Here’s a story that maybe even my siblings don’t know.
One of my earliest memories is of the “Great Root Beer Caper.” Long ago, there was an A&W Root Beer drive-in not far from our house, and they sold root beer for a dollar a gallon glass jug. I wanted that root beer enough that I was able to scrape up that dollar and make my way to the restaurant, which was on a major highway through town. I remember going up to the window and buying it, then beginning the long slug home. I wasn’t even 5 yet, and for a little kid like me, it was quite heavy, so of course, along the way as I was thinking up ways I could keep it hidden and still cold enough, I dropped that gallon glass jug and it shattered all over the sidewalk (I can still show you the exact spot to this day). What an apt metaphor — my shattered dreams spilled all over the concrete. Of course that’s something someone would remember over half a century later!
Here we are now in 2024 — the election is over, and we get what we get. But there’s one thing in which I’m somewhat interested, just to see how it works out — the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It makes sense on paper as some kind of “pie-in-the-sky” way, but can they really pull it off?
One of DOGE’s targets looks to be the massive government regulation that stifles growth and creativity; and one has to admit, there’s something there. I’m thinking of things like the story of World Central Kitchen (sadly, made famous for losing several workers in Gaza). WCK is an organization that was established on its ability to help areas hit by disaster because they don’t fall under all the rules placed on aid by the U. S. Government. For example, because the government says any packaged relief meals that are sent to a disaster area have to include bottled water, food aid sits around waiting for that water before the packages can be given to someone in need. In the meantime, WCK is on the ground making things happen because there are no such regulations to stifle their aid.
Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted on X, “The biggest cost of bureaucracy isn’t the headcount costs, it’s that bureaucrats find legally dubious ‘things to do’ that stifle freedom & depress our economy.” Elon Musk quotes it with a reply, “In a meeting with senior military officers today, they told me that it now takes longer to renovate stairs (24 months) in the Pentagon than it took to build the WHOLE Pentagon (16 months) in the 1940s!!” Of course when the Pentagon was built, we were under massively different conditions, but the concept holds. It takes months to get something simple done. I realize that safety is a major issue — we don’t want someone slapping up skyscrapers without some kind of standard by which an inspector can do their job. But the paperwork. The red tape. There’s got to be a way to make it better.
I’ve long beleived that one of our problems today is that most everyone’s already thought of the big stuff, so now to make it look like they’re still doing their jobs, our government representatives have to come up with the small stuff. I can think of one example here in Korea: they recently changed the rules for going through a crosswalk while the green walk light is on. Unfortunately, drivers now end up piling up at intersections waiting for people ahead of them who are confused by the law and are afraid to enter a crosswalk when there are absolutely no pedestrians in sight. Who can guess the unintended consequences of their actions? Impatient speeders, slingshotting around someone who thinks they’re following the law has got to be worse than letting people actually use their judgement when going through an intersection.
I think we’re at a point where it’s just people making it up now. They’re out of ideas so they have to invent more. They’re trying to justify their continued existence in government by loading up on regulations that perpetuate a government to interpret and enforce them.
I opened this piece with the Root Beer Caper for a reason. I’ve seen recently where a woman was arrested for letting her 10-year-old son walk down the road into a town just a short distance away. My goodness, if they’d had the laws like that when I was growing up, every parent — including mine — would have been locked up ten times over! I understand the appeal of safetyism to parents today. We’re constantly bombarded with worst-case scenarios that will probably never happen to the huge majority of kids, and so there’s definitely a pall of apprehension hanging around them. But I’m also mindful of the damage done by an unwillingness to accept any risk in a child’s upbringing. It makes them naive and less likely capable of handling the world they’re bound to encounter as adults. I’m hoping that somewhere along the line, our government lets us go back to common-sense as a general guide to raising our own children (among other things) and letting the results speak for themselves.
Here’s a bonus for you along these lines: one of my favorite scenes from the movie Brazil :