A Proposal for an Almost Anarchist Small Government

I've listened to enough of the Democratic and Republican conventions to make me wonder if we'd be better off in a near-anarchist, truly small government.

So as a thought experiment, here are some of my ideas on what a minimalist government would look like. Some of this is adapted from my new book, What's the Big Idea? 39 disruptive ideas for a better America. 

Retain public schools but eliminate all district, county, state, and federal education bureaucracies and rules. Give teachers freedom to teach what they're passionate about and what they think their kids need to and want to learn. I would emphasize education for citizenship: ethics, empathizing with others, communication skills, and encouraging a cosmic obligation to care about people other than yourself.

Eliminate preventive policing--e.g., cops patrolling the streets. To deter crime significantly, you'd need five cops on every block, roaming through buildings, regularly invading privacy. Feasible-level preventive policing doesn't work well enough to justify the cost to the taxpayer. I would retain a streamlined police force to apprehend criminals.

Cut the defense budget by 80-90%. I'd guess that the additional safety that accrues beyond the most beneficial 10-20% is too small to justify taking all that money from the taxpayer.

Retain government's role in commandeering the building and maintaining of the infrastructure.

Eliminate government "investment" in energy and other technologies. If all companies, with all their brilliant scientists and bean counters, have all rejected a technology, it is too unlikely to be worth taxpayer money, even in the long-term. Examples: ethanol, a nationwide network of electric car plug-in stations, bus lines that traverse empty. In Napa, taxpayer money was used to create gorgeous trolleys that ran for years from Napa's periphery to the downtown. They were always empty, a moving monument to the absurdity of so much of government's spending of our money.

Eliminate all social programs that haven't demonstrated even marginal cost-benefit. Those include such media and liberal darlings as Head Start, job retraining, and even extending unemployment checks. (That results in so many people saying, "Good. Now I don't have to look for work for another 26 weeks.) Similarly, every time government increases financial aid, colleges think, "Good. Now we can raise tuition more."

Reevaluate well-intentioned but side-effect-ridden government programs. Few could argue with the intent of affirmative action. Yet the result has too often been to move merit to a back seat. That causes enormous damage to America. Increasing home ownership is a reasonable goal but government policies to encourage that triggered the financial meltdown. Banks were pressured to give loans to people who couldn't afford to buy a home and so created Stated Qualifications loans, the so-called "liar loans." It's no surprise that many of the borrowers defaulted.

I believe government should not restrict gay marriage nor a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. I'm ambivalent about legalizing marijuana--Its use would increase, which would take a devastating toll on motivation and memory, and increase traffic accidents. For the same reason, I am ambivalent about alcohol being legal. Of course, prohibition would result in a black market but I'd guess that the horrific societal effects of alcohol abuse would be significantly reduced.

Allow the right to die. It's crazy that millions of dying people must live their final weeks in agonizing (and expensive) pain because the government says they can't ask a doctor to painlessly end their irreversible misery.

My intuition says that those proposals would lead to a better America. But no one could assert that with confidence...except for a politician.

What do you think?

The Stump Speech I'd Give if I Were Running for President

I'm not delusional enough to run for president, but drafting what would be my stump speech helps me refine and articulate my ideas on how to improve America. HERE is the text of that speech.

HERE is the link to my delivering that speech on my NPR-San Francisco radio show. Scroll down to the 05/08 show, labeled "stump speech." The speech is the first 20 minutes. Then I invited callers, the first one was supportive, then some assaults, and last, a good question.

We ARE All Socialists Now....Whether We Like it or Not

The government lets us keep no more than 25 cents of every dollar we earn.

Lest you think I exaggerate, consider this list of what you're forced to give to the government:

Federal income tax

State income tax

Local income tax

Social security tax

Capital gains tax

Medicare tax

Disability tax

Corporate tax (passed on to you in the form of higher prices)

Tariffs on foreign goods (passed on to you in higher prices)

Sales tax

Property tax

Local business tax (Where I live, in Oakland, California, I must pay $3.60 for every thousand dollars of GROSS income.)

