An unworkable thesis

I appreciate the interest created by my last blog, Where I went wrong. Confessions are better than excuses in finding answers.

In this blog, I will address the four vulnerabilities exposed by Steve Levine in Where I went wrong.

I’ve organized this blog by Point (Steve) and Reply (Me). It’s the Steve and Me show!

Getting into the details of anything can be difficult and potentially dull. Nevertheless, moving from concept to real-world must be done to chart a path to better government. By addressing potential weaknesses we put meat on the bones of the 90-Degree Turn theory. For this reason, I greatly appreciate Steve’s critical feedback.

If you’re brave enough, read on.

Unworkable

Point 1. The “unworkable thesis – that a database of needs and resources can be used to rationally allocate resources to competing needs and somehow overcome the interference of self-serving political and special interests”

Reply: Difficult, perhaps, but not unworkable. If Amazon can measure the needs of consumers and match suppliers to those needs, it's well within our reach to do the same with government.

The Needs Monitor is not static but forward-looking. It reports on today's priorities and measures progress towards those priorities. In the Needs Monitor, every American can report their concerns, provide details about those concerns, and (if they want) offer solutions. A tremendous amount of know-how exists throughout the country – in and outside government. We want to tap into this know-how in the Needs Monitor. Creating not just a database of needs, but a database of solutions too.

Open-source, secure, and powered by AI (artificial intelligence), individual issues are organized in the Needs Monitor and grouped into specifications and proposals that are shared with Washington. Rather than the Federal Government issuing Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to the country, we flip this process around and have state and local governments issue RFPs to Washington that directly reflect the validated needs of its citizens.

In this way, we pivot Washington's bureaucracy by identifying which resources are most (and least) needed by the country. Then, based on the country's needs, Washington's massive bureaucracy (~ 10 million employees) is reshaped to address the current and future demands of the country, not yesteryear's political agenda.

In the pivot, we return control over funding to state and local governments and put a big hole in Washington’s fundraising-centric politics. Of course, self-serving political and special interests will always be a problem. However, by changing the dynamics of who controls money (from Washington to state and local government), we disrupt the influence of special interests and return power to the people locally where we live.

It will be hard, perhaps impossible, for lobbyists to penetrate every town hall in America. Walking the halls of Congress and the Pentagon is much easier. The old school approach will no longer work when Washington's control over spending is taken away.

In the 90-Degree Turn, Congress remains but its role pivots from spending to facilitating. In its new role, Congress will help connect federal resources with local needs while streamlining laws and tax code to fulfill those needs.

As the Needs Monitor reshapes the structure of the federal bureaucracy, Congress's role is reshaped to support local needs. New laws don't need to be created, but rather existing laws, and tax code, need to be simplified and made relevant to the desires defined by the people in the Needs Monitor.

Point 2. “Even the idea that some local or state individual or groups of individuals can correctly assess the needs of a community is almost untenable given the complexity of the infrastructure needed to create, operate, and maintain municipal property and services.

Reply: Within the context of today’s bureaucracy, Steve is right. We need to undo complexity at all levels of our democratic republic.

However, in the 90-Degree Turn, the individual (not individuals or groups) defines the needs of a community. It’s the role of local, state, and federal governments to act on those needs, not to define them.

As a nation, we know a lot more today than our counterparts from 1789. As such, we require fewer people to inform our thinking and more people to act on our needs.

In the 90-Degree Turn, politicians pivot from legislators to facilitators. In this capacity, their aim is to align government assets (federal or local) with the locally validated needs of their constituency. The purpose of politics (at least as a social science) is to make government better. Today, this purpose is negated by money and political ideology.

Politics (along with human bias) will never die, but this becomes less problematic when locally validated needs are defined down to the individual. If we want politicians to act on the needs of the country, we can make the Needs Monitor their compass. It can also serve as a benchmark for measuring performance.

The same technology that has driven the success of thousands of companies is applied in the 90-Degree Turn. Not as a government project that runs at 200 times cost but instead as a secure open-source platform available to all.

Point 3. “The disallocation of funds, personnel, and assets would create chaos and explosive anger among those disintermediated.”

Reply: I agree. This is likely to happen in a scenario where entire federal agencies are summarily closed. However, the potential for chaos and pain is mitigated by Bottom-up Separation where local needs intersect with the assets of Washington. In this process, funds, personnel, and assets pivot to where they’re needed and away from redundancy and waste.

Today’s management of funds, personnel, and assets by Washington has already created chaos and explosive anger. Staying the course is not likely to make matters better.

Point 4. Let us consider elemental infrastructure priorities that deserve funding at a fundamental level -- communications, law enforcement, fire-fighting, emergency medical services, sanitation services, water, electricity, and natural gas distribution grids. These are all resource-intensive and levered to a growing population. However, the most disruptive overarching component governing the allocation of funds are the respective unions that prioritize funds allocation to personnel over the creation, repair, replacement, and improvement of infrastructure. Requesting funds allocations from the federal government demands oversight and auditing -- but unfortunately most of these systems are defective by design.

Reply: There’s a lot to address in Steve’s point 4. I am no expert on Unions, but Unions are often cited as the source of political interference, overhead, and complexity. On the other hand, Unions would not exist if they didn’t address a need. In the process of pivoting the Federal Government and aligning it with the needs of the country, Unions might need to pivot too and redefine their purpose not just to members but to the country as well.

Tracking fund allocations is, without a doubt, one of the most essential functions of government. But, as Steve argues, I agree that these systems are defective by design. From my perspective, “by design” also means a political system that uses the complexity of government as camouflage for keeping the government big, complex, and ripe for corruption. In Washington, solutions don’t garner the hype and political donations that come with making problems bigger.

Congrats on making it to the end! If you have any feedback, comments, or criticisms please email me at jbfred@90degreeturn.com.