As most of us are aware the almost all Western governments are living beyond their means. Every year they spend more than they raise and their debts spiral ever upwards. But there is a solution: ask the voters. Here is how it would work:
- On his birthday the voter is asked what he would like the government to spend its money – sorry ill-gotten gains – on.
- The voter gets to select from the departments of state: defence, interior, health, education etc.
- At the end of the month the selections of all the voters who have responded are totted up and government revenues for that moth are divided amongst government deportments in proportion to how many voters have selected them.
At a stroke:
- Spending and revenues are brought into line.
- Voters cannot complain that the government isn’t spending enough on such and such because it is in their power to do something about it.
- If it becomes apparent that a department has too much money (or too little) then that will (one hopes) become public knowledge and voters will change their selections accordingly.
- There will no longer be interdepartmental rows over spending. It is taken out of the hands of politicians.
- Departments would have a strong incentive to keep waste to a minimum. If it becomes known that they are being wasteful, voters are likely to move their money to a different department.
I can see some objections/issues:
- How should voters make their preferences known? In person? By mail? Should the voters get one vote or several? 90% of me wants to spend on defence but 10% wants the money spent on prisons.
- War. If a war starts it could take a while for the state to get on a war-footing. About a month but I would guess there would be provision for such an emergency.
- Publicity. Humans being humans and politicians being politicians, there will be great competition between departments for voters’ favour. Would there be a danger of advertising budgets getting out of hand? If advertising was banned what else might politicians get up to?
- Revenue is lumpy as are birthdays. The government does not raise the same amount every month and birthdays are not evenly distributed throughout the year. This could have some interesting effects.
I can’t see that working given the inefficiency of government. As proof, isn’t California still counting votes three weeks after the election?
Hmm. “We have only 10% of the budget we needed for prisons. Release all of the prisoners and sell the prisons”. Probably not the best solution.
Alternately, the workshy allocating 100% of their allocation to “Welfare” and ignoring defence, health, etc.
What about all those “Stop the War” and/or CND numpties that would campaign to defund the military, or the racist idiots of “Buy Large Mansions” who would campaign to defund the police.
Chaos.
Love it.
Comes back to that thing about “It ain’t the votes that count, it’s who counts the votes”. They are still hoping to unwind the loss of the house by manufacturing missing ballots.
– Never happen – and for one simply and very obvious reason. You can ask any Minister or senior bureaucrat of your government – or anybody else’s government, anywhere – and they’ll tell you without hesitation that they despise you, and are not interested in your thoughts on anything. You are a know-nothing voter who doesn’t have the least shmick how things work; they know far better than you what you REALLY need, and providing it is their JOB – if they could be bothered to do it. You just toddle { – read, ‘fuck’ – } off somewhere, find a nice comfortable easy chair, and doze for however-long it’ll be ’til the next election when they’ll be forced to make you a few more empty promises, and until then they’ll see it all right.
You’ll thank them for this some day; now OFF WITH YOU!
A few responses:
That would appear to be a peculiarly Californian thing. Most countries are able to count votes the same day. And don’t forget the number of votes would be about 1/365th of the usual total. In a typical British Parliamentary Constituency that’s 200 votes per day.
There are libertarians who speculate on what would happen under those circumstances. It wouldn’t work out well for the criminals. But it might spur governments to look at cheaper ways of punishing them. I believe Lord Kitchener had some interesting ideas.
It rather depends on how many people we are talking about. If they are a majority then disaster will ensue. But it will ensue anyway just through the democratic process. My suspicion is that the workshy are not that common in number and, anyway, they also want low crime and, possibly, strong defence.
When it comes to defunding the police, sure there’s a chance that some people might have allocated their revenue share away from the police but after seeing the results the chances are that they would have allocated them back. Feedback is a lot faster than with normal elections.
“On his birthday the voter is asked what he would like the government to spend its money – sorry ill-gotten gains – on.”
