Our Blundering, Intrusive Government

Our government wants more control.

Our government is not competent.

These statements, combined, are a disaster for institutional credibility. A government that wants more control must show credibility in its implementation of its goals. A government that is incapable can only regain legitimacy if it limits its authority. We have the worst of both: Incapability to perform its basic functions combined with an ever-increasing intrusion into our daily lives.

After an outage in the Notice to Air Missions systems that were supposed to warn pilots about weather, runway issues or other obstacles, the Federal Aviation Administration forced almost all flights to be grounded in the United States this week. The NOTAM system depends on an outdated computer system that hasn’t been updated in years. Pete Buttigieg is the Transportation Secretary. He is well-known for taking two months paternity leaves and then bragging on national television about it. “There was a systems issue overnight that led to a ground stop because of the way safety information was moving through the system.” The problem was then reported to President Biden. Biden helpfully stated that Buttigieg should address it. “restore the system quickly and safely, and to determine causes.”

Bravo, gentlemen!

The government is in serious trouble with its air traffic control problems. Whether we are talking about the nation’s scattershot but brutal covid lockdown and mandate policies, its utter incapacity to handle a historically unprecedented flood of illegal immigration across our Southern border, railroad strikes barely averted by Congressional force, or the signal inability to recruit members of our military, our government seems to be failing repeatedly at issues that implicate core competency.

Yet, while our government is proving to be utterly incapable of performing its most basic functions effectively, it continues to pursue its goals. We found out this week that the Consumer Product Safety Commission could consider banning gas stoves within the home. This is supposedly due to the danger of childhood asthma. Gas stoves are used in approximately 40 million households across the United States.

When governments promise much but deliver little – and when they seek to control much, but only succeed in controlling the most minute and irritating aspects of daily life – they lose their legitimacy. That is exactly what has happened over the last century in the United States. The growth of the regulatory state means that government now reaches into the nooks and crannies of the lives of its citizens – and yet government cannot actually do the most basic things required of it. Unsurprisingly, citizens distrust government.

Unfortunately, this distrust doesn’t manifest in the widespread calls of citizens to limit government’s size, scope, and intrusion. It is a hue-and-cry to “elect the right people.” This is a category mistake. The problem with our government is not one of staffing, but one of incentives – and all the incentives are on the side of inefficiency, blundering, and encroachment. It is unlikely that this trend will stop until the American people understand that they have two options: competent government or highly involved government. But not both. In a representative republic the problems of government are in the end the problems that the people vote for.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases