NationStates Jolt Archive

Unless they're kicking ass in some way or another, I don't have a problem with the government. That is, I think the primary focus of the government should be to kick the asses of trouble makers and law breakers and scammers and stuff like that.

I guess it is a problem that it's inefficient, but you can't have everything.

Edit: Actually, I think what it comes down to is what Milton Friedman said. You're not going to spend someone else's money as wisely as the money you went out and worked hard to earn yourself. That is probably where the inefficiencies of the government comes from.

edit 2: oh and my thread now

"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."

That's what's wrong with government.

Yesterday, a fellow NSGer brought up an interesting point.

Venndee said:

We also have the desire of bureaucracies to be intentionally inefficient, so that they can use rising crime rates, overcrowded prisons, and overloaded dockets to demand more funds at the expense of the public.

It seems that even the most fiscally conservative governments suffer from a underlying motive to waste resources. After all, why should the government clean up its budget, or downsize to save costs, or repeal antiquated laws and tax systems to help out its populace when doing the opposite will justify them to take in more money and grow in size. Lets face it, the only motive the government has to use their money wisely and not tax the heart and soul out of its people is to keep the average citizen from voting for someone else or from rebelling in anger.

And I'm not just talking about government of countries either. I'll give you an example. Every year, the business school at my college finds ways to blow its budget at the end of every fiscal year. They do this intentionally because if they had money left over at the end of the year, they couldn't justify asking the state government for more the next year. For example, 2 years ago they bought a dozen or so electronic smart boards for their classrooms, but only 2 professors actually use them. Last year, they decided to buy big comfy leather chairs for all of the offices. The professors in the business department regularly joke about it and call it "Christmas in February." Its kind of funny to them but, is it not a travesty to the hardworking individuals who paid their taxes?

So what should we do to fight this problem? Or, do you all actually agree with me that this is a problem? Please share your thoughts.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. "

-Thomas Jefferson

There are many fundamental problems with Government.
The one that sticks with me is a person you know nothing about has the power to decide what millions of other people should do. There will always be unrest as long as this remains the case.

It seems that even the most fiscally conservative governments suffer from a underlying motive to waste resources. After all, why should the government clean up its budget, or downsize to save costs, or repeal antiquated laws and tax systems to help out its populace when doing the opposite will justify them to take in more money and grow in size. Lets face it, the only motive the government has to use their money wisely and not tax the heart and soul out of its people is to keep the average citizen from voting for someone else or from rebelling in anger.

And I'm not just talking about government of countries either. I'll give you an example. Every year, the business school at my college finds ways to blow its budget at the end of every fiscal year. They do this intentionally because if they had money left over at the end of the year, they couldn't justify asking the state government for more the next year. For example, 2 years ago they bought a dozen or so electronic smart boards for their classrooms, but only 2 professors actually use them. Last year, they decided to buy big comfy leather chairs for all of the offices. The professors in the business department regularly joke about it and call it "Christmas in February." Its kind of funny to them but, is it not a travesty to the hardworking individuals who paid their taxes?

So what should we do to fight this problem? Or, do you all actually agree with me that this is a problem? Please share your thoughts.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. "

-Thomas Jefferson

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this a democratic republic, yes? As such, there is a very compelling reason why they would repeal antiquated laws, downsize to cut costs, etc: people vote them out of office if they don't. Now, why this isn't a huge priority among the populace during a recession, a war, and a time when the health care, education, and financial systems of most states are under severe stress isn't entirely clear [/sarcasm], but it would seem to me that the problem boils down not to some nebulous "other" in the government taking away all your hard-earned money. Rather, it's that the we the people who actually comprise the government are more interested in other facets of public governance than making our public sectors into the form of the bureaucracy with 0% graft or waste.

Your example of the business dept. is in fact a good case study, but not for the reasons you seem to think. It is true that they waste money on good years. It is equally true that if they were perpetually short-changed, this would compromise their ability to provide education to their students, which is perhaps a greater evil because of its acuteness (more on this later). Now, the ideal in this scenario would be that the government establish some bureaucratic entity smart enough to determine exactly what they need and flexible enough to provide the business department with what it needs in any given year and no more. But any commission that fulfills this requirement would have to spend a great deal of time, money, and manpower to develop this year-to-year assessment, and the funding of that might very well outweigh the gains by reducing cost overruns within the department.

