Posted on 05/11/2014 9:14:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” -- Ronald Reagan
Relying on big government to help you out would be like relying on the Girl Scouts to spearhead an invasion of Iran. It's the wrong people, in the wrong place, doing the wrong job. Whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge, our government is barely functional. That's certainly not a shocker. Anyone who has had dealings with the federal government can tell you that it's slow, stupid, expensive, belligerent and incompetent. But, here's the $64,000 question: WHY is the federal government so slow, stupid, expensive, belligerent and incompetent? It's not a mystery.
1) It's not the government’s money: One of the biggest reasons a "kid in a candy store" acts like a "kid in a candy store" is because he didn't have to earn the money he's about to spend. It's no different for the government. Government employees are not the ones working double shifts when they're exhausted to collect enough money to pay their taxes. They just collect the sweat of someone else's brow and spend it the way they see fit. If you're irresponsible with your money, you may lose your house. If a company is irresponsible with its money, it may go out of business. Yet if a government employee is irresponsible with YOUR MONEY, he's not on the hook for it personally. If he borrows billions and it gets frittered away, it doesn't come out of his wallet. To them, it's all monopoly money and no matter what happens, they're going to get more to play with next year.
2) The government is doing things it shouldn't be doing: How do you think Burger King would do at selling perfume? How would you feel about eating Purina brand hamburger? How about discount shoes sold by Rolex? If the government were simply building roads, throwing up a few street signs, securing the borders and making sure rotten horse meat isn't being sold as steak in the local supermarket, it would probably be relatively good at its jobs. But, when we have the government declaring your yard a wetland because it rains, micro managing what kind of light bulbs you're allowed to buy, bailing out big corporations and forcibly taking over our health care, of course the government does it badly. Just as you couldn't be a talented brain surgeon, race car driver AND Navy SEAL all at the same time, the federal government simply cannot be all things to all people.
3) It can't go out of business: Theoretically, the government could go out of business. Just ask Saddam Hussein....well, if he were around to ask. However, it's highly unlikely that's going to happen to our government. Yet, that fear is one of the biggest drivers of efficiency in the free market. A company can make a series of small mistakes, be too slow to adapt to change or even make one big mistake, one time and it's game over. That's why businesses tend to be so ruthlessly efficient. It's either be ruthlessly efficient or go belly up. On the other hand, our government makes mistakes that would bankrupt 98% of the businesses on the planet year in and year out. For example, what value did we get out of the trillion dollar stimulus? How is Obama's decision to help radical Islamists take over Libya working out? Are those Obamacare promises panning out just like the Obama Administration said? When the federal government is involved, it's all "New Coke," all the time, forever, no matter how much the public hates the product it's putting out.
4) It doesn't effectively measure success and failure: Government does measure things in a very broad sense. It measures the debt, although it uses an accounting method that hides future liabilities, something CEOs would be jailed for doing. The government can tell you the "jobless rate," although it's essentially meaningless since it doesn't include large segments of the population who have given up on looking for work. The government uses the Congressional Budget Office to project the expense of future programs, but it has rules in place that insure that the CBO dramatically undercounts the costs.
On the other hand, as a small business owner, I can tell you how many Facebook "Likes" I bought last month, how much revenue each Facebook "Like" I buy is likely to produce per month and how long it will take to make my money back. Our government doesn't do that kind of measurement because it's not its money, bureaucrats don't care about "making it back" and because a program is judged a "success" or "failure" based on how it plays out politically, not based on whether it works. One of the truest quotes you're ever going to hear is, "What gets measured, gets managed.” Since almost nothing is effectively measured by the government, almost nothing gets effectively managed.
5) There’s a lack of responsibility: The late, great Milton Friedman once said,
“When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union — like public housing in the United States — look decrepit within a year or two of their construction…”
Similarly, when no one is held personally responsible for the failure of a government program, nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. Who's responsible for Benghazi? The IRS targeting of the Tea Party? Fast and Furious? The trillion dollars we wasted on the stimulus program? The National Debt? Obamacare -- oh wait, there are still people pretending Obamacare isn't a failure.
But, that's just it. Between the multitudes of politicians and bureaucrats tied into every decision, a biased media and raw partisanship, there's a fog bank around every program, decision and calamity created by the government. That's why ultimately, you'd be much more likely to be fired from a government job for saying something racist or making a nasty crack about gay marriage than wasting a billion dollars or getting people killed with your incompetence.
