By Thomas Calabro | United States
Many of us have worked for someone who was very particular about how work was operated and needed to constantly monitor and manage workers so that they may arrive at the preferred outcome with the specific method. In a way, the Government is the same as any micromanager: a controlling figure of authority who seeks to regulate the aspects of a job rather than delegate these powers to others. In this case, we can see how an intrusive government wishes to become the biggest (and worst) micromanager of all, one that monitors and controls the means of production.
We constantly see states that wish to exhibit the attitudes of the typical micromanager. The state has a lack of faith in how a job gets done (in this case providing goods and services to the people). So it seeks to monitor how businesses conduct themselves, what materials to use, what wages to pay employees, what products can even be sold, and what prices they are sold at, if you are even allowed to. Any issues in these realms are a call for the state to gain influence over these aspects for its intended purposes of increasing the nation’s economic strength, of distribution of wealth, and even of creating “healthy” lifestyles.
While a free market has proven to be an effective way at distributing goods and services to a greater amount of people, many grow resentful of this amount of free will in the hands of certain individuals, choosing to harm the environment, or an individual’s own body because of the products they demand. The idea of one consuming a big gulp with a plastic straw, while smoking a blunt inside of a car manufactured in another country, does not instigate the thought of a people whose economic system provides goods demanded to a large population that through voluntary interaction. Rather it shows the need of creating a social/cultural atmosphere of implementing policies for the good of a collective (the State, Americans, the lower class, etc) rather than the individual. It isn’t the distribution of goods and services of our desires, but the distribution of goods and services of our needs.
The result of the attempt to control the economy and the economic decisions of individuals and businesses become similar to the effects of a micromanager. Creative innovators are suppressed, as a result of the lack of incentive to grow due to red tape, and other hurdles that are required to contribute “effectively” into the economy and ultimately pushing away talented and hardworking employees/workers that may effectively contribute, either to the economy or a business. There is no way to effectively see where what society needs without pricing mechanisms or freedoms to use certain products that cost less and are demanded more. Rather it is reliant upon those who set rules and regulations to either set standards that are needed to be met to meet the demand or to downright seize the powers of supply, effectively taking control from the producers (who really are controlled by the demands of the consumers) so that those very same people feel that the economic decisions are in suitable control.
This micromanagement shows a lack of faith in the economic system that truly puts the consumers in control, has increased wages, decreased poverty, and gotten us to a world where food and other necessities are less of a scarcity. It is time that those who feel we must control the economy realize that by placing our trust into the economic system that relies on individual demand, we truly are in control, and should cherish that freedom that many in the world don’t have.
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