Human beings in the past have had a tendency to head toward a more chaotic state of life; people will usually do things such as looting and rioting whenever there is a lack of control in government. Where government in Lao Tzu's eyes should guide the people, government today is created in order to protect the people - not only from outsiders, but from themselves.
Even though they were written hundreds of years ago, some of the great works on government still contain a wealth of information that can be related back to the present day. However, not all works have significance on the modern era. Where Machiavelli and Jefferson agree that a government should be placed above the governed for them to follow, Lao Tzu believes that a government should give its power to the general public; because the differences between Lao Tzu and the other two the former holds weight in today's society while the latter cannot be achieved in the "real world".
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