Politics: Towards a Better Government

Governments inevitably expand its control over the people with increased regulations, growing bureaucracy, and loss of freedom to its citizens which it is meant to serve. Constitutions and division of power serves as a mitigating factor to this growth in government but it cannot stop this inevitable trend. The growth is not only a consequence of mismanagement and corruption but rather is due to the fundamental nature of governments attempting to solve problems by introducing more regulations. Once a regulation is introduced, its removal is much harder since there are inevitably special interest groups that directly benefits from such regulations and they will fight hard to preserve the status quo. To counter this or to not feel left out, other interest groups also make their case and introduce their own regulations which benefits them. As the years go by, there is a snowball that grows ever larger. A government that grows too large and entrenched will inevitably mismanage its citizens due to accidental negligence or deliberate aim at control.

Such a government will also be extremely hard to reform and revolution does not guarantee any change except for those benefiting the revolutionaries. In many cases, a revolution is a convenient excuse for one group who has not been given power to seize power for itself, sometimes leading to a worse situation than before with even greater control. The solution guaranteed to work is to have periodic migrations and settlement in faraway lands where a new improved government can be built from the foundation with the culture and legislation to ensure its growth into a sprawling bureaucracy is substantially slowed. For instance, the US was built based on many of the enlightened ideas of European intellectuals. Today, currently much of the easy-to-access lands on Earth has been settled which makes it very difficult for new idealistic groups to form their own governments in distant lands. In the future, space travel and ocean settlements will allow new and hopefully improved types of political systems in self-contained societies.

Reform may be possible though if certain action steps are taken. These ideas I present are not original and have certainly been suggested in greater details by libertarians who actually understand American politics much better than I. Nonetheless, the suggestions I offer and the benefits that will happen if the actions are taken seem fairly self-evident to me.

1. Encourage private enterprise not connected with the government. This can come from tax incentives and direct funding. Often, the same service offered by the private company can do a more effective job than the government. In package delivery, FedEx and UPS often do its job more effectively than the US Post Office, delivering goods on time and charging competitive rates. In rocket launch services, SpaceX, a startup company initially funded by the personal checkbook of Elon Musk, provides launch cost at a price potentially ~$50M cheaper than that of United Launch Alliance, a company that's jointly owned by Lockheed Martin and Boeing with a much longer history and political and economic clout.

In the father of all future incentive packages since the inception of President Obama, i.e. the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, $82.2 billion was spent on protecting the vulnerable while $43 billion was spent on energy and only $7.6 billion spent on scientific research. Among the $82.2 billion, about half or $40 billion, more than scientific research and energy manufacturing and research combined, was spent on providing unemployment benefits so that unemployed people can continue to collect paychecks while essentially sitting at home and doing nothing.

If the same funds was reversed and $82.2 billion was spent on scientific research or the energy sector instead, the consequences will have been substantially more positive and greater than that of Joe and Jane sitting at home in their pajamas so that they have more time to look for jobs. This money could have spurred advancements in the space or energy sector, building up the technological infrastructure and advancement that can provide billions of dollars of return in the future while also creating new jobs. A new technological breakthrough can lead to the creation of ten companies worth billions of dollars that can then hire Joe and Jane to get off of their sofa and build the building as construction workers or work at the local bar that just opened due to the sudden influx of lawyers, businessmen, engineers, and scientists in the area from the growth in business. As usual, politicians are often influenced by interest groups that hold the majority of votes but often don't have the vision to see further ahead.

2. Reduce the power of federal laws for local regions by ensuring that local laws supersede federal laws. Often, federal laws are unpopular or not applicable to particular regions or to particular groups of people. To enforce the same law on everyone across a nation often benefits only some and harms everyone else. Furthermore, offering a national government this level of power can be quite dangerous. For instance, the passing of the Patriot Act passed during the administration of Bush gives the federal government almost unlimited powers in detaining people without trial in any US state or territory. Obama has extended this Act in three provisions by continuing US agencies to wiretap its citizens, search business records, and conduct surveillance on individuals.

3. Immigration should be re-opened. America was built by the hands and minds of immigrants giving it the nickname as the land of opportunity. Its gates in the early 20th century welcomed millions to its shores, with many of them being the poor from Europe and Asia that were leaving the turmoils or poverty in their respective countries. Through several generations, many of them developed their education and business to build the America that is today. No one will say that was a bad thing. Yet, now, immigration to the US is very limited and there's only talk on restricting it more with almost no one saying the reverse. Opening up the gates will jumpstart the economy in two ways.

First, with millions of unskilled immigrants willing to work twice as hard and at half the pay, American citizens can dedicate their time to other tasks. For instance, the daycare system for kids is abhorrently expensive in the US but millions of parents will pay the money anyway since there's little choice for someone to take care of their kids at home. Second, with tens of thousands of skilled immigrants, new technologies and companies can be formed leading to increased prosperity for all and technological benefits. From what I have seen, the US university educational system is perfectly willing to offer high quality education to foreign students only to kick them out a few months or a year later since they were unable to secure a full-time job in the US in time to maintain their visa status. This loss of human capital is quite regrettable.

I will put up more thoughts in a future post but for now let me stop here. What do you think?