And we'll kick in your door armed with machineguns to prove it!
Plus, politicians are corrupt, incompetent, greedy, self serving and care more about themselves than the nation and people they are supposed to be serving.
And kill your dog and give you a ticket for having an unlicensed dead dog.
Most liberals, whether they admit it to themselves or not, envision themselves as the Queens, or at the very least potential Queens or mating drones. They envision a society in which the rest of us ‘workers’ are all equal under them. Every government that allows career politicians, whether it be an overt totalitarian system or not, winds up to some degree as the above. Every single one.
I am not saying in any way that I am for anarchy. I am not. I am for a republic system of the type that the founders envisioned, but with some important additional safeguards. No one should ever be allowed to spend more than a total of 12 years of their life in a paid political position in the US government, or working in the equivalent of an advisory position for anyone in office. No one. The preclusion from lobbying after holding elected office, or any other appointed position in any administration, should be at least 10 years after your last position - and violations should result in a mandatory 5 year prison sentence and a loss of all lobbying-associated money.
Oh, and voter fraud, including assisting or ignoring voter fraud that you personally witnessed, should also have a non-negotiable five year prison sentence, with loss of all personal voting rights for life.
"I'll take 'Jack In The Box' for $1,000, Alex."
IMHO, actually there is one over riding reason why Government, at almost all levels can not work.
BLUF - any government solution arrives too late to be of any help.
Because the government is so distant from where the action is and has so many levels of incompetent bureaucrats it is never closer than three months behind what is happening. Frequently it is a year or more behind.
In any dynamic society, like ours, this means that corrective actions have already been applied at the point of action when the government finds out about the initial problem. By the time the approved government solution arrives on scene (3 to 12 months later) the problem it is trying solve no longer exists. But, a new one exists. To which the government approved solution is applied.
Visualize a pendulum swinging from side to side. Its ideal position is in balance at the center. By the time the government solution (push up to stop the swing) arrives the pendulum is at the high end of its arc and the government push up causes everything to fall out of balance making the initial problem worse.
“And kill your dog and give you a ticket for having an unlicensed dead dog. “
LOL
And kill your dog and then give you ticket for littering.
Between the multitudes of politicians and bureaucrats tied into every decision, a biased media and raw partisanship, there's a fog bank around every program, decision and calamity created by the government.It isn’t “the media,” it is journalism which is “biased.” The “bias” of journalism is that it predominantly reports bad news - and, since journalists aren’t responsible for any of the troubles they report, journalists are always reporting what went wrong when they weren’t in charge.Consequently journalism is criticism, and journalists are hostile to people who want credit for actually doing stuff, but simpatico with other people who are mere critics like themselves. The result is that journalism naturally functions as socialist propaganda.
It doesn’t effectively measure success and failure.
Like when I see billboards and internet ads from my state telling me to watch out for motorcycles. The money is for “feel-good” (for them) reasons, and presumably has no real benefit, and certainly is not being measured to determine if the effort was worthwhile.
This applies very well to just about any “War on...”
While I agree with these, the biggest reason big government will always fail is because not all of us want to live like an ant colony or a bee hive, with our pre-defined roles and living under a hierarchy that doesn’t allow self-definition, free will, and the choice to live with or apart from the rest.
Let those who wish to live in cities decide what services they want, without federal subsidy. Let those who live in the country decide their government services and restrictions.
Let those who live in a condo complex decide their own rules when possible, not the city, county, state, or nation.
Fantastic analogy. Thanks.
It also explains why we need the states to be handling this and not Washington DC.
ROFLMAO.....
You had to have been a Purina Shareholder at one time.
I was an knew exactly what you meant.
Grin. Not a shareholder ... a friend worked at BK so we made fun of the other chains.
When Purina owned Jack in the Box....it was essentially dog-food burgers. Man, they were bad. Even as a shareholder I wouldn’t eat there.
IIRC they used TVP (textured vegetable protein) in their burger. We did call it dog food back in the day.
1. This government only exists to keep us hostage now
2. More regs means more overwhelmed government, financialy, enforcement wise and effectively
Note taphat the author is right, you cannot have it do all things, much like a field cannot support two different crops at the same time, the way the Soviets did it in contravention of the Bible and famines ensued.
In their standard ploy of psychological projection liberals claim conservatives are greedy. But, in reality there is nothing greedier than wanting to take someone else’s money or property.
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