Consider this statement: Governments are effective and responsible problem-solving mechanisms. The statement is also known as the Government Efficacy proposition.
Many people implicitly make such an assumption when they call for government action. In some limited cases the above statement may well be correct. However, in the vast majority of cases it is incorrect. How so? One has a myriad of historical examples showing an abysmal track record of government action. Which points to government as an ineffective and irresponsible problem-solving mechanism.
Examining the statement "Governments are effective and responsible problem-solving mechanisms", one needs to examine the proposition closer:
(1) the statement makes "government" an action character. But government is an abstract concept. Abstractions can not think, decide nor initiate action. Only people can think, decide and initiate action,
(2) the concept "government" and its thinking and deciding is more succinctly: Politicos through the mechanism of government. Only people can think and decide and those people are politicos as government is directed by politicos,
(3) the initiation of action is the mechanism of government. Once again only people can initiate the action decided upon by politicos. Those people are known as the bureaucracy of government.
Changing perspective, who desperately wants one to believe the statement "governments are effective and responsible problem-solving mechanisms"? Answer: Those warm and fuzzy, supposed non-self-interested, dispensers of the really fuzzy concept of "the public good"....the politico class. The assumption that politicos would like one to make is: Politicos, thinking and deciding, should in fact think and decide on your behalf because they are effective and responsible problem-solvers.
Further, the bureaucracy of government, the "mechanism", also wants you to believe they are dispensing the public good. That their mission, no matter how anti-individual rights that mission might be, is merely the dispensing of "the public good". Hence if they trample individuals it is perfectly OK as they are on the righteous path of "the public good" as defined by those warm and fuzzy, supposed non-self-interested, dispensers of the really fuzzy concept of "the public good"....the politico class.
In the main, by examining results rather than intentions, we find: Autocratic/technocratic tendencies, based upon massive self-interest, dispensing political self-interest resulting in an ineffective and irresponsible problem-solving mechanism known as bureaucracy.
Which leads one to Unicorn-governance. Huh? If one favors the concept of governments are effective and responsible problem-solving mechanisms, “then one imagines a State different from the one possible in the physical world“. One imagines the Unicorn. (1)
(1) Unicorn Governance, Mike Munger, The Freeman, 08/11/2014
http://www.fee.org/the_
