I support the idea of government and feel like I am part of our government. I vote, and sometimes who I voted for is elected. I express my opinions at times. I sign petitions for and against what are governments are doing. I feel like I am an important part of our government. Government isn’t them, doing things to me, but rather it is that we who are doing things to and for ourselves through the governments we elect.
So much in media is negative regarding government. This is particularly the case in social media. I don’t always agree with what our governments do, but that is how it works. Government is designed to move slowly and change slowly so that it can adapt to changing social needs and norms. Government does not and should not operate like business because it exists to serve, not to grow and profit. Government is designed to serve all the people in its jurisdiction with the purpose of maintaining and improving their quality of life, not to enhance itself to its own ends.
Why do so few people vote? I see voting results of 25-35% of eligible voters actually voting. Do the others have no interest? Do they feel that their vote is worthless? Do they not understand that this is a participative democracy and your vote is one way to participate? Do they not understand that government is there to represent us all? That it’s not a case of ‘us’ and ‘them’? They are us!!!
I like that democracy reflects the decisions of the majority. It really isn’t possible to simultaneously satisfy everyone’s interests, so majority rule seems like the best we can do. One of the problems, however, is that people running for public office often lack suitable education or experience to operate as political government officials.
We have a lot of legislation that affects how governments can or even must operate. We have long-established ways of doing things – designing roads, planning communities, calculating and collecting taxes, collecting garbage, social service provision, regulating business and construction operations, police operations, courts, and so forth – that are often complete unknowns for newly elected politicians. Some newly minted politicians will boast about how they are going to shake everything up with broad and sweeping changes. They do not realize that a lot of thought and experience by professional staff has gone into the design of how things are done, and naively do not expect resistance to their ‘brilliant’ proposals. So, the new politicians quickly get frustrated, mostly because of their lack of knowledge, education, and experience of how things have evolved and adapted to the legislation and best practices that affects the public sector. Some people refer to this as ‘red tape’ and a bad thing, but their are usually very good reasons for the way governments have learned to best operate.
I believe that people running in elections should have some basic training. I think, also, that people voting in election should have some basic training. The voter’s job is to elect someone who represents their views of how things can and ought to be. In my experience, however, voters tend to run on impulse, on feelings rather than truthful information and well-thought-out ideologies. More recently, many voters, or at least social media posters, seem more interested in spreading hate over existing politicians (populism) instead of actually supporting what they believe are better ideas. More recently, too, has it unfortunately become normalized to expect the spread of lies and disinformation.
It’s clear to me that the task of government is to solve problems. If there were no problems affecting us as a society or community, there would be no need for government. There are societal problems that will never disappear and will need continuous monitoring and effort, like supplying clean potable water, roads, sewers, and garbage collection and many other things. The goal should be to do these things both effectively and as efficiently as possible and it is only in these respects that government operations should be in any way like a ‘business’. There should be no cutting corners in regard to safety, security, and continuous operations for any type of ‘profit’ motive. There should be no profit to be gained from these operations (i.e. at the lowest cost to constituents), thereby excluding the possibility of them becoming privatized in business.
There is no doubt in my mind that our government should be open, transparent, and fully accountable for the things it does. I worked in government for most of my career and found that their is a great divide in thinking regarding the role of government and the activities in our community. Some perceive government as being helpful and useful while others perceive government as stifling and something to stay clear of. If entirely free of government regulation, many citizens will do many good things, but many others will do detrimental things and will run into conflicts with each other. Most of us don’t want detrimental things happening and often our best recourse is to turn to the government to regulate and to decide and resolve conflicts and disputes. Despite what opportunistic and regulation-avoiding individuals think, we need government to keep our society functioning in a healthy and fair manner.
There’s probably a lot more I can write about government, openness, taxation, and so forth, but later.
Thanks, Jim.