Why Government Always Fails: It’s All About Incentives

WDOWS (00:00.512)

Why does government perpetually fail? You know, I’ve talked about this before about taxes. I wouldn’t mind paying taxes. I don’t mind paying taxes if I actually felt like I was getting my money’s worth. And I’m gonna be honest, that’s how most people feel. Nobody likes being taken advantage of. Nobody likes wasting money. When you see a hard earned dollars being set on fire,

No one likes it. You know, you think of that scene in Batman where the Joker’s got that big pile of cash there and he just sets the whole bloody thing on fire. Well, that’s what we’re dealing with all the time. And that’s government. I recently did a podcast talking about the TSA. TSA and how I believe that the TSA should have nothing to do with government at all. Let the private sector handle it.

I have been consistent on this for decades. Hurricane Katrina, we laughed, but it wasn’t even funny. It was funny, funny, not funny. People were having issues and FEMA couldn’t figure how to get water to spots until Walmart stepped in and they showed them how to do it. FEMA could privatize that too.

I want to reiterate. Government is, and I wrote about this in the past. There was a movie back from 1956. I first saw this movie as a kid when my dad would bring home from school, reel to reel projectors. This is back when, you know, 1970, you know, early, I had VCRs back then, but they were like a zillion dollars. So you could actually go to your local public library and

take out reel to reel movies. And my dad would bring a projector home from school. He was a school teacher. And we’d watch movies and the blob. Steve McQueen, the blob, bloated by the blood of its victims just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Well, that’s government, except it’s bloated by our tax dollars. And that’s why we continue to see Washington, DC continue to expand. Its footprint gets bigger and bigger.

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and Bigger X goes into Maryland, it goes into Virginia, all the surrounding areas, all of the communities that were there. Again, I think one of the biggest mistakes we made as when our founders made was decide, again, it was a compromise to have the capital put there. Bad idea. Bad idea. Again, the whole city just basically exists to feed itself and that’s unfortunately what

it’s become. There was a episode of Seinfeld back in the day. George was working for a company called Kroger Industrial Smoothing. And the company was a disaster. Company was an absolute disaster. There was a meeting that took place where they didn’t know whether being in the black or the red was, you know, any good or not. And they couldn’t figure that out.

Anyway, nothing matters. There’s bottom line doesn’t matter. Bottom line doesn’t matter to the federal government because they force us to give them more money.

WDOWS (03:36.11)

They just force us to send them more money again. And again, we don’t have any choice. We don’t have any choice. That’s what are we going to do? mean, what are we going to we have a tax revolt? I mean, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a tax cut the government off. But that’s that’s never going to happen. So they continue. You know, they tell us they give they feed us lines of

BS, we’re lower to your top line income taxes. And then they just find another way of taxing you. You can look at your cell phone bill. You can look at, know, basically we’re all in a perpetual state of paying taxes. There’s never going to be enough. Again, why would that? What would be the incentive of government actually doing a decent job? Think about that. We’ve got a world of incentives,

Why do a good job? It’s actually, quite frankly, it’s better for them if they f-stop up all the time, quite frankly. Am I wrong there? Oh, they do a horrible job, it doesn’t work. Well, guess what? We just need more money. We just need more money, which means we need more government employees, we need more people grifting on our hard-earned tax dollars. DC and state capitals all across the land.

It’s the land of grifters. These are people that do not build or create anything. Never have to worry about a bottom line. You know, there’s another aspect of this as well. And people can there’s a lot of people in the private sector that and I’ve talked about this too, that have had an ethical bypass at birth. And they understand this. They are well aware.

well aware of the incompetence in government. Now, the government does give out contracts to the private sector. And if you are lucky enough to get one of those contracts, woo, hoo. And that’s, again, that’s one way that these politicians enrich themselves. I made the point, this was during the financial crisis after Barack Obama.

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got elected. I talked about it on the show. I said one of the best investments anyone could have made. Anyone could have made was to give money to Barack Obama. Start a company that you called the Green Company and you would have gotten cash. You would have gotten cash from Obama and let’s call it what it is. Okay.