You seem to forget that waste is a feature in any system, and our hope is to minimize it rather than eliminate it; indeed, the only way to eliminate waste would be to eliminate government itself. The opportunity costs of reducing it to microspopic levels, however, would often mean spending more money than on what you saved. Cutting costs won't do it; cutting the costs of bureaucracy sounds plausible in theory, but it usually translates less into "The business dept. no longer gets comfy chairs" so much as "The business dept. loses 5% of its revenue across the board every year, which is okay in good years but in other years means compromised service for students". Measuring the impact of some students getting a compromised education against people putting $.01 back in their pocket because the business dept. wasted nothing on new overheads, the impact for the students actuallly seems much more significant. The essence of my critique then boils down to the fact that in order to talk about the big, bad bureaucracy the way you do requires 1) an overly utopian assessment of how efficient bureaucracies can be, and 2) the fact that you seem to forget everything you might have ever learned about opportunity costs.

Rather, it's that the we the people who actually comprise the government are more interested in other facets of public governance than making our public sectors into the form of the bureaucracy with 0% graft or waste.
Politicians care about votes and public opinion. The people who actually work for government departments don't.

Last year I had a part-time job helping the Brisbane City Council figure out whether or not they had the data to do a big study into the cost effectiveness of certain policies. I thought it was a really worthwhile cause, and started off being very excited.

But that didn't last long. It seems everyone at Council is on some form of flexi-time system or 'work from home' thing where they come and go whenever they want (some only turn up two or three days a week). No one in the large-scale planning department had an economics education, indeed I don't think anyone actually had a decent uni degree (though I didn't ask). Trying to explain to them what I was trying to do seemed impossible.

Anyways, it soon became clear that the data wasn't available because Council didn't actually collect vital information on the assets it was running, and the data that was being collected went to different departments where it disappeared into paper files, never having been close to a computer. When in the final presentation I made this clear to them, nobody was at all surprised. "That's just the way it developed" was one answer I got.

Now, this isn't enough to judge governments as a whole, but the fact that Brisbane voters would probably quite like an efficient government that knows what it's doing doesn't have any impact on this.

The thing is that this won't change. There is no one I can think of who had the power or cared enough to clean the place up. A business that is run like this eventually goes bankrupt or gets a flogging on the share market until someone with guts takes over. The Council will continue like this for all eternity, and that's the problem with government. Democracy is nothing compared to market forces when it comes to putting some discipline on a bureaucracy.

So what should we do to fight this problem?


Government and economics of, for, and by the People.

Current distinctions in class and access to political power create the problems you cite. Political and business elites can get away with ignoring problems for their own gain exactly because they are not the one's who must pay the price. Politicians subsidize their lack of ethics though tax hikes, and CEOs strive to crush competition in order to guarantee income regardless of actual performance.

If, however, those who made political decisions where also those paying the tax bills; If, however, those who owned and controlled the corporate board were also those opening their wallets at the cash registers; if, however, we removed the ability of a privileged class to foist the cost onto someone else...

So long as those making the decisions are distinct from those paying the price, the problem of bureaucratic exploitation (which is essentially class warfare) is not going away. "Public" or "private."

Yes, yes, I like what I am hearing! I love sharing opinions on NSG!

Now critique this will you please:

Lets make the government raise its own money by participating in the market place. For instance, lets give the government a monopoly over the casino/lottery industry. Therefore, the government is forced to raise its own funds rather than increasing taxes. It gives the government a finite budget that they are responsible for.

What do ya'll think? Is that a silly idea?:)

Now, this isn't enough to judge governments as a whole, but the fact that Brisbane voters would probably quite like an efficient government that knows what it's doing doesn't have any impact on this.

The thing is that this won't change. There is no one I can think of who had the power or cared enough to clean the place up. A business that is run like this eventually goes bankrupt or gets a flogging on the share market until someone with guts takes over. The Council will continue like this for all eternity, and that's the problem with government. Democracy is nothing compared to market forces when it comes to putting some discipline on a bureaucracy.

Do city councilmen or mayors in Brisbane not pick who leads the bureaucracy? As such, can't they force the issue if they really wish it to happen?

Offhand, I'd say that times are good or the subject matter you were attempting to study was not particularly significant to the electorate, possibly both. In good times, bureaucracies necessarily get slack; that happens in business and in government. In times of revenue decline or on pertinent issues, the bureaucracy will shape up because they have to or their elected political patrons get run out of Dodge. The market is the aggregate will of individual preferences of consumers. Democracy is the aggregate will of the individual preferences of citizens. I'm not sure what kind of distinction you want to draw is, but it doesn't seem particularly significant.

Democracy is nothing compared to market forces when it comes to putting some discipline on a bureaucracy.

