These are not new concepts around here, and while going through some old posts for my 10th Anniversary year I found one I wanted to reprint here. I was only mildly surprised that I said some of the same things as I did a few days ago, almost word for word. A bit surprisingly, the links in it are still good (two gave a 404, so I deleted one link, and the other I left for its name).
If I Got To Dismantle The Fed.Gov
But it got me thinking, despite the "tax the rich" crap we've heard so much it sickens us, we know that it's the spending. We know, thanks to Dr. Hauser, that tax incomes remain around the same as percent of GDP regardless of tax rates - tax rates determine if the economy grows and creates opportunity for more people to improve their standard of living. We all know that deep cuts in spending from both discretionary and the entitlement budgets have to be cut if we're going to turn this ship around. So it got me thinking, if I were king of the forest, what would I cut?
Some of it is easy, and you've heard it all before. The Department of Education has not educated a single person, and needs to go. The Department of Energy was founded to help us get independent of foreign oil, and we have become more dependent on foreign oil. BATFE is a useless black hole of suck, and needs to go. The tax code needs to go, and the IRS sent home.
But here's a couple that will surprise you. I deal with a couple of "big name" agencies that have undeserved good reputations, the FCC and the FAA. Both of these were useful at some point, but have long outlived it. The FCC needs to be cut back to a bare bones couple of geeks who help keep services from stepping on each other, maybe monitoring the spectrum to find violators. Originally, they provided technical direction for the development of radio and television, and helped get broadcasting started. Now their technical side is routinely stepped on by stupid political hacks with unimaginably stupid ideas like Broadband over Powerlines while the political appointees advance insipid attempts to regulate the content of news and programming, including whether you have the required number of women and minorities. The FCC probably hasn't done anything useful since the mid 1960s and needs to go. Upset you saw Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction? Complain to the network and the advertisers.
The FAA is likewise just about useless. When it comes to the systems that keep airplanes communicating and not flying into each other in mid-air, they leave all the technical decisions to the industry committees who define the systems, and just have you verify you meet the industry standards. There's no reason we couldn't just report to the industry committees, with minimal changes. Did you know that the FAA has us certify radios repeatedly, for every different aircraft they might get mounted on, and the cost to put a newer design radio on an old aircraft is so high that airlines just won't do it? Why have standards-based acceptance if you then have to certify on each aircraft? Why not just go to the airframe maker and prove you work on their plane? It's needless duplication of efforts.
NASA needs to go. This pains me for many reasons. I grew up in the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo days and idolized them. I've worked on a NASA satellite, for the JPL, with people who put satellites out at Jupiter. But events this year have proven that they lost their recipe sometime long ago. Then, of course, there's this abomination. Buh-bye.
And don't get me started on the government takeover of student loans. Or Amtrack. I could do weeks on this topic.
You made a good start. Add the Dept of Transportation. Remove them from the federal gas tax scheme. It may have been useful when they first built the interstate system but it is built and only needs maintenance now which can be handled by the state. Let the state add all or part of the deleted federal gas tax to the state tax if needed. As it operates now it has become clear that the current federal gas tax is only a large slush fund to curry favor with politicians. The Boston big dig was overpriced and corrupt but who went to jail? Now California looks at it as a painless way to construct the train to no where. Then there is hike and bike trails and bike lanes in city traffic. If you want those tax tennis shoes and bikes. Then there is the light/heavy rail fad of subsidizing trains and what a money loser that has become. As I once lived in Minnesota I am familiar with their boondoggle. They spent ONE BILLION to build the system and the fairs that are collected don't even cover maintenance costs. The federal DOT needs to be neutered and the sooner the better.
ReplyDeleteDon't start me on the FAA...when I retired I regained some of my sanity from having to deal with them.
I should have added the disclaimer, "this is only a start" but I thought that didn't need to be said.
DeleteOf course, I'm more familiar with what I've written over the years than anybody reading!
Two key words-reduce spending * dollar absolute *. Make it constant dollars if you like.
