Article 9. False Assumptions and Beliefs Made by Government Leaders

The Most Costly False Assumption Made by Government Leaders

The single most costly false assumption made by government leaders is that Bureaucratic Government Operates Efficiently. Nearly all government leaders seldom give the efficiency of bureaucratic government a second thought or at least they think that nothing can be done about the problem. The fact is that all Bureaucratic organizations are inherently inefficient in management in two areas: being overstaffed, nearly all by 10% but most by 20% or more and by the organizations failure to prevent waste, fraud and corruption.

This assumption is made every time we find related that there is only two ways to reduce budgets either “cut programs or raise taxes”.  This completely leaves out the third alternative of making government more efficient.  This is deeply engrained in our culture nearly all Politian’s and Reporters regularly make this mistake of  a two choice alternative cutting programs or raising taxes.  We hear this all the time repeated on TV.

This false assumption that bureaucracies operate efficiently comes from an even greater lack of understanding of the concept of efficiency and what it means for governments to operate efficiently.

Democrats make this assumption when they defend giant bureaucratic organizations such as Medicaid and Medicare from the recent budget cutting attacks from the Republican House. Democrats feel that there is enough public support for the services of these organizations that the republicans can’t win. Republicans are well aware that services provided cannot be sustained in the future and want to reign in the costs of these programs before doomsday. This kind of confrontational behavior is based on the single false assumption that bureaucratic government operates efficiently and therefore there are only two alternatives cut Medicare or raise taxes. Government Leaders who know about the inefficiency of Bureaucracies seam to be in agreement that nothing can be done about the problem. 

Democrats and Republicans should focus their attention on reforming government bureaucratic organizations using Enterprise Lean to get the highest efficiency possible. The method I propose Right-Sizes the Bureaucratic organization and changes it to a Team Managed organization. This is a major change in the way that these organizations are managed practically eliminating the current fraud and corruption with the help of today’s new computer systems. The benefits of this method is that democrats and the public get to keep the services provided and Republicans get the budget cuts they want and Medicaid and Medicare survive, at least for now and everybody wins except the bureaucrats.

It is clear that the third option of increasing the productivity of government is not well understood. In fact it is not understood at all by most state legislatures and congressmen who continue to pursue cutting programs or raising taxes as the only two options. One of the reasons for not buying into over staffing is that when I say nearly all bureaucracies are over-staffed 10% and most are over-staffed 20% or more they simply don’t believe it.  The reason is this is an average and all politicians are regularly confronted by examples of over-worked government employees while some government employees have almost nothing to do.   

The Biggest Widespread False Belief About Government

The biggest widespread false belief about government is that “what it does” is somehow different from 
“what normal business does”.   For every function found in government you can find something similar in business even voting.  But yet government appears to be fundamentally different from business.  This is because the political trappings of bureaucracy has created this mystique.  This belief is widespread in our culture.  I recall the famous quip by an astronaut who had just finished his day of training “That’s good enough for government work”.
  
If you can accept that this as true -there really is no difference between what government does and what business does -then you can begin to understand the mystique of bureaucracy.   Bureaucracy has brainwashed us all into thinking that if there is no profit motive then there is no reason to be concerned about the bottom line.  This has left us with the sad fact that it is nearly impossible to fire a government employee.  And as for laying off a government employee if there is no work to do it is totally out of the question.  This is one of the basic reasons that Bureaucracies are over staffed by 10% while most are 20% or more overstaffed.  This means that your taxes are most likely 20% higher than they should be.