The Economic Libertarian

Five things I would love to see the government do:
1. Enforce 1% turnover of teachers. During the summer, 1% of teachers should not return to their jobs. If less than this number have quit or retired, fire the teachers with the lowest student grade-pass rate from the year previous.
2. Instate a grandfathered elimination of social security. Those who are currently recieving funds would recieve their full check. Those who are not yet recieving funds should not recieve anything.
3. Eliminate federal highway programs. Sell all highways that can be sold. Such highways as can’t be sold are offered to the states or dismantled.
4. Ban logging on public land. Logging should be done on privately owned plots of forest.
5. Privatize the oceans. End open-access policies, divide the ocean into strips, and auction these strips off to the highest bidder.

Reasons why the government should do these things:
1. The educational system is year after year mediocre. The processes for firing teachers are awful, complex and hard. A mandatory 1% turnover rate would help get rid of the worst and push bad teachers into jobs where they are more productive to the economy and less harmful to other people’s children.
2. The social security system depresses our already dismal savings rate, encourages consumerism and debt, and reduces people to dependence on the state. It also requires theft in the form of excessive taxation to fund.
3. The highway system is not good infrastructure. It costs more to maintain than even the smartest owner could get out of it in profit. Roads are terrifyingly inefficient. If the highway system and automobile transport were not so massively subsidized, railroads would take over, with associated improvements in the national economy – and the environment!
4. Logging on public land has always been shown to be environmentally destructive, while logging on private land is usually done in a sustainable, renewable manner. That’s reason enough.
5. Fish stocks are collapsing. I happen to like fish. Open access policies cause over-fishing. Private ownership will cause sustainable fishing. Again, that’s reason enough.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 7:12 AM and is filed under Government, Spending. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.