It is difficult to find any other institutions that are more universally loathed than our governments. Though often touted as the best government form ever existed, our federal and state governments are extremely complex, bloated and inefficient. Our governments routinely put the special interests ahead of the people and are often caught red-handed in illegal or immoral conducts. The recent incident of Snowdon is a timely reminder of what our government is capable of. Today Washington is caught in a hopeless gridlock of partisan politics and it is very difficult (if not impossible) to bring any meaningful legislation through the complicated maze of conflicting special interests and ideologies. Those bills that did manage to pass are often full of loopholes and earmarks, making their effects in practice highly unpredictable and often harmful. You need to look no further than our current federal tax code for a legislation that is complicated, senseless, full of loopholes and earmarks. Such tax code creates perverted incentives and unintended consequences, e.g., the highly sophisticated tax shelter schemes utilized by Apple is a prime example of how human ingenuity is wasted in the wrong place because of a bad piece of legislation. The current political system needs radical reforms, but fresh ideas have no chance of becoming law because ordinary voters understandably are skeptical and fearful of any dramatic changes from the status quo.
What is wrong with our government? People often blame corrupted politicians and officials, though convenient but that is a very simplistic and counterproductive view. I believe most people in the public service are most likely moral and do act with good intention for the public. The dire situation of our current governments is a sure product of our own political system, which is designed to have low efficiency by the founding fathers, with all the checks and balances in place to prevent the concentration and abuse of the power. The system has worked brilliantly in most of the United States history until in the last 50 years or so. There are many reasons why it no longer works in modern time, I will write about it in the upcoming blogs. For the moment, let's just focus on what is wrong and how to fix it.
If our government were a private corporation, it would have and should have gone out of business. No corporate that consistently operates in low efficiency, produces expensive services and products that are universally hated, and engages in illegal conducts can survive the free market competition, with an important exception of being a monopoly. That is exactly what's wrong with our government.
Our government enjoys the monopoly of many important powers: taxation, legal use of force, legislation and law enforcement, money printing, court and legal system etc. It is true that the governments have monopolized most of these powers throughout the civilized history, but in this day and age with the rapid advancement of technology and the unprecedented equal and free access to information, I argue that there are no longer any good reasons for the government to monopolize these powers. We can design a new form of government based on the distributed power, and having the governments compete to serve the needs of the people. Today there exist limited competition between state and city governments, citizens could move to other cities or states if they don't like the local legislation and government policies. However, such competition largely benefits only the large corporations and wealthy people who can actually afford to move; moving is rarely an option for ordinary people because of limited job mobility and family ties.
In this series of blogs, I will layout the new form of government based on the distribution of power and the free market competition in government services. I will argue that such a government form will bring much needed efficiency and transparency, meanwhile protect the liberty of the citizens to the fullest extent. Since this new government form is founded on the distribution of power, it doesn't need to be inefficient to prevent the concentration and abuse of power. This new form of government is not based on any particular political ideologies: People are free to choose, associate and practice any political doctrines. People with similar political views will group together to write their own legislation and form their own governments, and freely practice their own political doctrine to their hearts' content, just like how people organize and practice religion today. The new government form is not based on geographical regions like our city or state governments, instead they are based on ideologies and people's free association. Multiple governments will compete with each other to attract citizens, and the governments offering the best protections, services and benefits with the least costs will inevitable attract the most number of tax paying citizens. Multiple competing governments will allow all political ideas to be put into the ultimate test of practice, and they will bring out the best quality of competing ideologies because the citizens affiliated with the same government all share the same political views, thus they will be able to enact and enforce the uncompromised and true version of the laws that fully reflect their political beliefs.
The ideas may sound radical, but I will explain in the upcoming blogs that they are perfectly rational and practical. I hope this can spur some serious discussions on how we can fundamentally reform our outdated political system, and modernize our governing processes.
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