Atlas Did Not Shrug

Economic theory, a varied and confused mass, where few have certain answers and fewer still can make accurate predictions. Beyond the basics of Keynesian or classical theory, there is little that truly resembles the real world simply because the situation is far too complex. But what of the discussion of the power of a single individual? How much does one man matter?

Individualism, with one of the most extreme forms in Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy, accentuates the power of a single person to make for herself based on her own will power and skill. For Ayn Rand, it became a concept where a few people truly ran society and caused it to progress. In her novel Atlas Shrugged, an oil magnate disappears overnight and an oil well immediately spews its black gold and fire high into the sky. But in fact, such an ideology is ironically an argument against itself. If only a few people could truly achieve then it would make the argument for collectivism all the stronger; place these few people in charge of everyone and run society in a socialist dictatorship.

Beyond this, the general American mood on the issue is likely more accurately portrayed by the nebulous concept of the American Dream; any person can achieve to be the wealthiest most powerful man on Earth but at any given point in time, only one person holds the position. Therefore, by definition, the vast majority of people are in lesser positions. This culture reveres the successful businessman but the adoration of financial acumen intrudes upon society an unhealthy focus on a single aspect of skill. Why else, in contrast to Atlas Shrugged, does a corporation not immediately implode upon itself should its founder disappear? Whereas, in Atlas Shrugged an oil magnate disappears and the oil wells immediately breakdown into ill use, in the real American world, the workers would still continue their duties with someone taking up the mantle of leadership in due time. In fact, the larger the corporation, the less likely the loss of leadership would greatly affect it. Individualism succeeds because, in the real world, the vast majority of people are naturally motivated to work and only this complete skill set does it allow for success. A factory succeeds because a scientist discovered the theory that allowed the engineer to design it. It succeeds because the technicians, skilled labour and menial workers toil in its machinery. It succeeds because the leadership holds to a vision and its management efficiently handles morale and work distribution. Thus, the best addition to the economy is the holistic view of organizations to better understand them.

In the corporate world of today, marketing and sales construe the vast majority of personnel at any given organization. Beyond small businesses, additional workers are mostly non-producing individuals. These are administrative positions, advertising positions, sales positions and so on. When the vast majority of your workforce produces nothing but corporate propaganda and media advertisements, in the false cry of capitalism, it creates a sense that society can achieve much more if these workers had instead produced something tangible, even ideas or simply better products. The engineers, the menial workers, the general staff is largely unaffected by the upper echelons of management beyond the fourth or fifth level. Sales are predicted by the success of advertisements and not product quality. Maple Leaf foods can be responsible for the worst number of deaths due to food poisoning in recent history but still maintain its dominant market position without any adverse affect simply because it handled the public relations issue well. It matters little if the food is any safer. Small businesses are made up mostly of the individuals who produce the product and only a minority perform the business and marketing. If the economy were made up solely of small businesses, efficiency would rise, in terms of workers producing products but one does lose the economies of scale afforded by large corporations. Poorly run businesses with little market share and no power over price would immediately fail but corporations can outlast turmoil by brand recognition. Still, it is hard to predict the actual effect of small business capitalism.

When we see society, especially after the subprime mortgage crisis precipitated by short sighted lenders, dominated by the same individuals who decade after decade cause economic upheaval but government unable to form legislation to combat the waste then we see democracy undermined by financial interests. The corporate entity becomes inefficient because, depending on the industry, once it grows beyond a number of individuals, the extra individuals no longer actually produce tangible products. Thus, for large corporations, they do not obtain money from a superior product but rather from superior market share. Any single person has not the time or patience to sift through the possible products and thus most make a choice on either price or brand; brand if there is something recognizable, price otherwise. This results in a society where government is unable to purchase open source software because it has no one liable for a lawsuit should some component fail to run correctly. It results in people paying for over priced goods because they are unwilling to trust unknown companies. In this world, you never obtain the market price. Corporations become the same entity with all the wastes we blame on government; inefficient bureaucracy, incompetent leadership, money squandered to a few individuals, mass nepotism. No longer true is the argument that corporations fail if inefficient, such only occurs at the small scale but the adage "You're too big to fail" can be seen with only a quick glance to the American bailout packages for banks and lenders (whereas individual people who similarly suffered during the economic crisis obtained nothing, as if to accentuate the point that if you are small you receive no assistance whatsoever).

So, do we have a society where only a few truly run it, or do we not? Perhaps one can take a peek at statistics.

