Why is it that governments (or large organizations) rarely do anything intelligent?

This is a strategic exercise in understanding how large groups of people operate.

TLDR: You try getting a large group of people to agree on anything while trying to figure out how to pay for it while keeping them all out of trouble. If you can get three strangers to agree on Pizza toppings I’ll be impressed.

Basically, the government is spending most of its time simply trying to prevent things from getting worse. Ask any parent and they can explain in detail.

One important point is trying being a tightrope walker – you have to really stay balanced in every decision or you risk going too far to the left or right and fall.

How to explain the absurd complexity of governing a country?

  • First, you have to read Plato’s Republic – 3 failing of Humans:
    • Humans are greedy
    • Humans make mistakes (are incompetent)
    • Humans abuse power

This is why most modern governments are built on a system of checks and balances. You have to spread out the power, greed, and mistakes in a balanced fashion that allows the greed of one group to balance out the abuse of power of another group that corrects the mistakes of a third group that is also limiting the greed of the first group.

You have to build the systems of government to be stable and effective in light of the fact that the majority of the people running the government are human – the will experience greed, make mistakes, and abuse their power.

Then keep in mind that the human citizens are greedy, incompetent, and abuse power. Regardless of the form of government, you still have a bunch of greedy, incompetent, power abusers trying to maintain power, maintain order, and keep the whole thing going while trying to deal with millions of greedy, incompetent, and power abusing citizens.

That’s basically why there are over a dozen civil wars going on at any given time.

If you live in a place with no civil war, no soldiers on the streets, and no obvious corruption, where you can trust the law enforcement and leave your home without fearing for your safety – you are in the minority of the human population.

Creating law and order is crazy hard, and requires basically everybody to cooperate at some level. Which is why the brute force/iron fist approach is so popular – it’s simple and crudely effective, very easy to understand.

But if you want things like freedom, liberty, independence, not having people with control issues telling you how to live your life –

  • Have you ever gotten 3 people to agree on Pizza Toppings? How about 3 million, or 3o million, or 300 million?
  • Did you understand your high school chemistry teacher? Do you understand that everything you forgot from school is actually relevant to how the world works and needs to be understood to effectively run an industrialized 21st century nation?
  • Why do intelligent people hide their intelligence?
  • Would you rather be a billionaire with vacations and privacy, or a Politician with zero privacy and spend most of your time asking people for money or apologizing for things you can’t control.
  • Politicians use the term “true facts” because they deal with statistics, lawyers, and biased presentation of information. They cannot tell the difference between scientific fact and well-argued lies. Nobody can be an expert at everything.
  • Based on GDP – the United States controls 25% of the world’s wealth, with only 4% of if population.  We are the richest nation on earth by most measurements and the US still have problems with poverty and hunger.
    • There is more demand than supply. More people than resources. Even in the magical 21st century where there is enough food for everyone, we can’t figure out how to feed the hungry, and we throw away lots of food, much after it spoils.
    • How do you deal with the simple fact that there is a scarcity of resources? More people than stuff to take care of them.
    • How do you decide who gets wealth and who doesn’t when there simply is not enough to go around?
  • Then keep in mind at any given time a portion of the population is actively engaged in criminal activity, some out of aggression, some out of desperate need – how do you deal with that? More resources you don’t have spent on people you don’t have the resources to properly help, but you have to protect the common good.

Think about how many mistakes the average person makes in a given day.

Do you get 8 hours of sleep, drink 8 glasses of water a day, eat 7 servings of fruits and vegetables, eat meat, whole grains every day? Do you never eat sugar, preservatives, or any unhealthy foods? Can you drink only one drink of alcohol per day? Do you ever speed? Are you ever late for anything? Do you procrastinate? Do you have more things to do than time to do it? Do you watch TV instead of reading a book or doing chores? Do you get exercise every day? Do you pay all your bills on time? Do you have credit card debt spent on things sitting rarely used in your home or garage? When was the last time you were tired / hungry / in pain and said something stupid that turned into an argument? When was the last time you brushed your teeth? Flossed? When was the last time you had 2 bills and only enough money to pay for one of them?

At it most basic form – a government is a delegation of responsibility to a small portion of a larger group of people trusted to maintain stability and the common good. If you consider that everyone is making a few hundred mistakes per day, and add that up for any number of people in a group; honestly I’m surprised that we do as well as we do.

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