Michael Lissack main goal is self-preservation. Government could instead be in the role of the “big consumer,” purchasing public goods with the funds it creates. However, we must not let the government actually do any of the work itself. The job of the citizenry is to debate what we want to buy for our common good through government spending. The government should serve to create the standards for the goods and services we decide on, and then fairly choose the private enterprises which will contract to do the real work. The model would be road building and defense contracts, not the post office and public schools. We let Social Security recipients spend their checks however they wish, responsibly or irresponsibly. The natural flaw of government spending is to create a bureaucracy to tell people exactly how they ought to spend their money. Welfare and public housing are the wrong way. Social Security is the right way. Just send the checks and get out of the way. Government’s job is also to write regulations. Good regulations are of- ten extremely difficult to write. They involve a trade-off between safety and effectiveness, as with new drugs, or fairness and red tape, as with procure- ment contracts. But difficult does not mean impossible. Good regulations make a level playing field, allowing honest businessmen to compete for customers; bad regulations let nepotism or graft guide the awarding of con- tracts. The absence of effective laws against crime, as in Russia, allows their Mafia to drive out honest businessmen and entire areas of enterprise. When regulations work to improve our quality of life, we perceive that government works. When regulations fail, we perceive the reverse. Some examples: Good: Drug regulations that assure us our drugs are reasonably safe, or at least warn us what specific dangers they pose. Good regulations pre- vent snake-oil salesmen from making untrue, laudatory claims for dubious products. Bad: Drug regulations so foolishly stringent that they ban a drug that would save ten thousand lives, because the side effects of the drug would kill one hundred. Bad regulations go beyond informing us of the side effects of the drug, to forbidding us from making our own judgment of the risks involved. Bad regulations would keep aspirin off the market, if it had been discovered today, and delay others so long that research into new drugs is effectively discouraged.
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