That immediately reminded me of H.L. Mencken’s old line:
“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.“
Or, for those of us that have actual constitutions, Balanced Budget Amendments. Outside of a declared war, no more goes out than comes into the coffers. If we want those massive programs, fine, but we have to pay for them immediately. No more multi-trillion dollar budget deficits. Priority number one is come up with a plan to start paying down the current deficit. Get rid of Universal Suffrage. No one who is a net taker gets to vote. It makes no sense whatsoever to have voters who exist only to say “yes, by all means, take out of his pocket and put into mine” except as a vote buying scheme. End the forever wars. We can still subsidize R&D and rebuild things like manufacturing and shipyards, but no more going into wars around the world just so LockMart and General Dynamics stock keeps going up indefinitely.
Of course, none of that will ever happen.
This is the item that most worries me. (It’s in the 2nd list.)
Take as an example item #3 from the 3rd list: War.
The voters might well think that too much money is being spent on the armed forces, until a war comes. Oh wait, that is what happened in Germany and other euro-countries in 2022!
— There is also the fact that this proposal does not necessarily limit the growth of the State: the government might well decide that, since there are many voters supporting each department, spending should be increased.
I favor instead the proposal (by Milton Friedman, i believe) that there should be perhaps only 4 departments: State/Foreign, Defense, Justice, and Treasury.
And even most functions of the Justice department can best be delegated to local governments; which can also take care of health, education, the environment, transportation, etc.
More Mencken: Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Well it could not be any worse than the current system – under the current system the United Kingdom and the United States (and many other nations) are not legally bankrupt, but they are functionally bankrupt.
I am sometimes asked “where is the collapse you have so long predicted” – to which my answer is “look around you” and compare your towns and cities to the same places 60 years ago.
True people are not hunting each other for food (but I did not say they would be) – but things have clearly got much worse and they are continuing to get worse.
“Rome was not built in a day” and it did not collapse in a day either – Roman civilization declined over a long period of time. Statism reached insane levels under the Emperor Diocletian – but the barbarians were not sacking Rome itself for another century.
As for how the debt crises will really be solved….
Even the official government debt of the United Kingdom, United States, and-so-on is bigger than the entire economy– and “entitlements” (especially health care and old age pensions – as well as welfare bills in United Kingdom) continue to grow in schemes which CAN NOT (by the very way they are drawn up) have their costs controlled.
This means DEFAULT is inevitable – either open default, or disguised default by massive inflation.
Some people still do not grasp this – default (either open or disguised default) is inevitable.
There are worse things than default – if Louis XVI had defaulted on the debt, as previous Kings had done, rather than calling an Estates General (because he did not want to be dishonourable and default on the debt) there would have been no French Revolution and hundreds of thousands of people (yes hundreds of thousands of people – mostly ordinary people in the Provinces – see the historical works of William Doyle) would not have been murdered.
Yes, yes indeed, default is terrible – but there are worse things.
Remember the costs of just servicing the American debt is now over a TRILLION Dollars a year (just the interest payments) – yes, again, default is terrible (there will be terrible suffering with default), but there are even worse things than default – and this debt burden (which is increasing all the time) is unsustainable.
A new currency is also clearly needed – hopefully NOT the digital currency the international Corporate State.
I am a “back to the future” person – I would like to see a return to gold and silver, but other people support Bitcoin.
Either way the “Dollar”, “Pound”, “Euro”, “Yen” and-so-on (these whim currencies) are going to die. Money must have nothing to do with governments or with their pets (sorry “partners”) the Credit Bubble Banks.
I can’t see that working given the inefficiency of government. As proof, isn’t California still counting votes three weeks after the election?
That isn’t inefficiency, that’s vote rigging. Sorry, “Ballot Curing.”
In addition to a voting system supporting Brendan’s proposal (I’m skeptical of that…see below), why can’t an online voting system be devised that is secure? And transparent? And used for all elections? My idea for transparent: we could each look up our vote and see that it was counted correctly (the computer science nerds here will tell us how this can be done with blockchain or somesuch). We could each also see our neighbor’s votes, but not individually (protect privacy) only in aggregate. Say, the 100 votes closest to my home address, I could see those totals. If they were skewed too much one way or another I might know. I might not as we don’t talk with our neighbors like we used to. Just a thought…transparency and auditing are important.