I know you’re gonna get the people right freaking out. I’m sorry. You know you take a look at the people that gave money to Donald Trump a lot of guys that I went after personally here on my program white-collar fraudsters white-collar fraudsters Trevor mill I go on and on and on everybody we covered here on the program well they gave money to Donald Trump and you know what they got themselves they got themselves a pardon in

another contract with the government. Yeah, Trevor Milton got pardoned and he’s got another company going where he’s getting more money. Can’t make the stuff up if you wanted to. Again, that’s how the system works. And the system sucks. Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban made this point. And I disagree with him. Because it’s not a lie. He says, it’s what basically what he says contradicting himself in this but he makes a good point. Now you’ll you’ll get it after I read it.

He said the big lie of government sucks at everything is that they suck the most at enforcing performance and costs.

market, you’ve ran a business. Okay. Okay. You, you essentially suck at everything. If you can’t enforce performance and costs. So his first sentence in this, he contradicts himself. But what he says here is true. You know, it’s worse than the government running a service, private companies, knowing that the government entities they contract with can’t

WDOWS (08:13.09)

do to stop them from blanking up everything and making a fortune. Yeah, Mark. They do know that but who’s right in the checks?

Well, essentially, we are as taxpayers. Essentially, we are as taxpayers, but we have to write those checks because they’re taken from us by force. They’re taken from us, our taxes, and this is how they spend our money. So ultimately, Mark, it’s the government’s fault. Sorry. He says, I’m not saying this applies to every private company. Many do have ethics, not all. As an entrepreneur, it’s embarrassing to us all. You’re right, Mark, it is.

Okay, need proof. Look at the Kristi Noem ad contract. Look at healthcare taxpayers provide 70 % or more of the revenue of the largest insurance companies, those same insurance companies that get fined and found liable for ripping off taxpayers again and again and again. And they still get to do business with the government knowing they can effectively steal money from us all. The fines are nuisance. Mark’s get it. Said this all the time. Fines are just parking ticket.

That’s all he’s right. Finds Asia corporations is a parking ticket. It’s a cost of doing business. It’s like when FedEx gets a parking ticket on its truck when it has to double park in Manhattan to make a delivery. Anyway, there’s been movies about this as well. One was one in regards to the Iraq war was good war dogs was true story. Two kids.

They start an arms company. They just go find out you can go online. Apply for your own company. Apply for a government contract and they, you know, said that they could provide all of these guns and weapons and they figured out a way to do it. They made themselves an absolute fortune. even though they were selling faulty ammunition and all sorts of other crap that they bought from Albania. But anyway, neither here nor there. The government perpetually fails because

WDOWS (10:27.06)

No one is held accountable. No one gets fired. All you need to do, and I’ve explained this before, is you need government workers and people that work their way up in management actually have incentives for cutting costs and saving taxpayers money. But there’s no way that’s gonna ever happen because it’s the blob.

and the bigger government gets, the more money goes to Washington DC, the more money that is gonna, you the wives and the significant others, you know, wanna leave Barney Frank out of this. Anyway, that are gonna be spent in, know, Bethesda at the various different stores there.

That’s my money. That’s your money. It’s a grift. It’s a grift we’re all getting taken advantage of. you don’t think if you don’t actually think that they could cut cut government spending in half, they could. it could easily be done. sure. lot of people would lose their jobs, whatnot. But again, all of the various different hands in the pot.

I know I, I, I’m, you know, talking about this for the hell of it. It’s kind of a learning thing for you. can understand my position and why I don’t want to pay taxes.

Well, I don’t want to pay taxes. I say this, I’ve said this for some time. You want to come and you want to raise my taxes, balance the budget. Balance the budget and every additional dime of taxes that you are going to get from me has to be used to basically pay down the debt.

WDOWS (12:18.126)

Can you do that? No, they can’t do that. They can’t. Because when they talk about government cuts in spending, it’s not cutting spending. don’t cut crap. They just cut the increase that these failed programs get again and again and again. You’re in the know now. You’re in the know now. Okay, this and again, this is not an elephant or donkey issue.

Okay, that little fake fight that they put on about all of the stuff. It’s nonsense. Okay, it’s nonsense. They both. They both reap the rewards. yeah, remember we had we were gonna have Doge right? What happened to Doge? What happened to not having any earmarks or any pork spending? it’s all gone.

It’s all gone because you, we, unfortunately, we’re elect people that really can’t build or create anything. They just like to steal from us.

Watchdog on wallstreet.com.