AN ANALOGY

Most everyone likes sprots analogies, but sports gives a non-threatening insight into the way things are accomplished in a free society. So, in that spirit, I offer an analogy to illustrate the proper role of government in the economy.

A football game consists of two teams managed by coaching staffs playing according to agreed upon rules, enforced by neutral officials. The rules are necessary to accomplish the purposes of the game, ensure some level of fairness, and make the game worth playing in the first place. The coaching staffs provide the management, teh skilled expertise to make their teams perform at the highest level. The better the caches perform their duties, the more competetive and therefore the more worthwhile the game. The referees perform teh role of regulators. When they do not perform impartially, the game suffers. Now, if at some point, the officials decide that the coaches are not doing their jobs, and begin to perform the duties of coach in addition that of referee, the rules of the game no longer are important. The officials are no longer impartial and the outcome of the game no longer depends on a fair competition, but on the predilection of the officials.

In our economy, the proper role of government is analogous to the role of football officials. They are regulators, and regulation is important for the proper functioning of competetive enterprise. When government also assumes the role of manager, the inherent benefits of competition, the promotion of efficiency, are lost. Government can set the rules to allow for a healthy, competetive economic activity, but when it assumes to become a player in, or micromanager of that activity, outcomes become divorced from merit, and the entire enterprises degenerates into a bureaucratic mire.