Why did Donald Trump win the presidential election? And why was voter turn-out so low?
Disgust with Senator Hillary Clinton? Check. Irritation with DC gridlock? Check. Gender and race bias? Check. General unease about the direction in which the United States is heading? Check.
But the main reason, I believe, is that most of us fear and loath big bureaucracies.
The Tea Party’s primary energy source was the overreaching federal bureaucracy, while Occupy Wall Street focused its wrath on the big banks, military contractors, oil conglomerates, and other large private sector bureaucracies that have become “too big to fail.” Almost every politician and talking head has complained about how the big government and big business bureaucracies are in bed with each other with the lights down low to give birth to offspring that benefit the big people while diminishing the rest of us.
And the Trump campaign did a much better job connecting with this anti-bureaucratic bias.
Conditions on the ground are causing big bureaucracies to worry. Columnists from all over the political spectrum have argued that being agile, setting clear goals, using technology wisely, and learning from mistakes separate effective from ineffective organizations. Technology appears to be moving us away from lumbering organizations where employees march in lockstep towards more agile groups that practice guerrilla warfare, guerrilla marketing, and improvisation.
But change is hard, and the Big Government Big Business Bureaucratic Alliance (BGBBBA) has banded together behind the scenes to write regulations, raise money, develop marketing campaigns, and generally make it more difficult for others to compete. After all, it’s much more fun to make love, not war, while expanding perks and maintaining the status quo.
We need not fall into the BGBBBA trap of allowing our differences on the government’s role on abortion, gay marriage, marijuana, race relations, and other “hot-button” issues to stop us from competing with the “bigger the better” Goliaths. We need to work with our traditional political enemies who agree with us about reducing the influence of the “too-big-too-fail” bureaucracies. Possible areas of common ground include:
* Cutting the corporate income tax while reducing corporate tax breaks and subsidies;
* Developing a system to pare back red tape, especially for small businesses;
* Increasing the minimum wage to reduce government welfare costs.
* Insisting that the criminal justice system focuses on violent crime;
* Requiring large donors of political campaigns to identify themselves, instead of hiding behind made-up nonprofit entities; and
* Setting clear goals on what needs to be accomplished, and giving states more freedom to determine how best to meet them, with incentives in place to reward the most successful states;
Big bureaucracies can be beautiful if they use their size advantage to create something valuable instead of just enriching their friends and shareholders. Small bureaucracies can be ugly if political infighting and poor planning prevent them from using their smallness to their advantage. Big government can be beautiful if it sets high expectations and shares best practices without overly engaging in how things get done.
Davids of the world, unite! A few well-aimed stones can perform miracles.
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