NO, THE PUBLIC SECTOR ISN’T ALWAYS TERRIBLE

A quote appeared in my social media feed the other day that I enjoyed:

“It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great or terrible. Alas, reality is more complicated than comforting caricatures.”

The quote belongs to Jon Meacham, whose resume includes a Pulitzer Prize and multiple visits atop The New York Times bestseller list. His book “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” a favorite of mine, is a timely read given all the Trump/Old Hickory comparisons floating around these days.

Meacham’s “comforting caricatures” line grabbed my attention as I’ve been thinking about — worrying, really — how Americans seem to be viewing each other increasingly through a zero-sum lens. The ease with which we dismiss the totality of other individuals, simply because they hold a handful of views different than our own, is troubling.

To a certain degree this flaw is a human condition. Our brains, operating as computers, tend to compartmentalize things for ease of understanding. But that can be problematic when it comes to how we view humanity. Especially when we’re sorting folks into boxes labeled good/bad, smart/dumb, respectable/laughable based on a narrow set of circumstances.

This people-sorting is also how government is treated.

Of course there are nuances to this observation but in general terms, those on the right side of the political spectrum have long viewed government with untrusting eyes, while those on the left look to it as the arbiter of a well-run society.

Thanks to the tea party movement, which catapulted onto the national stage in 2009, the right is painted as a bunch of government haters. And while many on the left love pretending that the right is comprised entirely of anti-government zealots, it is likely true that too many conservatives have been stricken with the “all government is bad” bug.

Because government is not all bad. To the contrary, it is imperative. Yet government has become a victim of our zerosum caricaturing. Why? For three main reasons.

First, government is influenced by politics, and politics is influenced by special interests. Therefore, government is often steered by concerns incongruent with the wants and needs of the American people. Second, bad ideas — and the price tags that come with them — implemented by government are rarely reversed. And third, well-intentioned government policies have a knack for creeping in to burden individuals as well as livelihood-providing businesses.

So again, it’s not that government is inherently a bad thing. It’s that it often doesn’t represent voters, it’s plagued with everlasting financial liabilities, and it frequently undercuts liberty. Add those up, and it’s understandable why some might think, “Gee, government stinks.”

That sentiment misses the mark, though, because government does do good. Some local examples:

Have you tried the new Chattanooga 311 app and website (if you live in the city limits)? It’s a breeze. Enjoyed the Tennessee Riverpark lately? What a treasure. And though the libertarian in me thinks it would be wonderful for the good developers and business owners in this town to offer infrastructure solutions to issues tethered to some of their projects, we’d be best suited if the city and county took the lead on those.

Zero-sum thinking skews our perspective of government.

It’s not always horrible, and it certainly isn’t always virtuous.

What’s more is that the zero-sum mindset has taken our eye off the most relevant musings about government. Instead of pondering whether it’s wholly good or wholly bad, the best questions are related to what government should actually be doing.