Our Not-so-incompetent Government

There are three primary takeaways here:

The government that we elect is not as incompetent as we are led to believe
Corporate ingenuity is not as great as we are led to believe and much of their wealth is due to government help and taxpayer dollars
As taxpayers, we get little thanks for our research dollars but we do get totally screwed, in fact, our taxes have actually increased economic inequality

Our government is inefficient, incompetent, overbearing, over-regulating, over-sized, over-priced, and holding back American businesses and Americans. We hear this constantly. We hear it all over conservative media, we hear it on liberal media, we hear it from corporate-funded think tanks, we hear it from our co-workers, and we hear it from our drunk uncles on the back porch. We, our friends, our families, and our coworkers all say it almost as if we think it is our patriotic duty. Somehow we have learned to despise the greatest Democracy on the planet – we were taught to see it as some big lummox that is in the way of progress and corporate ingenuity. As usual, there is a lot more to the story than what you hear on the news or on the back porch.

Corporations have some big advantages when it comes to their appearance of superiority over the government. They can keep most of their dirt and incompetencies quiet while our Government has to deal with the news media that is camped out in government offices sniffing around and waiting to pounce on anything negative and rarely pointing out the positive. Corporations can focus solely on making money while our government has an astounding range of responsibilities from keeping everyone safe to keeping the country moving forward. At the same time, our government has to deal with lobbyists, bought politicians, and infiltrated agencies all pulling the government in countless directions, most of which are not helpful to us.

What if corporate America had to deal with the media camping out in the hallways or in the boardroom? Imagine if all the senior managers and worker bees were being paid by the competition for a favor that was against the interest of their company. Would corporate America be so “successful”? On top of all of that, corporations can spend as much time, money, and effort as needed to tell us all how bad our government is, but our government can’t say a bad word about Corporate America (unless it is harming us). The truth is that there are plenty of examples of large commercial organizations that can’t get out of their own way (and they are nowhere near as big as the US Government).

Reality Check

In reality, our government and corporations rely on each other heavily and this has played a big part in making corporate America successful – corporate America hardly became successful on its own. Now don’t go rolling your eyes on this; remember that you have been preconditioned (mostly by corporate propaganda) to think just the opposite. Certainly, our government gets in the way of some corporate “progress” by creating regulations that keep corporate America from polluting, poisoning, and stealing – but imagine a world where corporate America could do whatever it wanted. Our Government doesn’t prevent companies and industries from being successful, but through laws and regulations, it does try to keep them from making a profit at the expense of our health and prosperity and that of the planet.

There are some fundamental reasons why our government can and should drive the success of industry by providing them with some of the most significant research and technology development in this country – let’s take a look at a few of those reasons:

Our government can take greater risks – they don’t need to worry about burning a hole in the budget as a business does. Our government has the resources to tackle issues that businesses can’t without taking the risk of going belly-up. The last thing venture capitalists (private entities that invest in companies and ideas) like to do is take risks, but they are more than happy to swoop in and invest in companies that are using government-developed and government-proven technology.
Our government can spread out the research and development – they aren’t concerned with maintaining “proprietary information” or hiding their work from the competition. In fact, they often pull in contributors from multiple colleges and various businesses to get the job done (and to purposefully spread the knowledge of the underlying research – which can spawn additional areas of research). They also connect companies with investors and agencies that can help expedite research, development, and deployment. All of this leads to the actual creation and sharing of new knowledge that can be used by others.
Our government can also spread out the timeline – If it takes longer to get something right, then it takes longer. There is less pressure to get something out the door fast, and more importantly, there is less pressure to shelve something important if its development is not going as planned.
Our government can help dole out the results – corporate America is better at getting things to market and into the hands of people, but even here, corporations and industries often depend on the government to assist with production, teaming, and opening markets for new technologies. This includes assisting in opening up global markets for companies by interacting with other governments on their behalf.
Our government looks well into the future and considers what will give us a stronger, more vibrant economy – it does not need to worry about showing ever-increasing profits every quarter to keep Wall Street happy. On the flip side, our government certainly keeps Wall Street happy by giving corporations all that free technology and research.

Without the investments of your tax dollars over the years, we would be in sad shape as a nation and corporate America would have much less to brag about. Taxpayers have provided many freebies for corporate America over the years, but have gotten little in return for their generosity. Here is a quick look at some government innovations and handouts that have created incredible wealth for much of corporate America and a handful of individuals.

The Smartphone

The list of government-funded technology in our smartphones is long and it is reflective of the government thinking forward, doing the work, and sharing the new knowledge and technology. It also exposes the other side of the coin where companies take the tech and run. Anyway, here are your contributions to the iPhone…

The government didn’t invent the smartphone but they provided the majority of the technologies that made it much more than a phone. Without your taxpayer dollars, smartphones don’t exist. Maybe Apple is better at integrating and improving existing technology and not quite as good at innovating new technology. One thing that Apple has done exceptionally well however is to exploit democracy – they took all the work and ideas that we paid for and shipped the jobs overseas and they continue to take advantage of every “wealth-inspired” law they can to avoid paying taxes – and they are hardly the only ones. Those who could afford to own stocks did quite well over the years of course, but they aren’t the real investors in Apple. The real investors, those that funded all the high-risk, up-front research through their tax dollars, were everyday average Americans – but as usual, everyday average Americans got kicked in the nuts. The smartphone also greatly helps Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and many other firms by giving them instant and continuous access to their customers/zombies.