ReplyDeleteSome years back, I knew a gentleman who made his money setting up tours to the various large airshows around the country - a package deal with transportation, lodging, local transportation, entry, and so on. He approached Amtrak about purchasing large blocks of tickets or running a special train. They refused. He asked about simply buying large blocks at retail and they told him that if he did so, they would cancel the train. They went on to say that if any train like that was filled, they would cancel it, and actually told him that they did NOT want the trains to be successful, as that would jeopardize their government funding. Apparently it's a lot easier to expend no effort and fail while counting on the Feds to give you money than it is to actually try to do your job.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure, but if you are saying that ATC (Air Traffic Control) should be handed off to private industry, I have issues with that. Every proposal to do that has been essentially a take-over of ALL airspace by the airlines. In general, the airlines hate general aviation and will do anything to make nearly impossible to fly a light aircraft. Back in the 1980's or 1990's an airspace plan by the Department of Transportation was floated that tried to do it also. That plan included all aircraft having an approximately $10,000 transponder on board. That luckily got nowhere. But if ATC were privatized it would probably happen.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't think that the Libertarian method of injuries or deaths and lawsuits would make up some of the product standards for aircraft like hardware or wiring. I do agree that the certification standards are overly done as you pointed out. I wouldn't want Sony, et al consumer grade standard electronics (which I have actually heard some one state) used in aircraft.
Well, I wasn't thinking about ATC, but they do fall under the purview of the FAA. I was thinking more their system regulation, which they long ago outsourced to RTCA and other industry committees. And especially thinking about their certifications.
DeleteThis is where I'm willing to admit that some sort of incentives to follow rules are necessary; unfortunately, they become disincentives for not following rules. AKA law enforcement. We see how rational law enforcement is all around the world right now.
I feel the same way about nostalgia for NASA, but in the end, Pournelle's law has taken over NASA just like every other one of the agencies you mention.
ReplyDeleteThe big alphabet agencies have become welfare systems and minority hiring schemes that at best are harmless to the public while being consumers of vast tax resources. The lingering question remains what would you do with all the drones if they were eliminated?
ReplyDeleteThe FCC had an explicit "in the public interest" test for granting permission to broadcast from day one, and government gets to judge what speech is acceptable. The FCC's core purpose is to infringe the first amendment by controlling the political content of speech, just as much as the BATF's core purpose is to infringe the second amendment. The BATF isn't constitutional even if they do occasionally return stolen guns, and the FCC isn't constitutional even if they do occasionally shut down interfering broadcasters.
ReplyDeleteWhere's my Saturn 5 rocket motor blueprints and engineering test data, why aren't they selling that book in the gift shop? NASA's core purpose is to impose gun control by denying permission to research and build and keep and bear rockets of all sizes. That's why it doesn't matter if the NASA rockets fail; failure is a good thing, just like how we've barely seen personal weapon innovation since the revolver was perfected 100 years ago. The purpose of the FAA was to cartelize air travel, and centrally plan which of its captured brands get to service what markets. More recently it demanded everybody get gate-raped to infringe the fourth amendment, and it won't allow bus type service from the many small airports which don't have cattle loading chutes.
Anonymous,
DeleteYou are bit over the top. Some parts of the FCC are perfectly Constitutional if managed correctly. I would not want to see Congress having to deal with the minutia of frequency management for one thing.
NASA is not stopping people from building rockets; the BATF and Department of Commerce are doing it. I have an electronic copy of a book from the late 1950's on Amateur Rocketry written by an Army officer. I had a copy I bought in 1966 when in 8th grade and somehow lost the copy later. As I understand, publishers are not allowed to publish it because it is now banned by the BATF as terroristic material. The DoC makes it very difficult to ship larger solid fuel motors for amateur/model rockets. Still there are groups of "amateurs" out there that are building solid rocket motors and liquid fueled rockets. Unfortunately they are under government scrutiny. As to launching them, having FAA permission to use the airspace is not a bad thing. Anarchists dreams of no regulation are pure fool hardiness.