FrankenGov

There are those who believe the less government in our lives the better, and I tend to agree, however, I am not a believer in eradication of the government. I believe government is a necessary evil, but must be controlled. Many would argue government is a Faustian bargain at best, ultimately becoming so large it overtakes its master and turns the tables so now the citizen supports the government and not the other way around. It is a valid concern but it is my belief this state of affairs is more a result of human corruption then of something inherent in the concept of a government. A government should exist to serve its citizens; nothing more, nothing less. It is a concept brought to realization by a collection of humans. It does not think for itself; it is not FrankenGov. 

There is a difference between government size and number of government services provided. Government size is the set of resources the government consumes while "number of government services" speaks to how many useful services the government provides to its citizens. They are not directly related and should not be. 

The IRS is a perfect example. At one point in time it was probably a laborious task to process all the tax forms from the citizens each year. These days one would think computers could replace nearly all the IRS workers, but alas, the IRS never seems to reduce head count. Without knowing all the details, from the outside looking in, one might consider this a bit odd. If, however, we could reduce the IRS head count by say 70% then this would be a good thing for almost everyone except the IRS employees who were laid off (and possibly some politicians). That's fine. The needs of the many should outweigh the needs of the few. 

Another example, might be when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) falls down (as it did with VW in 2015). I am sure the EPA's explanation might be along the lines that they are over worked and under paid. We can look at this as emblematic of all the other government agencies. So what do we do? The way I see it, we have 3 options; we can eradicate the agency, we can throw money at the agency, or we can figure out what's broken in the agency, fix it and optimize it. To be colloquial "we could run it like a business". This last option seems like the only sane option available to us. 

I suspect the problem we have with our government is one of apathy, and once that sets in corruption is sure to follow. Almost any American if asked the question is government too big would answer yes. We all know it yet no one seems interested in fixing it. It is this apathetic status quo mentality that I believe is at the root of the problem. Put simply, there is no impartial oversight for most government organizations. I don't see anything good coming from this. 

One way to correct this is to develop indices which chart how similar operations in the public sector perform and use that to develop performance metrics for each government organization. It is not acceptable to ask the individual government organizations to develop these indices. This must be done by a disconnected third party. It is crucial to keep corruption out of this process. 

So perhaps the solution is to simply make government agencies accountable and monitor their performance as any business owner would do.