Subject: Perennial Conundrum
Date: Thu, Aug 14, 2014
Msg: 101082
> Hi Rick - > > "So you want a structure of government where the structure itself forces those in charge to make wise decisions" > > Um. Not quite. > > Political self-righteousness cannot be overcome from within government. It needs to be overcome from within civil society. > > Civil society can shape politics. > Then politics - thru the laws passed by elected leaders - shapes government. > Then government regulates within the laws created by elected politicians. > > The hardest work occurs upstream, well before we get to "government." > > And it isn't just prioritizing work. It's design-based work. It's optimizing work. > > To me, cap and prioritize is a form of engineering. It can have value when it is utilized within a wisely designed architectural setting. But the harder work, the work of getting the architecture right, cannot be reduced to a matter of engineering. One could not have created the U.S. Constitution with cap-and-prioritize, and many of today's key issues also involve architectural choices of similar complexity. > > Civil society is the best place for us to engage that sort of dynamic complexity. If we can overcome some of the pressures of self-righteousness, we can make better progress as a nation on the essential architectural issues of our time. > > Best, > > Steve Johnson
Steven Howard Johnson - Civic Futurist 410-562-0361 Book in Progress: Thoughtful Patriotism
>> So you want a structure of government where the structure itself forces those in charge to make wise decisions. >> >> Why isn't cap-and-prioritize the structure you are looking for? >> >> The cap guarantees fiscal sustainability (just like the cap in cap-and-trade guarantees environmental sustainability) and the transparency of prioritized budgets forces what's left of government spending to allocated wisely (just like the trade in cap-and-trade enables society to wisely allocate what resources are left under the cap). >> >> - Rick Raddatz http://IncentiveReform.org
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