Government And Failure

EVER NOTICED the difference between a politician running for office and a politician in office? When running for election, the politician will say anything to get elected. In the last few months we’ve seen the Kerry campaign provide us with a textbook example of this. Every week, it seems, the campaign tries out a new theme. Kerry is for the war. Then he is against it. He would have taken out Saddam Hussein. Then it’s all a mistake. He’s reporting for duty, surrounded by his band of brothers. Then he’s going to get us out of Vietnam, er, make that Iraq. He’ll do anything to get traction with the electorate.

But when politicians are actually governing, then they will say anything to avoid doing anything. Is Social Security going broke? Nothing can be done: but we will protect it with a “lockbox.” Are the cities terrorized by teenage hoodlums? Nothing can be done: the cops are racist. Johnny can’t read? Nothing can be done: the schools are underfunded.

There’s a simple reason for this. When running for office, the politician must win or he is history. But once in office he gets to merge himself with sacred symbols of nationhood and community. Social Security is “ours.” Youthful monsters are “our” future. And everybody supports “our” teachers. Governments have learned, over the ages, to hide behind these sacred symbols. That way they can accuse their critics of profaning the sacred symbols instead of answering their criticism.

When government screws up, it usually manages to blame the corporations, and the people line up to cheer. When the US government screwed up the economy in the 1970s with wage and price controls, people were happy to blame the oil companies for gas lines and soaring gas prices. When the government of California screwed up electric regulation in the 1990s, people lined up to blame Enron but kept silent about municipal electric utilities in the Pacific Northwest that were price gouging with the best of them.

Of course, when government really screws up, then people blame capitalism itself. In the 1930s, when the government suits made mistake after mistake, committing wrong on wrong, by reducing the money supply, allowing banks to fail, keeping failing businesses alive, raising tax rates, boosting import tariffs, and creating a corporative state with the fascist NRA, who did people blame? Why, they blamed Wall Street speculators, heartless bankers, and capitalism itself! By 1939, after Franklin D. Roosevelt had succeeded against all odds in prolonging the Great Depression for ten years, he was reckoned a national hero.

We want government to attack problems, and so they do, happily attacking them for years and years without effect. But corporations are different. From them we demand satisfaction or our money back. Why do we tolerate this double standard? Who knows?

But the lesson is obvious. When we want to attack problems, there is nothing better than getting a government involved. But we should understand that the problem would never get solved. For when we charge a government with a job, all we do is appropriate our money for people to work on the problem. Chances are they will discover that the problem is much bigger than anyone imagines, and that they will need more money to make a dent in the problem.

When we want to solve a problem we should charge it to a corporation. Fed up with high whale oil prices? Here’s a young bookkeeper, John D. Rockefeller, who has been doing a modest trade in Pennsylvania mineral oil and has some ideas about “standardizing” the oil to make it safe. Want a car in every garage? Here’s crackpot mechanic Henry Ford with an idea to apply the methods of the meatpacking industry to automobile manufacture. Want to get a package delivered coast-to-coast overnight? Here’s crazy Fred Smith with an idea to fly the packages to Memphis, sort them, and then fly them on to their destinations in the morning.

Then there’s Sam Walton and Wal-mart. They ought to build a mausoleum for that guy in Tiananmen Square next to Chairman Mao. In his endless quest to deliver everyday low prices he’s done as much as anyone to get the Chinese people off their knees and into prosperity and security.

Government is in the business of protecting a terrified people and leading them to safety. If it ever did get them into the Promised Land, it would be out of a job. But corporations, the creatures of double-entry bookkeeping and limited liability, are in the business of customer satisfaction. Again and again and again.

Government and Failure

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