Liquidate Government Part 3.

I propose that government should consist of only three ministries, in accordance with my own capitalist beliefs of what government’s job is. These three ministries are partly just symbolic, representing to the mind what government’s real function is. I say ‘symbolic’ because strictly speaking, government can actually function without any ministry at all. Just because someone long ago designed government with ministries does not mean that’s the only way they can operate. There is no reason at all, for example, that a government should not operate just like a commercial company, with one CEO (President) and a number of departmental heads or vice presidents – working in the same general office building and not necessarily having gigantic independent office buildings spread all over the city (and country) as ministries currently do with their huge independent electricity bills, maintenance budgets, vehicles, etc - and not forgetting the countless workers needed there.

There is absolutely no reason why an African government cannot operate like a simple company. After all, there are many companies in the developed world that are bigger than African governments. They oversee much bigger budgets, have greater ‘revenues’, have more technical and strategic problems to solve on a daily basis, and so on (while our ministers find more time to line up at the airport to 'receive' the president). And yet these companies have a management structure that is more lean, more efficient and much smaller than that of our governments. The entire budget of Zambia, for example, is five times smaller than Microsoft’s budget in only one department: research. And yet Zambia’s executive structure is much bigger than the entire Microsoft structure – not just that of the research department! Obviously this is completely inefficient.

The idea of government ministries was copied from Western governments. We have a similar number of ministries and similar structures as governments of developed nations. But we forget that these governments are much, much bigger than us. In fact, all of these governments are bigger than many Microsofts put together and they even have larger annual budgets. It makes sense that they should have bigger management structures and more people in 'management' than Microsoft. The purpose of management, after all, is to work at managing available resources. The more such resources, the larger the management can justifiably be. It does not make sense to have a large management structure to look after very few resources. You end up paying the management more money than the money they are supposed to be managing, which is very inefficient and almost insane.

This again is common sense. Common sense is anything that we all practice in our daily lives and are expected to apply in other situations. In this case, we all do know that it is insane to have a large management structure if you are overseeing very few resources. For example, there is no person in their right mind who can have ten managers when he has a company that makes only five hundred dollars a month. What are the ten managers managing? Nothing. It’s also possible that the main reason the company is only making five hundred dollars is because most of the money is only going to pay the managers for managing nothing.

This is precisely the situation we have in Zambia. We have many managers in the government – ministers, permanent secretaries, directors at each ministry, etc – and yet the government has very little money. So, what are these people managing? The money that the national budget gives to the Ministry of Science and Technology is very, very little and the minister in charge always makes it a point to complain about this, as do all other ministers. But the question is: if they have such little money to administer, then why do they have so many people to administer it?

If every Zambian took time to just find out what these ministries do, they would be amazed at just how pointless they are. They have so little money that there is nothing they do, really, except to pay themselves and all the institutions owned by government placed under them. The Ministry of Science and Technology just pays themselves, and sends money to the Technical colleges in Zambia and the other science institutions owned by the government. But seriously, do you need an entire ministry to do that? All the information that the ministry collects and keeps can very easily be stored and collected at another ministry – if they have an efficient computer system.

As one investigates all the ministries and assesses their functions, it becomes very easy to see that all the information owned by these ministries, a lot of which is practically useless, can easily be managed by a few data collectors and a single computer – they definitely do not need any directors and ministers there. The distribution of money to the various institutions under them can easily be done by one ministry – perhaps just one department at ‘cabinet office’ can be in charge of this. This would be more efficient, much faster and more coordinated. And of course, there would also be less corruption.

So, if all the jobs of these ministries can be done by Cabinet office – the vice president’s office – then why should we even have them? The truth is that we do not need any of them.

Someone might argue that these ministries all have experts in important fields who are very useful for Zambia, which is why we should maintain the ministries. Well, all I can say is that these experts are so useful that they have made us become the second poorest nation in the world. I might be wrong, but I think that if I have a company with many “useful experts” and I end up with the poorest company in the world, I might have to reconsider my assessment of these experts.

I agree that we have many great and brilliant experts at these ministries, but my argument is that we do not need them and we do not need whatever they are doing. The main reason is that, firstly, we do not have enough money to enable these to do whatever brilliant things they have to do. Secondly, evidence has shown that there is nothing they have done. The reason is not that they are bad, but it is more probably because the government does not need whatever it is they want to offer.

