Micromanaging The Government

It's generally agreed that micromanagement is bad; after all, not only is it extremely time-inefficient, but also managers tend to be too busy managing to have as much technical expertise as their underlings.

Why, then, do we try to micromanage our government?

The idea of democracy is that the power belongs to the people, but this doesn't mean that the people need to micromanage. When a company's CEO decides that the company needs to launch a product, he does not bother himself with the cogs and gears, or go around inspecting every line of code. So why should we care how our government chooses to attain our goals, so long as it does so effectively?

Let's face it, people's goals in life are really simple. We generally want to live without fear of war, famine, pestilence and death. We want to avoid traffic jams, and have the time and means to watch other people embarrass themselves in front of video cameras. In extreme cases we might want self fulfillment too.

There is not a single person in the entire world whose end goal is to pay less taxes. Nobody actively wants any specific laws. In fact, almost nobody even wants to either prevent or allow gay marriage. All of these things are means to an end, whether that end is financial prosperity, equality and justice, personal safety, or pleasing the Lord Almighty as He lies dreaming in R'lyeh.

That's why we should treat our elected officials the same way any good employer treats any valuable employee: tell them what we want done, and leave them to figure out how they can get it done on budget. It's their job, and they should be able to do it better than us. After all, if they can't do their job without our constant nitpicky supervision, why should we hire them in the first place?

Of course, at the same time it's important to remember that an employer usually has the ability to fire an employee if the employee breaks the law, knowingly acts against the employer's interests, or just proves to be completely incompetent. Not all employees would be motivated to do the best job they can when they know that it'll be years until anyone can possibly fire, demote, or otherwise punish them; and some people might be very motivated indeed to get a job that they know they are under-qualified for.

So if we want to keep up this democracy thing, we should act like it. If the people are the ones in charge, then the people should make sure to employ public servants who are capable of hearing what the people want and delivering it to them, while firing the ones who have proven that they aren't fit for the job.

And most importantly, we mustn't fall for politicians who promise to deal with whatever crisis is in the headlines this month; they are just like job candidates who can't do anything except spout buzzwords. By next year none of it will matter, and we'll be stuck paying the bloated salary of an employee who never gets any work done.