I think that there is a real job for government and it is in regulating our lives while being unobserved, sort of like a good referee that makes fair decisions quickly, controlling the bad while helping the clean play get on with it. Enlightened businesses should know that social problems may be always with us but they are bad for business. Eliminate illiteracy and you will sell more computers.
Business needs to learn to protect its ultimate bottom line by solving social problems, government should assist by building the rules of the game, and turn the action of the game over to the players, the people individually and in their businesses.
We are saved tax money ultimately and the company increases profit in the long term. Profit is not wrong, just the unethical route to the fast buck, now the rule more than the exception. To this point government has been wasting its resources fighting problems, when it should be finding a way to use the problem to create solutions, so that the regulating government can step back and watch the problem solve effectively solve itself.
Government businesses and depratments should be funded positively in the same way businesses are. Lets take health care for an example.
Right now we fund health care by paying doctors according to billable visits. Their response, quite sensibly, has been to line up patients in multiple waiting rooms. Doctors move rapidly move from patient to patient. The time spent with each patient tends to decrease. We have ensured that the patients will revisit so that other billable options can be tried. We have also ensured that doctors will tend towards advice that is on the "billable list" and "advice to smoke less" is not, I believe.
Why not instead fund wellness? Surely our medical experts can up with a health index based on age, blood pressure, breath capacity, cholesterol level, weight, etc. We adjust these figures for age, time spent as a client, socioeconomic levels, chronic conditions and so on. Then we pay doctors more and more on creating and then maintaining good index results. Healthier clients, more money. Simple. The response of doctors would be creative, according to my own doctor. Personally he would sponsor exercise clinics, spend more time weaning people from unhealthy habits etc.
Naturally the funding for visits would remain, but doctors would progressively use of their time in whatever way that would produce health. That in turn would cut down the need for more visits, decrease the number of diabetic patients, heart bypass operations, and procedures that are currently over-used with our funding emphasis solely on treating problems. Doctors would be unlikely to oppose the process if we promote it as "bonus wellness funds." The bonus of course gets funded in the long haul as healthier patients make fewer demands on the system.
If you want to have some fun, figure out some ways to fund social-problem solution with social-problem revenues. If there is too much gas consumption, then fund rapid transit and lower taxation on inner-city apartments with fuel tax. How about a tax credit for people living close to their employment? If alcohol consumption is causing road injury then use the huge revenue from liquor taxes to provide safe rides for drinkers and combat alcoholism.
Why do we fund fire-fighting by the number of fires there are? We should pay departments a bonus according to the absense of fires in their area. Then fireman would spend their time educating and monitoring their service are with a view to reducing risks. We can fun policemen in part with fund for reduction in crimes, and decrease in traffic accidents.
It gets better: legalize prostitution and use revenues to combat the spread of STIs and improve the education of workers. Use taxes from successful businesses to fund the development of new ones. Tax big-box residential stores, to reduce taxation for inner-city development. It all comes down to decreasing government (and much of its expense) by empowering us to realize natural benefits foam solving our own problems.
The first hurdle to overcome is that democratic governments are structured to reward winning elections rather than solving the problems we want them to deal with. Any democratic government wanting to make fundamental change will find that itself out of office. If a government antagonizes only 20% (a guess) of the population, that group will mobilize all its efforts to defeat the government by whatever means it can, ultimately through the polling booths. We have a problem-solving institution constructed in such a way that those in control of the institution will defeat itself by trying to hard to meet its goals.
Using our thesis for this article, the problem in manufacturing governmental consensus has to drive the solution. This could be done by a multi-party commission to construct legislation alternatives. The alternatives could be presented for electorate survey, then parliament could vote for or against solutions already supportable by social consensus. Not supporting an alternative that went through this process would flag the government as "unresponsive to the wishes of the majority," a position that fortunately is usually untenable.
The result of this process would be a new democratic governmental structure responsive to a well-informed electorate and motivated and oriented to come to grips with long-standing social problems in ways that would have a greater potential for success. The role of government would shift from unproductive superficial party conflict to creating realistic alternatives for the electorate that would drive consensus and solution.
If you like this line of thinking let me know, and help me add to the blog and promote it.
