When the government runs your life... and wins

One of the biggest problems of increasingly larger human groups is the governance. We have mentioned before that the neolithic revolution improved the productivity (particularly in terms of food) so much that many farmers would end up with more than they could consume or even store. This, in turned, allowed people of special talents to give up their own farms and focus on their craft, so that they would be fed from the surplus of other farmer through the trade of they manufactured goods. But human societies quickly learned that there were also tangible goods: safety and order were just as important to the survival of the village as was the production of food, and soon there were soldiers (producing safety both against invaders and as police to patrol the streets) and bureaucrats (producing order, which often covered the legislature and the judicature).

Remarkably, both safety and order are largely "invisible", being defined as the absence of dangerous situations. This created the need for what we would call today a "subscription service": the customer pays on a regular basis and the provided promises to attend to their needs. Just imagine what would have happened if the soldiers were only paid in case of attack or riot: they would certainly end up hiring rioters to ensure recurrent situations of unrest that would guarantee a stable income. To some extent we still see this kind of behavior among the bureaucrats, that tend to be more dutiful in their uphold of the laws when the budgets are short (have you heard of the traffic ticket runs?).

Photo: Times Asi

Becoming part of the government has always posed a certain conflict of interests. At least from a formal point of view your decisions shall be based on what is convenient for the people at large, even if it might go against your own personal interest sometimes. The other problem is that, while your survival is reasonably assured as an elected official, you are (at least in most democratic countries these days) expected to opt out of your business interest for the length of your tenure, so for many people being elected ends up meaning losing some money too. In many cases this loss is balanced by the gratitude and renown that the position might lend, possibly help them in their future careers once they have left office.

With the increasing complexity of the governmental structures, the additional obstacle is that town halls and other executive bodies are more and more ran as actual companies, so the leading positions are not held by the people anymore, but instead by highly professionalized managers. This professionalization has two major disadvantages: on the one hand, it produces a very strong disconnection between the rules and the people, since most professional managers live well above the standards of a typical citizen. The other disadvantage, which is liked to the previous one, is that these professional are used to certain level of compensation that many municipalities cannot afford. As a consequence, the most brilliant managers are often lured into the corporate structures, while the government is left to work with those with a true calling for public service and complete the ranks with the leftovers of the corporate selection.

Checking the world history we can see that power tends to stay in the same circles even after the concept of hereditary monarchy is dispelled. Whereas kings used to be life-long, most presidents these day need to be re-elected and might even have a limitation of terms. However, the resources required to set up a successful election campaign are often so large that only the richest and most famous can either invest their money or gather contributions in a sufficiently wide scale. And the support of the parties creates a certain "political oligarchy" that effectively bans anyone from aspiring to the public service if it is not through their electoral structures.

The question in the end is how well the government serves the people, but this is a trick question, because the definition of the people varies a lot from one situation to the next. For instance, 18th century Dominican Republic was a very democratic society... for the few hundreds of landowners, which were supported by a huge mass of slaves, servants and wives that did not have any say in the political life of the country. This meant, of course, that the interests of the landowners were much better served by the government than everybody else's. On the other side of Hispaniola, in Haiti, a bloody revolt by the slaves in 1791 lead to the ousting of the French colonial regime, so even if most former slaves were free people, they lived even worse than they did under the power of the metropolis.

There are sadly many egregious cases of exploitation of the people by their rulers: the examples of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, or Jorge Videla in Argentina are just a few among lot of rules that have failed to server their people. Even the recently instated military junta in Myanmar, or the long-established communist regime of Xi Jinping in China have disputable arguments in their favor as providers of well-being to their citizens. Oppressive regimes have always alleged to have the best interest of their people in sight, but frequently ended up in massive incarcerations, exiles or executions. How can we be so wrong?

This question came to me today as I saw some initial economic balance on the Tokyo Olympics. Is it really in the best interest of Japanese households that these games take place? How about the management of the pandemic? How is it possible that the U.S. Federal Government issues some recommendations that are readily countermanded by some states? It is just logically impossible that both of them are right (even if both of them could be wrong), so who is this possible?

One frequent claim against many democratic governments around the world is that they are mainly focused on being re-elected instead of actually serving the long-term interest of the country. Winning the job feels more as a recognition than as an opportunity, so they devote themselves to enjoy their prize rather than to make a wise use of their chance. Luckily, elections catch up with bad government sooner or later, but let us hope that it does not get too bad before it gets better. Have a nice weekend.