Entrepreneur or fool?

Entrepreneurs: I just left an "idea" on the website of the California entrepreneur who wanted to split California into six states. My "idea" was to consolidate local school districts;not exactly a new idea breakthrough.

What bothers me about these "thinkers" is most of them are engineers by training. Now, some of my best friends are engineers, but they make rotten governors. 

Public Administration is actually a skill set. In our democracy it is one that is constantly criticized by businessmen and women who , because they can run a business, think they can govern. 

I am always reminded of the most spectaculor failure of an engineer trying to govern: Herbert Hoover.

Hoover was a man of business, who trainwrecked the American government.

Now to be fair, Hoover was a product of his time. In 1930 government had a minimal role to play in the economy. Free enterprise was nearly completely unregulated, and had put the country in the ditch for years.

The Great Depression taught the country that government regulation of the economy and bureaucracies were not bad.

Today we hear calls  to eliminate these same regulations as "bloated" and ineffective. That may be true that  some that are outdated, but the basic truth that government requires, well, laws, regulations and GOVERNMENT.  

And the free thinker , who is collecting ideas, as if they haven't been been made countless times before, is almost ludicrous.  It is like only business technology billionaires can come up with ideas to reform government.  You are talking fish out of water here.  They don't have a clue!

Over 300 million people live in the United States. The vast majority of the population live in highly complex urban environments. How on earth can we govern this with the minimalist approach of conservatives is beyond me?  

What we get with small government is ALWAYS poor government, poverty and ultimately, violence.

The Marshall Plan is given credit for saving Europe from Communist take over after WWII.  The reason it worked is Marshall recruited local government experts to rebuild war torn countries and public bureaucrats who knew how to make cities work.  And he got them cheap, many still had enlistments and were in the service, or extended to do the work for a few year; and Europe rebounded faster than anyone imagined.

Credit American City Managers, sewage experts, firemen, police; etc., all those mundane bureacrats that conservatives criticize every day.  

President George W. Bush imagined Iraq as a new conservative Marshall Plan.  He promised that a conservative approach, with privatization not public administration would rebuild Iraq cheaper and better, calling his efforts a new "Marshall Plan" for Iraq.  

Nobody calls it that anymore.  Bush's efforts were wrong headed and a disaster.   Water systems STILL don't work, billions of dollars were basically ripped off by private contractors and nothing works.  This led to a rebirth of opposition to American efforts for reform, sectarian violence, and a train wreck.

Why, well go back to 1930 and Hoover, and you find the same thing.  Anti-government politicians make rotten governors.  

Now , we have made the horrible mistake of allowing big money and corporations to buy what government we have, rendering state and local governments ineffective and actually aiding the huge gap between the rich and the poor.

We need government with a new reform movement, not to get rid of government, but get private enterprise whores out of it. Otherwise, we can brainstorm all we want, it won't work!  It has never worked before, witness Hoover and lately Bush.  

There is a saying, "The People get the government they deserve".