Understanding Competition, Waste, and Ease

We are about to dig into a topic that will fundamentally change the way you think about freedom and systems of government. After many years of study, I know when we ignore Benjamin Franklin, we do so at our own peril. Franklin was as great an economist as anyone who ever lived. He understood the essence of human nature perhaps better than anyone ever has.  One of his most significant realizations was the concepts of competition, waste, and ease explained how nature worked and how it should be applied to the marketplace and government. You may wonder why you haven’t heard of this set of concepts considering the great minds we have had throughout history. Bastiat, Smith, von Mises, Hayek, Friedman…none of them “got” competition, waste, and ease.

The ramifications of competition, waste, and ease are huge.  

Don’t confuse simplicity with value. First, the concepts are so simple any high school student could understand them. Many concerned citizens have disparaged the lack of an informed electorate.  Concepts so simple as competition, waste, and ease are the best way to give everyone a foundation. As someone recently said, “Once you learn competition, waste, and ease, you can’t unlearn them.” Having a fundamental understanding of the forces at play can help anyone diagnose what is causing a breakdown in a system. When you consider that our system of freedom operates on these same principles you can then understand how to fix it.

People who say they want limited government don’t often understand why. Since the Federal government has no competition, it will necessarily be wasteful.  As it grows, it will waste more and more. The only way the people can keep their money from being wasted is to keep government limited. How simple is that?

Competition is a good thing. The concepts argue for as much competition as possible. Knowledgeable people have long argued for private sector solutions as opposed to government solutions.  I’m not sure they understood why. My guess is they simply based their conclusion on historical experience. It was easy to see that the private sector always did better than the government.  The real reason, however, was the private sector had competition while the government did not.

Competition, Waste, and Ease Create Maximum Freedom When in Balance

You better check yourself before you wreck yourself. Federal welfare is bankrupting the country (everything moves to ease).  Unfortunately, we are never going to get rid of welfare. What can be done though is to introduce competition. The federal government has no competition so the program is very wasteful. We need to remove welfare from the federal government and exclusively give it to the 50 states.  This will create a marketplace with competition. It will also create accountability to properly manage it for the residents of that state. The states who are wasteful may attract more people but then they will become insolvent. Over time the curve between all the states will flatten and welfare will become more of a system of individual obligation.  It will not be as wasteful as it is today…because of competition.

How many ways can you apply these concepts? This is just one example of the concepts of competition, waste, and ease being applied to a specific situation. We have the ability to solve many problems in our lives and government if we would just apply these principles. Franklin was very wise and for a system of freedom to work you have to know how it works and how to fix it when it falls out of balance. If lawmakers and citizens fail to understand these principles we will get more bad laws and bad governance.