Utility taxes (phone, gas/electric, garbage, water)

User fees, for example, public college tuition, mass transit fares, park entrance fee

Excise taxes (for example, on tires, alcohol, cigarettes, soft drinks, blank recording media, even vending machines)

Car rental taxes

Hotel occupancy tax

Parking lot usage tax

Gasoline taxes

Bridge, tunnel, and road-use tolls

Passport fee

Airplane ticket taxes

Car registration fee

License fees (from profession to your pet, from a hunting/fishing license to a license to run a radio station)

Gas guzzler tax

Parking meters

Real estate conveyance taxes (when you buy or sell, in addition to the aforementioned capital gains tax.)

Driving citations: The fees for parking and moving violations have become usurious: Where I live, $45 for a parking ticket, $250 for not coming to a full stop at a stop sign, and dare you get caught driving under the influence: $6,000 is the average cost.

Other citations: I got a $250 ticket for having my dog off-leash in an empty park!

Beverage container "deposit" (5 or 10 cents per bottle and can in most states--and who bothers to return them to reclaim the deposit?)

Additional taxes. For example, where I live, there are additional taxes for libraries, mosquito abatement, schools, ambulances, etc. Should not these basics already have been covered by the myriad other taxes we pay?

And, when you die, managing to still have some bucks, there's estate tax.

I’m sure we pay other taxes I’m unaware of or can't think of.

And President Obama wants even more of our money. He’s already pledged to increase taxes on the wealthy and he wants yet more from everyone. For example, he wants to increase the number of toll roads and his carbon tax (pleasantly called "Cap and Trade") will increase the cost of anything that contains carbon, which is practically everything: for example, plastics, gasoline, even skin cream.

Most neutral observers insist that Obama’s mammoth deficit budget and projections for yet more bailouts and “stimulus” spending will force further tax increases, including to the middle class.

By one estimate, President Obama's current budget will cost the average taxpayer $25,573.48 in federal income tax alone.

In addition, as the New York Times reported today, the Obama administration is printing money "at the fastest rate in its (the Feds') history" to, today alone, "pull vast sums of money ($1 trillion) out of thin air." This deflates the value of every dollar we manage to have saved.

Do you feel you receive fair value for giving the government 3/4 of what you earn? Do you believe the nation as a whole derives fair value or do you suspect that large gobs of your money go to bureaucratic waste and pork-barrel spending that few taxpayers would support if given a choice?

To help you answer that question, let me tell you about the one little corner of government spending I'm familiar with because my wife is a superintendent of schools: the education bureaucracy. Enormous sums of our tax dollars are spent every year devising, implementing, monitoring, and often litigating regulations: “No, Regulation 43.77659 B in Section 654.37D in the California Ed. Code states that the county should get the money." "No, Federal ruling 25.7736b says the district, not the county should get the money.” Only pennies on your dollar go to actually helping kids learn. You'll be amazed to see how absurdly labyrinthine even one set of rules governing one little pot of money is. Here, for example, are the rules governing just one portion of the additional tax dollars Obama is giving to state education departments.

So here’s a thought experiment: All government is hereby dismantled and all tax and fee dollars are returned to the taxpayers. Tens of thousands of dollars would be returned to the average family each year, which adds up to over a million dollars(!) over their lifetime. Thus, individuals could spend and save that fortune as they saw fit.

Companies would thus sprout up to provide services the public would be willing to pay for: roads, mass transit between highly-traveled places. The public would likely be willing to give the government some carefully monitored money to provide national defense and law enforcement and probably a safety net for people truly unable to support themselves on their own or through private charities. Schools, like most services currently provided by the government, would likely be private--no massive bureaucracy, which means most dollars would go directly to the classroom. Social Security probably wouldn't exist--a recent survey found that, if given a choice, half of people would opt out and simply rely on themselves to save money in a better investment vehicle than Social Security. (which is not hard to find.)

So imagine an America in which we got to keep 90% of what we earned rather than 25% and in which we had more choice in what services would be publicly or privately provided. Do you believe America would be better or worse than the America Obama is creating?