For what each of us spends on Government Services (local, State, County and Federal) if we chose to invest proportional time and effort, we would be demanding better value at less cost year after year. Furthermore, at all levels, if we are getting more/better services at less cost, the United States could enjoy a global economic competitive advantage from the most cost effective and efficient government services.
The keystone of this transformation rests with individual citizens, not elected officials or political parties. Our challenge is to motivate ourselves to initiate a cultural shift toward greater civic responsibility. The secret sauce is to start locally on the smallest levels of government services, then, as our management skills, tools and habits grow, expand upwards to broader layers of government services. Solutions can be driven upwards through communities versus the current stagnation from our oscillating political party control. Technology must be a force multiplier.
The multitude of ideas introduced in Consuming Government can serve as a catalyst to align interests, talents and passions of our citizens for this civic culture transformation. The book's "Flywheel" ideas may come to fruition as described, or evolve in other ways once more and more citizens contribute. What's most important is that we all choose to actively better manage government services to ensure ever-increasing value at lower costs.
For those who have yet to experience the joys of differential equations, you may not see the similarities. To solve differential equations, you need to make assumptions or create boundary conditions; these must remain true for the differential equation to be solved. If the boundary conditions change (no longer hold true), then the previously developed solution is no longer valid. The math or what the Founding Fathers developed is not at fault, but the boundary conditions changed. This helps explain how a well-designed democracy strayed off course.
Chapters in this part
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins uses a flywheel analogy to describe how a new idea can take hold at a corporation. At the time I read the book, I was working for a multinational corporation, and that concept resonated and has always stayed with me. In this book, we are going to use a flywheel to give us hope and to develop a common way to understand and discuss how we go about managing the government we buy. I also tag, or label, my ideas and suggested actions “flywheel ideas.”
A flywheel is typically a heavy spinning wheel. The spinning weight captures energy, referred to as inertia. A very large, heavy wheel, spinning very fast is going to be hard to stop, as there is a lot of energy. I like to picture a big spinning stone wheel, as a medieval soldier sharpens a sword. In modern times, flywheels are used to help some mechanical machines maintain a constant stream of energy. The Way Things Are Today flywheel is our current state of how our different levels of government operate, how we manage it (politics) and how it engages with us. It has a tremendous amount of energy, it can be stopped and spun in a different direction, but not without a lot of applied effort.
The second flywheel is our Economic Flywheel. We can view our economy as a large flywheel, the more energy in that flywheel the stronger our economy. We can also have discussions about how something is impacting our economic flywheel.
The appendix discusses flywheel mechanics and how those mechanics can be related to gross domestic product (GDP).
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As I introduced earlier, there are man-made forces that impact the rotation of our flywheel. My first homemade go-cart had a brake. It was a wooden 2x4 nailed to the side of the frame. When I wanted to slow down or stop, I just pulled back on the piece of wood and it scraped along the pavement, slowing me down. Brakes on the economic flywheel are similar, like a lever that pushes against the spinning flywheel. The more force pushing down on that brake, the more energy is going to be sucked out of our spinning flywheel.
If we take actions to mitigate how hard the brakes are pressing against our flywheel, even small changes can add up to more economic energy.
As we step through these sections, picture a big beam being pushed against the economic flywheel. Some brakes will be bigger than others, but they all are taking energy from our flywheel.
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While brakes are pushing against our economic flywheel, there are also weights attached to the flywheel. On each revolution, our flywheel needs to fight against that weight to make the next revolution. In a worst-case scenario, the weights could become such a burden that a country’s flywheel could stop spinning. Our work is to reduce the weight so that our economic flywheel retains as much energy as possible.
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Picture a stone flywheel spinning on a shaft. If there is no lubricant, there will be lots of friction. We can measure that friction through heat, which is the energy that is coming out of our economic flywheel. If it is well lubricated, the flywheel spins efficiently without much loss of energy, so the things that we do to help our economic flywheel reduce friction and spin effectively lubricate our flywheel. However, there are many elements that have the opposite effect, acting as sand. Picture sand pouring into that gap between flywheel and axle. What is happening now? More and more energy is going to be pulled out of our flywheel to fight through that sand. Lots and lots of sand is getting in the way of our economic flywheel.
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Grease on the axle helps our flywheel spin better. So, anything we can do to be better managers of all of the government services we buy we put grease on the axle. This also covers how we manage those whom we hire to manage government service.
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We now have a shared view of how our democracy evolved as boundary conditions dissolved, a shared mission of changing the direction of the WTAT flywheel, the economic flywheel vernacular to assist with discussion and debate and a multitude of ideas to rally around. How each of us embrace our civic responsibilities will differ, but the essential element is that we all need to be doing our part, no matter how small or large.
Chapters in this part