As for Brendan’s proposal, it sounds like direct democracy which is “the mob”. And the mob in the US is not too civically minded, not well educated on our history and what works and what doesn’t work. As others point out, the addicts would vote for more of their poison. But I like the idea…just needs some adjustment and I’m not sure how to do that…sorry!
As for “ballot curing” and other shenanigans, I’m all for chopping off some hands, sending a message to those doing the counting who have trouble counting the other side’s votes! My guess is that 50-100 fingers would suffice for the counters to self-correct.
In my opinion, this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the bureaucratic mindset. A government agency will NEVER announce that it has too much money, even if it has to spend millions on super-expensive paper clips or redecorate its offices every year in order to spend its budget.
I haven’t specifically researched it, but I would be very surprised if there were more than a handful of examples in the entirety of political history where a government department handed back money at the end of the year.
why can’t an online voting system be devised that is secure? And transparent?
Physics.
this can be done with blockchain or somesuch
RUNS AWAY SCREAMING!
Rather than trying to fix the statist systems, we should be promoting solutions that actually have worked historically.
For example, right now in Birmingham they’re closing most of the public libraries. As the state is exiting that, it creates an opportunity for free society to fill that niche. If you look at the history of public libraries, quite often they started as private members societies that were then taken over by city corporations in the late Victorian period. This was true in Gloucester, for example, where the public library started life as the Gloucester Literary and Scientific Association. Although this society was doing fine and paid for by subscribers, the Gloucester City Corporation kept trying to start its own public library. Even after the idea was rejected several times by the voters, eventually the City Corporation got its way and bought the library of the GLSA. In Gloucester we’re not quite as bad as Birmingham but most of the original library the taxpayers acquired is long gone, replaced with mostly trashy books. Naturally I think it should never have been acquired, although the public library service was not too bad when I was younger it certainly is today.
The point I’m trying to make, however, is that those of us who don’t believe government should be doing a lot of what it is doing should seek to promote alternatives. There are many alternative ways of financing, such as mutual societies or co-operatives to listings on public stock exchanges (the closure of the regional stock exchanges was, I feel, a huge mistake) and public subscription. Managerial government has failed, as most of us knew it would. The solution to that isn’t more of the same but with more democratic input, it’s taking back powers from local and national government and placing them in the hands of free society. That doesn’t necessarily mean private corporations, though it can do – it could be “Community Interest Companies” or the older but perfectly serviceable “Companies Limited by Guarantee”. It could be unincorporated associations, co-ops and mutual societies.
A big part of the problem with modern government, both local and national, is the source of funds is decidedly murky. Years ago local governments raised taxes or issued bonds. Now they get most of their funding from central government, with no need to reassure private investors by acting responsibly and no need to live within their means. Meanwhile, PFI is undoubtedly at the core of many struggling NHS trusts’ financial problems.
A lot of the Labour vs Conservative debates in this country, especially in the minds of the general public, boils down to worries about the evil Conservatives privatizing the NHS or inefficient Labour splurging tax-payers cash on the NHS. It’s really a false dichotomy; the public is convinced that the Conservatives want to sell off the NHS but this need not be the case at all. Let private investors invest in the NHS. Although the NHS is certainly wasteful, if the general public could buy bonds directly for the NHS more people would have a vested interest in seeing a leaner, more efficient NHS while still keeping to the general principles of the NHS.
It certainly seems to me that the alternative-right has been very poor at suggesting alternative ways of structuring or financing public services. If free society concedes that the only way to finance public services is through taxation or the national government borrowing money to spend then it fails at the first hurdle.
When I was younger I’d come up with these sorts of schemes, but I’m afraid they completely miss the point. Government is broken because the people in charge want it to be broken in the way that it is. Nobody in the civil service is the slightest bit interested in reducing any budget and they sure as hell don’t want to give ordinary people a say.
