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11/06/2005: "The government will always get it wrong"

No matter what the problem is, any solution provided exclusively by the government is going to be the wrong solution. Here's why.

A solution provided by a government must be a kind of cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all (otherwise the government is just playing favorites). Usually government will scale the solution so that the rich get less of a benefit than the poor do (or at least, they try to). However, none of this gives the government sufficient flexability to taylor programs to single individuals. It's all done on a formula or set of rules.

On the other hand, the individuals that make up a governed body are as varied as they are numerous. Ask any ten people what they want the government to do, and you'll get at least ten different answers. Worse yet, they will all be adamant that their answer is right. How can any government hope to possibly get it right? The best they can hope for is to be tolerably wrong. That is, where a few benefit, and those that don't benefit don't grumble too loudly.

The only way for a government to get it right is to let everybody have their own way. You want it? You get it. Of course, this is impossibly expensive to implement. Not just infeasably expensive or unimaginably expensive. Impossibly expensive.