There is something that, it seems to me, is becoming more and more universally true of American Government, both Federal and Local. And that is this… the bigger, more powerful, and more intrusive that Government Agencies become, the less effective they are at delivering the services they promise. Perhaps this has always been the case, but lately the Texas power grid failure has brought the problem into stark relief. Talking to several people in Texas in the wake of the ice storm #Fail from last week, those who were not already Preppers with back-up systems in place are becoming Preppers. Going forward, depite the fact that everyone pays for the power systems in their States, there is a growing understanding that they these systems are fundamentally unreliable and won’t be there for us when we really need them. So, many of us are going out and spending money, in some cases money we don’t have, to install back-up systems for those times when the government solutions we are already paying for fails us. In fact, the only people who aren’t installing LPG tanks in their yards, or buying generators or power inverters for their F-150 batteries either can’t afford it or are stark raving mad.
But that was a hundred year storm, you say, you can’t expect the Government to plan for those kinds of back swan events. Can’t I? I don’t need the power system when it’s 75 degrees. No one dies if the heat shuts off when it’s 52. When our lives are on the line is precisely when we need those systems. I might feel differently if government were saying to us, “hey guys look we can only afford to build a system that’s there for you when things are normal. If it gets crazy out there, we aren’t coming to help you, so plan accordingly.” But they aren’t saying that. They are, in fact, saying the exact opposite. They want more and more power and more and more control over our daily lives and they are perfectly willing to promise us the moon and stars in order to get it. The Texas power grid failure is emblematic of the result.
And this happens across all Government sectors.
Take education, for instance. Here in L.A. you can see an almost one-to-one correlation between the increases in spending on the Los Angeles Public School System and the degredation of the quality of the education actually delivered by that system. The LAUSD budget is already huge, but almost every year we are asked to give the system more and more money in the form of bond measures because the enormous piles of cash we’re already sending their way are just not enough. But as the bill goes up, the results in terms of student performance go down, way down. And what happened when we really needed them this past year? When COVID shut the country down and we were all suddenly working from home with our kids demanding our help administering their education from the next room? They shut down, they abandoned us, and they refused to come back to work even after the science (via the CDC and WHO) proved it was safe. So now anyone who is serious about educating their kids has to build a back-up system, even while they continue to pay massive property taxes to fund the system that has already failed them in multiple ways. Smart Angelenos got out of the system and went private years ago, even though they too continue to pay for a system that doesn’t work and which they do not use.
Policing has the same issues here in L.A. Our police force gets more expensive every year, even though most of us understand that when the shit truly hits the fan, we are on our own. Some years ago my wife called the non-emergency number because she was home alone and there was a guy on our porch who refused to leave. The dispatcher said she would send someone, but never did. The next day they called back to ask how it all turned out. A year later I complained about the incident to our Senior Lead Officer and he told me that our entire division only has two cars available for calls and that if I want one to show up I have to call 911 and tell them I’m in immediate physical danger. In other words, by the time I realize my life is on the line, it will be too late for anyone to actually help me. So what do we do in response to this alarming reality? We spend money we can’t afford to spend on back-up systems (tougher doors, better locks, security cameras, guns and gun safes) for when the system we already pay for inevitably fails us.
And yet there has never been a tax-payer revolt over any of this, nor will there ever be. We just bend over and take it. And when government comes along and asks to take over some other sector that has always worked well for us so that they can destroy it, we happily write that check.
You could probably send me examples from a million other Government sectors where the price has gone up as the reliability and quality of service has gone down. It all adds to the general feeling out there that our country is slowly becoming a failed state and that we are each of us entirely on our own.