Democracy is the market. They only seem to become distinct when we observe the simultaneous (and usually conspiratorial) efforts of politicians and businessmen trying to escape from the control of market forces. Both do so for their own personal profit and at the expense of both the people, democracy, and the market.

After all, why should the government clean up its budget, or downsize to save costs, or repeal antiquated laws and tax systems to help out its populace when doing the opposite will justify them to take in more money and grow in size.

Why would it want to "take in more money and grow in size"?

Governments know that attaining money is a politically costly endeavor; they want to minimize costs. If anything, in some respects governments have an incentive to spend below optimal levels, especially with long-term, costly endeavors: the costs are immediate and felt by the voters, but the benefits may only manifest themselves after a long effort.

Lets make the government raise its own money by participating in the market place. For instance, lets give the government a monopoly over the casino/lottery industry. Therefore, the government is forced to raise its own funds rather than increasing taxes. It gives the government a finite budget that they are responsible for.


Of course, one is assuming that those who run the casino/lottery industry have anymore incentive to operate efficiently than a government which recieves income though taxes. It is not difficult, of course, to find a multitude of examples of private businesses that seek or have sought monopolies, cartels, subsidies, or favorable legislation for the express purpose of escaping the efficiency of the free market, exactly because such escape provide a route to increased profits. Indeed, expressly granting the government a monopoly on any industry already provides an incentive to increase bureaucratic baggage and costs. If there is no competition, why attempt to do any better?

Of course, one is assuming that those who run the casino/lottery industry have anymore incentive to operate efficiently than a government which recieves income though taxes. It is not difficult, of course, to find a multitude of examples of private businesses that seek or have sought monopolies, cartels, subsidies, or favorable legislation for the express purpose of escaping the efficiency of the free market, exactly because such escape provide a route to increased profits. Indeed, expressly granting the government a monopoly on any industry already provides an incentive to increase bureaucratic baggage and costs. If there is no competition, why attempt to do any better?

I guess my thought was, if the government had to raise its own money, it would try to do a good job.

I am notably reminded of Collectivistation in the Soviet Union...Where there was the exact opposite problem...and there solution was innotive even if it wasn't humanitian.
If a farm was to produce less than its 'recommended'(I use the term lightly) quota then it was subject to getting its grain reserves forcibly confiscated.
If a farm was to produce near or more than its 'recommended' quota of grain then it had a equivilant of a tax hike.
So the problem became, why bother to produce more? If they didn't produce enough then things wouldn't go down...that sort of system is fairly difficult to argue with because if you didn't meet the quota then you starved.

The fundermental problem with governments is not with the governments, its with the people.
People are fundermentally drawn to protect themselves as opposed to protect others...Ok to be honest the Soviet Union is a bad example of this but the point remains that people will spend money(or even burn grain) to avoid giving it back to the government. Shooting themselves in the foot(Or in the head depending on how extreme) in extreme cases. The government is only one organisation...like any organisation it has limited resources and those resources need to be managed. And like any organisation it depends on its members being honest with them.
The Soviets went with the 'don't trust anyone' approach where as the current governments

I guess my thought was, if the government had to raise its own money, it would try to do a good job.

But the government would have a monopoly. It, therefore, would have no incentive to do a good job.

In the absence of democracy, a dictator has no incentive to do a good job. He or she possesses a monopoly on political power. He or she has no reason to fear losing political power to a competitor. This is why dictatorships are characterized by corruption and repression.

Likewise, in the absence of market competition, a monopoly has no incentive to do a good job. It exclusively possesses the market in which it operates. It has no reason to fear losing market share to a competitor. This is why monopolies are characterized by inefficiency, high prices, and inferior products.

Whether our economic good is "money" or "decision-making power" makes no difference. Trade in each economic good is based on exactly the same principle. Democracy constitutes market competition and efficient outcomes. Oligarchy, autocracy, and monopoly, the manipulation of the market to escape competition, all produce inefficient outcomes.

Simply saying the words "money" or "private," contrary to the most fundamental principles of "Libertarian" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism) nonsense, does not automatically guarantee efficiency.

The fundamental problem with discussions with discussions such as this is that they make blanket generalization and wild claims, what's important are the interests can control government, ie the ruling class, and not government itself. Government, ie political power, is a blank slate, and can be used well or badly.

The fundamental problem with discussions with discussions such as this is that they make blanket generalization and wild claims, what's important are the interests can control government, ie the ruling class, and not government itself. Government, ie political power, is a blank slate, and can be used well or badly.

I really want to participate in this discussion about wild generalizations but I got drunk an hour ago.:gundge: