Government Can't Innovate and Would You Like That Super-Sized?

Government can't innovate. There certainly must be exceptions but they don't come to mind. The US Post Office faciitated easy, cheap written communication between all Americans. Why weren't they a driver to move to the Internet? The phone company was essentially a government run institution. Where were they for the last three decades when cellular phone technology was becoming mainstream? Welfare benefits have n-tupled an unaccountable number of times since its inception in the sixties. How come we don't remember any example of them actually finding ways to reduce the welfare rolls for able-bodied individuals? With new healthcare legislation, where are the much touted economies of scale? Scale yes. Economy no.

On and on, the list grows for every branch, every corner of government. There's nothing wrong with the workers themselves, they are just as capable as those in the prive sector. Yet it seems the only thing they can do in this structured environment is grow, become less efficient, pass up opportunities to improve and just grow, and then grow more. With the exception of a few national parks and other isolated groups, government institutions can't break even. The government employees don't produce anything. They exist on tax dollars, skimming a little off the top of what you make. That is, each employee skims a little off what you make. The total is not so little.

Unemployment

There are a lot of theories about unemployment. Such as what the natural level is. Is it closer to 50 percent than 100%? And is the natural level what we really want? Most would agree we want somewhere near ninety-plus percent levels of employment and if the market won't provide it naturally (though market forces), then we want to get it through artificial means (the gov).

The trouble with innovation is, every time one hits the market, a shift in workforce takes place that causes upheval. New Jobs are created followed by old jobs becoming obsolete and lost. We're back to where we were, except now we have hovercars or an almost infinite library or something else we didn't have before. But we didn't create more jobs in the long run.

Meanwhile, the government, like some beast stuck in slow-motion time, can barely comprehend the changes going on, let alone take a leading role in determining what direction to take. So could the government raise the employment rolls? Yes, it seems they can, simply by growing. The more they do, the harder they must slave-drive those remaining in the private sector to pay for those additional workers through taxes. Notice that it doesn't particularly matter how hard the public sector employees work. The fact that they are being paid means the others have to pay them, and they can't very well stop working without disaster ensuing.

What we have here is unstable equilibrium. Everything just squeaks by, just breaks even. Everybody lives okay and then something unexpected happens. It could be a bad crop or a new disease or a natural resource becoming scarce. That carefully architected society then crumbles quickly.

And what a dull, drab world that would be. Government can't innovate, we already said that. And the private sector will find itself more and more hemmed in by higher taxes that further discourage innovation by raising the cost of risk taking and breaking even.

So if you can imagine a future with a high employment rate coupled with low innovation, you would get a stable society in which one century looks pretty much like another, only with everybody working harder than ever to keep it that way. You may have doomed the human race to a state of semi-suspended animation, punctuated once in a while by disasters, but you will have tackled the problem of 2010.

The Other Person Isn't as Smart

Sometimes you hear extreme views on the radio talk shows and ask yourself "How can they believe that?" You see when an international despot in the news seems to defy all reason. You experience it in personal life in any number of ways. The other person isn't getting it, they aren't being smart. How does this happen?

Debate club

Debate club in high school was a way to make a logical series of arguments that advocate a position. That's fine if you believe in the position you are advocating. What was new to us at that time was the idea that you can make an equally convincing case by arguing for the opposite side of what you believe simply by selecting (and omitting) the appropriate facts to tell and the conclusions we all must draw from them. And if you were very good, you might even convince people to agree with you on the resolution that even you don't believe yourself.

The modern equivalent of debate club can be seen everywhere. Every advertisement (for example, Coke saying Coke is the best tasting, has best type of bottle, etc.,, rather than presenting a balanced perspective of how well it actually compares in popularity, for example). Every political candidate (after all, who really expects a candidate to say their opponent has a better approach to some things and that the best of both should be adopted, although it must be true sometimes).

Al Gore is another example in the wake of climategate. He said he was concerned about global warming, he did not talk about regaining political power or becoming a climate billionaire. But if his stated motive was true, wouldn't the climategate scandal be at the very top of his list? One would think making sure the facts were checked, rechecked and checked again on the most important issue facing Humankind would be considerably more important than convincing the public that they are before the expert case is shown to be clean. It's even okay to take a skeptical view for a while and then conclude the theory is still good. It's not okay to sweep potential scandals under the rug.

His headstrong opinions can only be explained by other reasons than what he has stated publicly. Reasons like the self-serving ones given above. Convincing others of something you don't believe is like -- well, it's like high school debate club. Apparently, he has been very good at it because by his actions, apparently he doesn't believe it himself.

The way to win against an Al Gore is not to convince HIM he's wrong. Indications are he already knows that. The way to win is to marginalize his position. Convince the PUBLIC of the truth about it so no matter what he says, he cannot harm their lives or rob their wealth.

This is the only species on Earth that's really smart, brainy, intelligent. Head and shoulders above the rest. Although we see faint echoes of our thought processes in other species, no animal comes close to what we have. Which makes it all the more surprising that we uniquely have the capacity to believe that other people are significantly lacking in that.