Government needs a major overhaul—not to get rid of essential public programs and oversight, but to make them work sensibly. The goal of government is to serve the common good. The guiding principle for rebooting democracy should be this: Restore everyone’s freedom to take responsibility. Let others exercise their freedom to hold them accountable.
Legacy bureaucracies have grown ever-denser over the past 70 years, not only in the United States but in virtually all developed countries. Public goals such as safe products, fair markets, infrastructure, and public services are widely accepted and uncontroversial. But government’s capacity to deliver those services effectively is compromised by paralytic processes. Needed choices are frozen by bureaucratic micromanagement and possible legal challenges.
Government today is unresponsive and wasteful, and the open field of freedom is a minefield. As a result, Americans are anxious, frustrated, and increasingly angry. But there’s no reform path through the bureaucratic jungle. The simplest needs—maintaining order in a classroom, getting a permit for essential infrastructure, firing a rogue cop—are bogged down in bureaucracy and legalisms.
With no path to fix what’s broken, politics has become theatre. Politicians point fingers instead of proposing reforms. Extremists and self-interested interest groups dominate public debate.
The only way out is to replace the legal jungle with simpler, goal-oriented structures. Nothing will work sensibly until people with responsibility are re-empowered to make the daily choices needed to make things work.
American government is overdue for a major overhaul. The legal jungle must be replaced, not pruned. This requires a new operating philosophy—where daily governing choices are activated by humans taking responsibility, not thousand-page rulebooks. Our safeguard against bad choices must be oversight by senior officials, judges, and, ultimately, voters.
Does America today seem out of control? That’s the reality at every level of society—in schools, hospitals, and government itself. That’s why governing structures must be replaced by simpler frameworks that re-empower Americans to do what’s right and sensible.