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What still makes America unique in the world after more than 200 years? |
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is not an idle or academic question. If we still have any faith at
all in the concepts of Adam Smith about the wealth of nations, and that
terms of trade somehow reflect objective comparative economic advantages
rather than just the net effect of many government efforts to manipulate
markets to their own advantage, then we really should have a pretty
clear idea of what we think makes this country special. |
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What gives us a competitive advantage which can be relied upon to
sustain our prosperity in a fast-changing world, especially when other
governments still try to manipulate markets without hesitation. |
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our federal system of government and electoral process our strength?
It has some advantages, but do we seriously attribute the rise of
American economic power to the quality of our government? |
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Consider our early history. The freedom and prosperity of this
country wasn't attained in London by colonial politicians appealing to
the basic fairness of the King, members of Parliament, or even the
British people. If you read the Declaration of Independence
carefully, it chronicles a long list of grievances and many efforts to
address them by other means. We were hardly taken seriously at
first. We had a dream. They had the most powerful military
on the planet. We won. Again and again. |
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conservatives, we are not the "loyal opposition", whining from the
back bench about losing political power in Washington. We
still believe in those unalienable rights, and our limitations on the
powers of the federal government. State and local government is
more directly accountable for results. |
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Our power must be based on local performance through ethical and
effective governance which creates an environment in which people are
free to choose to achieve far more than we expect of them. It is
individual freedom to succeed, or to fail, which has driven our
entrepreneurial history of success. |
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need to focus on the local results we deliver when entrusted with the
responsibilities of public service. We must hold ourselves
accountable for higher ethical standards as public servants, but above
all we must demonstrably achieve better outcomes for our communities
during our tenure. That involves creating a better environment for
success in our communities - not more costly government programs.
The progress is driven by individuals working together. Government
plays a limited supporting role. |
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tyranny of the global superpower of colonial times was defeated by
resourceful freedom-fighters who shared a radically different vision
about the appropriate role of government. "We the people" are in
charge as a right of every citizen from the time of birth - not serving
our rulers. We don't surrender our freedoms through elections.
We delegate authority to our chosen leaders for a limited period for
specific purposes, and we expect them to step aside gracefully when we
choose to replace them with others. |
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elect public servants. They choose others to assist them in
carrying out the responsibilities which we have entrusted to them.
They organize the government to achieve better outcomes as best they
can. We don't directly control the bureaucracy. We rely on
our elected officials to do that for us. They are protecting our
freedoms while delivering what is expected of them. They serve at
our pleasure. We are not electing rulers. We don't swear
allegiance to do their bidding. They swear an other to do ours. |
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The
road to serfdom is paved with good intentions. It involves
the unchecked power of any central government to try to manipulate our
economy to the advantage of one group over any other. Regardless
of the apparent good intentions of those who are in power at the time,
it is a slippery slope when government officials start to direct the
economy to achieve political goals rather than to focus on the limited
responsibilities which have actually been temporarily entrusted to them.
The power to do whatever seems to be the best idea politically at the
time is a pretty reliable path to state-directed economic failure.
It may take time for the failure and the painful effects of it to become
obvious, but state-planned economies repeatedly fail. |
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Our strength lies in the chaos of rapid and free reaction to a highly
competitive market in which failure is as certain a risk as the
potential for achieving extraordinary success. Governments try to
never acknowledge failure, even when the facts are beyond dispute.
They move slowly, and try to avoid risks. Our individual capacity
to take extraordinary risks to achieve our dreams is fundamental to our
success. The freedom to fail is as essential as
the freedom to wildly succeed beyond all reasonable expectations.
It unleashes the power of dreams, while constraining them by the limits
of a competitive market and available resources. Bureaucracies
evolve. very slowly Individuals adapt faster to a changing world.
Governments present the risk of continually trying to
do things which really do not make economic sense. They resist
change. They can waste vast resources without accepting any real
accountability for the consequences of failure. They are playing
with somebody else's money. It makes a difference. That has
to be constrained. Limited government limits the competitive
burden of supporting a government. |
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Good intentions can lead to very bad consequences. State and
local leaders need to remain in a position to keep national leaders in
check. If they become too dependent on federal government
programs, then that power is lost. We become subjects of our
government, expected to be loyal to their expectations for us, rather
than vice versa. That's a very dangerous path which leads to
tyranny. |
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remain dedicated to the proposition that our government is of the
people, by the people, and for the people. That doesn't mean that
it exists to satisfy every want or perceived need, or to address every
grievance. We address local needs through accountable local
leaders, not a central bureaucracy. We don't
expect a benevolent federal bureaucracy to direct our economy and make
us all happy by trying to be fair to everyone while "stimulating" some
parts of the economy and restraining others. This country was not
founded on the premise of federal manipulation of the economy to be
"fair" to all by redistributing wealth and resources politically.
On the contrary, most powers were left to the states and local officials
so that vigorous competition among them would achieve better results..
We cherish the freedom to achieve extraordinary
outcomes as individuals and as groups of individuals, whether through
business or other collaboration, including charitable initiatives.
We accept individual responsibility for our lives, and the protection of
our freedom to choose how best to achieve our dreams.
Our concept of public service is for all the public to
serve the policies of the government leaders. It is for the few
public servants to carry out their limited mandates effectively without
intruding on our freedoms or wasting the resources we give them.
Who is bailing out whom? We are the ones
who pay for all of the federal, state, and local spending. If we
allow this recession to justify another massive expansion of government
spending to bail out the problems which unwise federal government
programs played a major role in creating in the first place, then we are
like the last investors in a Ponzi scheme, dreaming of illusory returns
rather than realizing that we are being conned and could lose
everything. |
