this together. Instead of allowing the elites to practice the time tested strategy of divide and conquer maybe we should show a little compassion for each other and be constructive instead of running to the snitch line to rat out your neighbour.