I doubt there is much that can be done in Britain because you don’t really have any limits on the power of parliament, but in the US the only thing that would fix it is a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, and that is practically an impossibility. There have been a few attempts but none of them got very far at all. The National Tax Payers Union in the 1980s pushed hard for an “Article V Constitutional Convention” which would have allowed a national debate and such a change, but that was not successful either. And FWIW would have been a terrible idea because a constitutional convention would have been a free for all that would have eviscerated the constitution. Amendments to the constitution are, by design, extremely hard to achieve. And frankly if you asked most Americans if they’d like a balanced budget amendment they might, lukewarmly agree, until they realized it involved cutting their favorite government program. It just isn’t popular enough.
I am a little excited at what Musk and Ramaswamy are doing. I think they have some very innovative ideas. If it were possible to move nearly every government department out of DC around the country and/or half the federal workforce that would have a dramatically big effect on the government. It wouldn’t save all that much money but it would have a significant decentralization of power. Can they do it? Probably not. But I sure do hope they have a large team from Blackwater following them everywhere they go.
As for Britain, I’m sorry, you need to suffer through rock bottom with Starmer for four or five years before you have any chance of coming up for air. Kemi seems though to be a Thatcher/Musk level change agent. So I hope she fulfills the promise she offers.
See also: Chicken and egg.
Until the population realizes that government expenditure is a cost, not a benefit, they will continue to vote in the same tribal ways. Sure, Kemi might get in like Thatcher in ’79, but even if she does she’ll be up against a civil service hell bent on tying her hands.
Politics is downstream from culture. Cultural change is needed first, the general population needs to understand that business as usual is not going to work. It is unfortunate that apparently it takes bins not being emptied, bodies building up unburied, etc but it does seem that that is where you have to get to before people re-evaluate their beliefs and priorities.
Budgets requiring public approval via referenda?
If I were serious about cutting gov overspending, I think I’d elect GrayMirror to advise DOGE.
(Of course, melding Yarvin with elected democracy would be sort of funny to begin with.)
I repeat – at this level of debt, and with the “entitlements” (such as health care and old age pensions – again there are no “trust fund investments” there never were, it is a lie, it has always been a lie) default on the debt (which, in many Western nations, is larger than the entire economy), open or disguised, is inevitable.
People who think this or that reform can deal with debt and entitlements at this level just do not understand the numbers. Default, open or disguised, is inevitable.
In the United States President Trump will be blamed for the, inevitable, economic crises – even though it was “baked into the cake” decades ago. Perhaps that is why he was allowed to win the election – so there can be a scapegoat.
In the United Kingdom and other Western nations the establishment may try to blame “Trump” for the inevitable economic crises, “it was his tariffs” or some other absurd lie. After all many British people believe “Liz Truss crashed the economy” – because the establishment have repeated this absurd lie endlessly.
Sadly many people believe what they are told to believe.
Notice that, although President Trump was allowed (unlike in 2020 – when the election was blatantly rigged) to win the 2024 election – there were lots of “odd” Senate and House elections (vote dumps in the middle of the night – with all the votes being for the Dem) so he only has a small majority in the House and Senate.
Even if President Trump wanted to restore real, i.e. commodity, money (money should be a Store of Value not just a Medium of Exchange – and a fiat currency it a terrible Store of Value, if it is a Store of Value at all), or to roll back the “Entitlements” (and I doubt he does – after all even President Reagan did NOT do these things), he would be unable to do so – as there is no real majority in the House or Senate to do this.
The same is true of other Western nations – but to a more extreme extent.
Look, for example, at the composition of the British House of Commons – it is like a horror film.
They will go along with the rest of the establishment (the officials and “experts” – including the judges) in expanding statism – till everything falls apart.
Paul Marks – you raised these issues in the earlier “How Britain is Seen (but let’s talk about Trump)” thread.
1. Trump is a populist forced by circumstance to become a small-government conservative. He is also a savvy businessman. His policies in the first term were populist. I do not recall any mention of deep, policy-wonk type fiscal reform.
His promise to “cut waste and clean things up” offers a lot of low-hanging fruit that is more palpable and urgent for most of his voters than reforming Social Security (threatening) or return to the gold standard (arcane)… The reforms he is focusing on also make for better street theater to continue promoting the conservative brand… one must be very careful when touching entitlements, or else you get awful optics like the press claiming that “Ronald Reagan thinks ketchup is vegetable in school lunches”. Remember that?
