Taking Care of Business, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

January 8, 2011 Martha Thomases 10 Comments

With the new calendar year comes new terms in political office all around the country.  And, since the Republicans picked up more wins this round, many are talking about running the government ‘”like a business.”

What does this mean?

The purpose of a business is to create a product or service and sell it for a profit.  The purpose of a government is to provide for the welfare of its people, including a secure environment conducive to the running of businesses.  It’s possible that the skills necessary to do the former can adapt to the purposes of the latter, but it’s not a sure thing.

Want an example?  Let’s consider what happened in the Northeast last month,  There was a tremendous snowfall.  Combined with hurricane-level winds in excess of 60 miles an hour, and you have a mess under any circumstances.  In this case, add in the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, when many people like to take vacations with their families, and it’s a disaster.

Most people would agree, I think, that one function of a workable government in a situation like this is to make sure that the streets are cleared of snow.  This not only helps the community (kids can get to school, sick people can get to the hospital in an emergency), but also helps business, because workers can get to work and customers can buy products.  This is work that must be done.

However, in many cases, it wasn’t.

New York City tends to panic when it snows, and I think this is because we have relatively little, especially compared to the areas  immediately surrounding us.  The  warm currents from the ocean keep the city just enough warmer that most snow hits to the north and to the west.  The last few years have been especially mild.  If I were running a business, and looking for places to cut costs (and therefore increase profits), I’d want to slash my snow-removal budget.

And then, this would happen.

Our mayor, a successful businessman, also just decided that business expertise is among the skills needed for the school system.  Our new chancellor has no experience in education.  She managed large companies, sold ads, and made profits. Good things, but not the same as turning children into educated, employable adult  citizens.

At its worst, running  government like a business unites the worst aspects of both worlds.  The newly elected governor of Florida wants to guide his state in that direction, and his business seems to have been ripping off Medicare.

And, really, do you want your elected officials to act like this?  There was no way to turn a profit when cleaning up the Gulf.

It’s not my intention here to say that business is always bad and government is always good.  My father was a very successful real estate developer (who just told my son that he wasn’t very good at evaluating resumes because “we only hired relatives, which I’m willing to bet is a way that no one wants government to work).

And sometimes, the two work well together, much better than either would do alone.

Fewer slogans and more actual thinking would make this next election cycle a lot more enjoyable.  And the results would be a lot more effective.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, thanks everyone for their concern and good wishes for her father.