If you’ve ever thought that the USA had a monopoly on incompetent government officials, you haven’t traveled very far outside the country.
Ryan Ginstorm, an indepent translator who lives in Japan, comments on a health official who assumed his 2-year old son was mentally retarded since he called a young dog a “puppy” and a young cat a “kitty”. (link)
Government, by its very, non-competitive nature, is incompetent. The people who gravitate towards government jobs are largely unable to compete in the real business world. (There are, of course, exceptions, and we can readily identify those by their lack of popularity among government circles.) Government itself only maintains its power with the threat of force, a compromise we the people allow since we see the benefit of having an incompetent legal entity who can use physical force as more important than its inevitable costs.
After all, we can’t have two independent governments, one right next to each other, competing for the right to pay taxes to them and the right to throw criminals in prison for life. See what happens if you try to setup a competing government in your state and see how far you get with that.
People who think government has some magical property that transforms all of its initiatives and workers into angels sent down from the throne of God to serve man are deluding themselves. Does winning an election fundamentally change the nature of a man? Does having your job funded by the extortion of taxes from hard-working and passive citizens mean you will automatically be a better person? Of course not. It’s absurd to think so.
Even in business, where competition drives the most incompetent out of the market, leaving only the least incompetent in control, and where natural market forces can thrust entire industries into the dustbin of history, we are faced with consistent and wonderful examples of incompetence. And in government, where the only force that can drive incompetence out is the rare, bi-annual election process, and even then, we are lucky to get people that are not completely insane running our government, how can you expect more?
The problem isn’t that people are incompetent. The problem is the system that allows incompetence to survive, and feeds it like a cancer. That problem is found in government. I certainly understand the position of people who want to throw government out in its entirety as a failed experiment. But I still believe having a big guy around who is ready to jump on certain people on a moment’s notice and kill them if necessary is a good thing, especially the American form where we keep that entity chained head to foot and beaten into submission every few years in humiliating elections.
Reagan said, “Government isn’t the answer to our problems. Government is the problem.” As I mature, I see that as more and more true every day.