From http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/famil105g-eng.htm
Ontario population in 2006: 12,160,282
Welfare recipients: 391 800
Above 250k Income: 67,020

So, if we unrealistically presume all individuals above 250k are inheritance bums and all individuals on welfare are also welfare bums then 3.8% of the population consists of complete moochers. This gives us a certain idea of the number of non-contributors to the economy. It also gives us an idea of how few people can actually be moochers in a society with a good economy and stable government. Should the number of economic non-contributors actually rise to 3.8%, it is likely the effects would be readily apparent and beyond this number would seem like an anarchist state in constant conflict and misery.

From http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/famil108a-eng.htm
Above 35k income: 3,737,310
Median Total Income Per Family: 66,600 CAD

This gives us a rough idea that most people are in the middle class, a situation that is most desirable for society.

As individuals come and go, any number of people can take their place in society and continue on. The idea that a single man can be a focal point is not only inaccurate but a dangerous idea to behold. Uplifting single individuals above that of others leads to worship of dictatorial situations, where the collective gives up its right and wealth to a few individuals, to paradoxically support the notion of individualism. Instead, this philosophy should be defined by the idea that every person contributes to society because, as an individual, they possess a unique set of skills necessary for a particular facet of the economy. Much as communists contend that a factory cannot run without workers, capitalists also contend that businesses cannot run without businessmen. One does not need to take any philosophy to an extreme. A holistic view of the situation would ask only one question of any person; what is your skill so that it can be best positioned in the economy?

X-Ray Party

Here presented in simple format is a list of ideas that can be used for the improvement of Canadian governance.

The system envisioned is a group of intellectuals, for a country of Canada's size and current population of 33 million, of roughly 10 000 to head the various roles of governance. They would have authority over the bureaucracy and direct the projects. In turn, they answer to the elected officials, which currently is the House of Commons (although they would more formally answer to the Senate).

Therefore, the bureaucracy would have several well defined purposes.

-Collect information, likely this would be done through StatCan, as it currently already does so
-Process information for recommendations, this would be done by the intellectuals in charge of each government department to post recommendations on future policy
-Execute projects, the government will put in policies some of which require work to be done, the bureaucracy conducts such work

The possible risks involved is inter-department conflict and self-justifying agencies. In this regard, intellectuals in charge of a particular agency will have a reason to continue to see the agency thrive in the government budget and may attempt to create reports or recommendations which misrepresent the facts in order to better secure funding. A government watchdog, like the Auditor General, may be useful in this regard to axe departments that are not strictly required, as well as eliminating plum posts.

1) The Intellectuals


Much like corporate hiring policies, all applications are posted in an open manner and resumes are selected from this large pool of candidates. Then, depending on the difficulty of the project, there can be a number of rounds of technical interviews.

Intellectuals hired will be for the roles of

-Manager of teams
-Team lead
-Team base member

This is devised into a system that is basically, a manager in charge of a department with multiple teams to work on each project. Each project has a team lead and a number of base level workers. One project, one team. The level higher than a manager is the cabinet minister.

It is largely the expectation that more levels of management will only lead to poor communication and lack of utilization of the intellectuals.

2) The Bureaucracy

The bureaucracy's job is to ensure that the paperwork is done properly. As such you would wish to minimize the overhead. This would include people to ensure all information is filed properly, forms/digital forms are processed from the general public (for instance, a department which issues licences). As it is not an inherently physically dangerous job, there is likely no reason for a union. It can be handled with normal salaried employees.

It is important for the bureaucracy to be streamlined as much as possible to ensure the maximum amount of labour to use for the various purposes of government.

3) The Elected

The task of elected members of parliament is to be a go-between from the intellectual base, consisting of thousands of people, and developing a sense of the situation from the various managers. Each department, as it is now, would be headed by a cabinet minister. Likely, several departments fall under the same minister. The minister's role is to read, analyse and accept the recommendations arising from the managers.

The managers are intended to be hired based on their expertise in their field, so that their recommendations are logical and evidence-based. For instance, a highly qualified accountant may make recommendations for simplifying the tax code in order to achieve greater efficiency and lower overhead costs in the bureaucracy. Then it is up the minister to combine the wants of the people (ie. the political platform for which he/she won the election) and the recommendations of those qualified in their respective fields.

4) The Point?

The concept is to create a government which does both what is most recommendable by scientific analysis and what is wanted by the people. Satisfying both of these conditions would be a far superior situation to western democracy which primarily only concerns itself with satisfying what people want.