Apple isn’t the only high-tech company that has ridden Uncle Sam’s coattails. There are plenty of companies and entire industries that have benefited directly from government research, investments, and funding – though it is rare that they admit it (or in some cases, even realize it).

Our government has developed and continues to work on technologies in aviation, nuclear energy, the internet, drugs and biotechnology, disease control, green energy, nanotechnology, battery technology, space travel, high-performance computing, and even dark matter (wtf is dark matter?). Industries have also benefited from decades of defense spending. Our government has vastly improved entire segments of our society including communications, airline safety, health, and our infrastructure. Baked into all of this work is a focus on our safety and our future, not on how much money can be made and how quickly it can be made.

The full list of government-funded initiatives is much longer and the list of companies that have benefited from, or even have come into existence because of, this work is even longer. Just think of all the businesses, both large and small, that exist because of the internet. Unfortunately, the larger of these companies do little to show their appreciation to taxpayers. They are quick to use their free money to lobby our government in order to decrease their taxes, throw away employee protections, keep the minimum wage down, and allow the continued hiding of their profits in offshore tax havens. Industries get the gifts and we are left behind. Not only is this a direct slap in the face to their employees and the Americans that have funded corporate success, but also reduces the flow of money in the country, further decreases tax revenues, and slows the economy.

We have no idea of the scope of what our government does for us every single day.

With increased corruption, companies can now more easily use the government to protect themselves by blocking government efforts to advance competitive technologies. For example, green energy development has met with considerable resistance resulting in many countries advancing well ahead of us. So instead of creating whole new industries, jobs, and products that we could export to a world that is desperate to halt climate change, we will watch as other countries take the lead and we end up buying from them. This corruption-fueled government waffling on green energy makes companies and venture capitalists less willing to take risks with their own money.

This story gets worse. Even though our country now has vast areas of knowledge to build on, more money than ever before, insane computing power, and the increased ability to collaborate, research in America is actually on the decline. Part of that reason is that businesses are spending much less on R&D and closing some of the biggest, long-standing research labs in the country. More and more often they are simply relying on our government and our tax dollars to do the work for them. Most of corporate America is not interested in creating anything or contributing to society, they are only interested in maximizing profit with as little effort as possible. This trend of declining private research is weakening our economy and our society – it is also weakening our world standing and our national defense (compared to advances in some countries). Along the same line, when employers decide to move manufacturing jobs overseas we suffer the double whammy of losing jobs and future manufacturing know-how.

We never hear of the successes of government-led R&D until corporate America sneaks off with the results and takes all the credit. But when a research project doesn’t go well or goes over budget then we can be sure that conservative media will jump up and down and breathe fire as they rage about our government wasting our taxpayer dollars (all while they are using technology funded by taxpayer dollars to spread their rage).

The lesson in all of this is that our government is actually quite competent. We don’t even see that we have been spoiled by everything that our government has enabled for us over time. We have no idea of the scope of what our government does for us every single day. Our negative view of our own government is formed mostly by agenda-driven politicians, political operatives, and pundits. This view is often confirmed by the corruption-driven policies that come out of Washington, but behind the scenes and throughout our government are hard-working individuals that keep this country ticking in ways we could never even imagine.

None of this is to say that businesses are incompetent – this is just about recalibrating the conversation. All the chatter about government being in the way of corporate America is just plain wrong. There should be a healthy relationship where businesses and the marketplace benefits from the government while our government benefits from businesses creating jobs, paying taxes, and expanding marketplaces all of which add to a stronger economy and society. Unfortunately, the second half of that deal is not happening at all. Unfortunately, as is always the case with our new tilted playing field, the risks are socialized (taxpayers take all the risk) while the rewards are privatized (corporate America and the wealthy take all the profits). Corporate America relies heavily on our government every day and they know it, they just don’t want you to know it. They just want you to help them to get more tax breaks and more subsidies to pad their bottom line, and fewer regulations so they are “free” to do whatever the hell they want.

Corporations should have a role in our society but they shouldn’t control it. Our society, our government, and businesses are supposed to work together to create a functional and fair democratic society and capitalist economy that works toward the benefit of all. It’s ok to be driven by profit, but as part of society you need to follow the rules that are established by that society and you have to contribute back to society. Corporate America should consider themselves lucky that they are even part of this discussion at all since there was no such thing as a “corporation” in America when the constitution was written.

Unfortunately, and with many thanks to the corrupted John Roberts Supreme Court, dark money, and conservative political organizations, corporate America has been allowed to use their vast wealth to infiltrate and take the reins of just about everything in our government – always tilting the playing field more in their favor. Just as important, they use (or buy) media to drive home the message that our government is overbearing, in the way of business, and making all of us worse off. They do this so we don’t mind them paying little or no taxes and so that we are happy to have them dismantle our government, remove our protections, and take over its services for their profit.

The simple fact is that without our innovative government, companies would do the bare minimum in order to keep their money flowing in and put forth little effort to advance the country as a whole. There would be minimal risk-taking, zero sharing of information, little expansion of markets, and lots of exploitation of consumers and our natural resources. The American economy would be in the dumpster without the active involvement of our government. Corporations would not be so successful and their wealthy investors would not be billionaires without exploiting all the benefits they get from our tax dollars. This coexistence was working wonders just a few decades ago, but the drive of corporate America to exploit us, take and keep everything for themselves, and control our government, has mangled the system so badly that now the taxes that most of us dutifully pay are actually creating the economic inequality that we are suffering through.

What's happening to our democracy, who's doing it, and how we stop it.

Is Our Government Incompetent?

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