The Business of Government

Over the years a lot of cash has passed through the hands of the American government and some has slipped through the fingers towards worthless spending. The problem is that when you are dealing with trillions of dollars “some” is a whole bunch of money. My solution, run our government more like a business. The president or a governor is like a CEO and under him the executive branch of the country or a state should run like a business to provide several products to consumers. Products range from security and trade agreements to mail routes and roadways. The consumers of these products are the American people, and yet at the same time the American people are also the shareholders. Because all of the customers are shareholders this rules out the need to make a profit, but the need to run efficiently is still there. Going with this analogy the Supreme Court would be a board of directors and congress would simply be a small group of shareholders selected by all of the other shareholders to vote on their behalf in order to save time. Running the country in such a manner was clearly on the minds of some when our government was designed, there are departments specializing in a certain product and various divisions responsible for various aspects of the particular product. Take for instance on a small scale a state has the responsibility to provide security to its citizens and they are willing to pay a reasonable amount. That state then sets up a structure of state police, sheriffs, and local police. The idea is on a daily basis the local police handle the needs of a group of people and if the needs grow to large on a particular day (sporting events, concerts) the sheriffs are called in. If the needs grown even larger (protests, riots) then the state police are called in. In this fashion adequate security is provided efficiently with minimal cost. In regards to these aspects our government currently employs such practices. The problem arises when say for instance the local police become inefficient at providing security (to many police for to few problems) or provide poor customer service (tasering and shooting people when it is not justified). At this point the police need to be threatened with budget cuts and if there is still a problem the people should vote to allow private contractors to provide security as long as they operate within the limits of the law, effectively putting that local police force out of a job. Now apply this to larger organizations such as the Social Security Administration. The product of this “company” is economic security, that being said they need to create a product features that the consumers (citizens) want for a price that they can afford (taxes). If the product features are insufficient or the prices are to high then people should be able to opt out of paying for social security and eventually that company will go bankrupt and private companies will take its place. By putting in place such measures that make our government operate in this fashion it not only becomes more efficient but the costs become lower and people can spend their money on other things than taxes. In short out government was supposed to run like a business and we are somewhat there, now we just need to get the rest of the way.