My guess is if you asked his team or his voters, they would give a general answer with equal parts shrinking the gubmint, energy independence, and bringing good jobs bask to America. Many of his voters would say things like “the government should not have bailed out the stock brokers”. That’s the level of their understanding. That’s where a smart politician starts to tell the story. Those MAGA supporters who do understand this issue also understand that President Vance or President DeSantis may be the ones to finally tackle this.
2. There are graphs circulating that show how quickly and precipitously the Obamists increased the welfare state, and the debt load based on those future promises.
Trump is fighting to roll back the last 8-12 years of deliberate fiscal irresponsibility.
Doing a lot of the more popular, less abstruse things he promised (like deporting illegals and cutting them from the welfare rolls) will help reduce the geometric increase of the debt. I don’t think it’s possible to grow one’s way out of such a debt, but cutting entitlements is an obvious first step – both in terms of policy and messaging.
3. The “inevitable” financial default at the end of the fiat currency/soft socialism adventure is a can that has been kicked down the road by decades of politicians. The MAGA conservative movement has more immediate concerns, and any conservative movement must take a carefully calibrated approach, educating the public as it introduces changes. Like fiat currency itself, it depends on public trust.
The debt bubble is a slow-motion game of Pass the Parcel where the geopolitical bloc that fails first loses… and America’s economy is the freest and can quickly change direction. Eurussia (we can call it that until Western Europe starts producing its own gas and oil again) is tied down by autocratic regulation, and has already missed several waves of hi-tech growth. China is an inherently unstable Potemkin economy poised to destroy itself with military misadventures. Both these blocs have shrinking populations.
If Trump’s reforms restart the American economy and convince the world to return to the dollar, The US will be best positioned to weather systemic financial collapse.
Kemi’s thoughts on what she would do in power are interesting, but contrasting with what she ACTUALLY did when she was in power (pretty much the opposite, at least as far as immigration is concerned), then it just seems to be more of the same “anything to get elected” lies.
Vote Reform UK.
It’s the only way forward.
@John Galt
Vote Reform UK.
I don’t follow british politics as much as I did when I lived there. Kemi seems awesome to hear her talk, but maybe you are right, she is all hat and no cattle. But I guess it is also only fair to say that it is quite different to be a junior minister under Rishi than it is to be captain of the ship.
However, I did want to offer a hopeful note for the UK. Although you have a lot of suffering to do under Starmer, 4 or nine years, I don’t know which. But if a new conservative (with a small c) election takes place by then you may well have some amazing precedents to follow. If DOGE in the US and Milei in Argentina (and possibly Meloni in Italy) are as transformative as they may well be, then perhaps it can set a precedent, something to point to, to allow the next British Prime Minister to have an example to point to. “I’m going to do that, not just a theory, what they did and get the same results for Britain”. I hope that Starmer’s destruction allows some hope for reform out of the burning rubble he leaves behind.
Look, I read things like this and I just throw up my hands.
What you have is a debt crisis. You have spent/are spending more than you earn. The answer to that is not to think up cutesy new ways to redistribute your spending in ways that the voters might like better. The answer to that is to cut your spending. And in the US, that is going to mean cutting spending A Lot. We are already $30-something trillion in the hole, and that’s just on the books – unfunded obligations like Social Security and Medicare raise the total to – well, they raise the total to a figure that nobody can accurately assess.
If you want to address the debt crisis by these sorts of means, by all means, go ahead – but instead of letting voters pick-and-choose what to spend on, you must have voters pick-and-choose what to cut. Assign each voter a fraction of the debt and tell them to pick which area of government spending they will cut to eliminate that portion of the debt. And it has to be short-term – no projections about how this will eventually reduce the debt in 9 years if the dollar does this and the market does that and the interest rate does the other thing – the spending gets cut tomorrow and the debt gets reduced this year.
And monkeys will also fly out of my butt.
llater,
llamas
The easier way to stop government overspend is to give anyone who is a net taxpayer an extra vote in a general election.