The intellectuals identify the problems in society or areas of improvement. They then lead projects to complete this work.

The bureaucracy facilitates the work by performing all the administrative duties. This is likely to be processing forms, issuing of material, collecting material, physical duties and interaction with the population (perhaps even customer service).

The elected officials are to ensure the government is doing what the people want, whereas the intellectuals are attempting to ensure the government is doing what is intelligent.

5) Role of Government

The primary role of government is to improve the economy, protect and guarantee your rights as a citizen and facilitate resolution of disputes. The constitution will largely and the criminal code will take care of most of the legal issues. Other than this, the largest government role is the economy.

Infrastructure:

The private sector is notorious for being the worst at implementing infrastructure. In a globalised society in which we today live, it is imperative that we minimize the time and effort required to install new infrastructure in order to allow the greatest and fastest economic growth. Failure to do so leads to our businesses operating at a disadvantage to other nations.

Governments should employ crown corporations or make a government led effort to install new infrastructures. As of this writing, the most imperative develop is fibre optic backbone for a digital economy, as well as wireless internet, and city-wide hot spots. Failure to develop this infrastructure will result in businesses being unable to utilize the Internet and fail against more technologically advanced competitors.

Employment Opportunity:
Governments should attempt to identify growing businesses and industries and make 5-10 year long plans for each, in the form of small business grants, tax breaks or other incentives, in order to encourage economic growth. Industries older than this should not receive any special government treatment; it would be a waste of tax dollars to support failing industries. Again, this would be the task of intellectuals to properly conduct this analysis and avoid the temptation of protectionism.

Development of Poor Neighbourhoods:
Poor people do not produce tax income, which from a government perspective is terrible. A good solution would be to pour development into poor neighbourhoods. This includes pouring extra money per capita for poor neighbourhoods for economic development, healthcare and education. The idea is not to bring poor people out of those areas. The idea is to make those areas liveable middle-class neighbourhoods because the people are more well off. It is beneficial for everyone to have more middle class to provide more businesses and thus more job opportunities and tax revenue.

Healthcare/Education/Social services:
Obviously one of the biggest expenses is healthcare, education and other social services (such as EI or pension plans). As these are almost entirely technical areas, one should expect technical individuals in charge. The government should strive to do two things. Reduce costs but also expand services. Improvements in social areas increase (rather than decrease) tax revenues because of the multiplicative effect it has in crime reduction, improved worker health (therefore less sick days) and a more efficient workforce (either because they are more well educated or because they can find more appropriate jobs to match their skill set).

6) Roadmap

Largely, we can begin this with more open hiring procedures in the bureaucracy. The first step is for the hiring of individuals in all government jobs to be open, well advertised and easily accessible on government websites and for anyone to be able to apply.

Next, it is likely that the first new job of the watchdog agencies in Canada to look after the hiring procedures to eliminate nepotism.

After this, as the bureaucracy grows more used to an open hiring procedure, it is probable that morale will increase due to improved skill sets in throughout the departments. While this may or may not occur, the next step is to lower the levels of management. Work environments in corporations are notoriously inefficient because of the many layers of management, a government is no different. Reduction in management layers would streamline communication between the base line workers and the people in control. This would hopefully both raise morale and competency.

Clear management mandates make for easier analysis of government agencies. Well defined goals for each agency would be helpful in determining the efficacy of government and bureaucratic policies. There should not be a reliance on metric based analysis but metrics are useful in a sense. Employees should also not be afraid of certain departments being axed, or projects cancelled. An environment in which individuals can suggest improvements of any kind, including cancelling their own projects, should be developed. Morale can be maintained by the fact that they will not lose their jobs and instead merely be transferred to another more useful project. However, the tool of downsizing should still be maintained.

Largely, today, upsizing or downsizing of government is a fickle policy based on the government in power and the ideology to which they aspire. This is a highly unintelligent manner of axing projects. It cares not the efficacy nor the skill of the individuals.

Intelligent government requires that we be prudent but selective about our actions. Well thought plans are far better than impulsive actions to gain a few votes but damage the country in the long run. Take for instance Paul Martin's refusal to deregulate banks based on the recommendations of bureaucrats under his wing. We see now that had the tories been in power, with their ideology of free market, our economy would have collapsed due to subprime mortgages.

No matter how government develops in the future, it is hoped that it develops for the better.