Why do we have so many economists at the Ministry of Finance? Do we need all those people to make the budget? Our budget every year is about one billion dollars. The budget allocations to different sectors just change slightly and this is always the idea of the sitting president – he might decide to impress everyone a particular year by just allocating a higher figure to agriculture or something like that. You do not need fifty economists for that. Not even one. One or two accountants would be enough.

I do realise that I can never get that sort of message through to this or any other government, but I believe that by giving my ‘extremist’ position, I might inspire someone to think at least in that direction and start thinking about streamlining and downsizing the government – if they do not go for outright liquidation. We actually do not need any of the ministries, but in this article I will suggest that we can have three ministries –  the reason I suggest three is more a question of symbolism than functionality. The generations that come in the future must know what government is there for, and the symbols that could remind them of this are the ministries that we could remain with if we liquidated the rest.

My three ministries would be: the ministry of national security, the ministry of public administration and the ministry of foreign relations.

National security would obviously consist of Defence, the Police and Courts of Law. This would be the most important ministry in the nation. The main purpose of government is security. When governments were first formed this was their only function. Governments only evolved into their other assumed duties because people kept wanting them to do more and more things for them – to favour them and so on. Governments have ultimately evolved into socialist institutions that are there to both compete with individual entrepreneurs in certain sectors of business and to take money from those who are productive to those who are not. Governments have been the biggest source of poverty the world over by their innate socialist inclinations.

Our future generations would gain a lot by seeing that government is only there, or mainly, to simply look after their security, from enemies outside and enemies within. They are there to make the environment peaceful so that everyone can concentrate on their productive efforts without worrying about security. They are there to ensure that everyone can pursue their own happiness without fearing immoral individuals who might want to take what they have worked for by force.

The United States has recently embarked on an aggressive mission of fighting terrorism both locally and on foreign soil. Although the merits of their war with some nations are still debatable and controversial, it is really the right function of every government to deal with the area of national security, and they should not occupy themselves with too many other things if they are going to do this work properly. My own belief is that September 11 would not have happened had the United States been more capitalist than they currently are. Had they been truly capitalist, they would have ensured that their government concentrated more strictly on national security instead of spreading their arms into everything. The United States government, for example, is involved in genetic research, competing very directly with private firms that have been trying to do things like isolating the human genome, etc. In an ideal capitalist state, the government should not involve itself with such things. All that money the US government uses on scientific research and such things would have properly gone into more research into security issues and higher concentration on national security. Removing all such wastes, their Defence system would have been so intelligent, so alert and so powerful that September 11 would not have happened. Unfortunately, even in the most capitalist nations of the world, there is a lot of socialism. Governments all over the world have evolved into socialist organs. They think more about ‘social security’ than about national security. September 11 is the result.

But the problem is more acute in Africa where, not only are governments doing the wrong socialist things, but it is not even logical for them to do it because of the little resources they have. The Zambian government engages in scientific research just like the US Government, and to us this is even more useless. That money should have been more useful just sitting in the bank instead of being wasted on research that we never see or use. When was the last time the government science research institutions of Zambia came up with something that affected our lives even in the least bit of sense? Never. So, we would not terribly miss them if they were dissolved – at least for now, while we are still poor. These wrong things could perhaps be done in future when our government is as big as that of the United States – though it will mean risking September 11 for us as well even then.

National Security is the main function of government, if not the only one. If governments become specialists at maintaining security they will become very good at the job. Governments are not good at national security because they are not specialists. There is no one who can become very good at something without specialising in it. By doing many things, one will become bad at all of them. Governments are bad at everything they do, whether it is health delivery, education, national security, and so on. There are some governments in developed nations that appear to give very good services even in these areas, but even there they are never as good as the private specialists. The private specialists would have been even better had they not have had to worry about competition with government in these areas. But this leads to a sharp debate on the alleged “weaknesses of the market”, so I will leave it there.

The other two ministries I can suggest would be the ministry of public administration and the ministry of foreign relations. In my ideal world these two ministries would not be there either, but in the “real” world, unfortunately, we need to have them. The Ministry of foreign relations can help us manage our relationships with the rest of the world. Foreign embassies, etc, come under this ministry. Unfortunately, this area has become very important in the world of international politics and especially as the world has evolved more and more into a unified entity – globalisation. A nation that fails to manage its image to the rest of the world might become a victim of false information on the world wide web and could lose the confidence of investors in the rest of the world. This should obviously receive much less money than the ministry of national security, but it can also be useful under the current world system.

Lastly, the ministry of public administration or public resource administration. Unfortunately, there are some things that are difficult to privatise – resources that need to be managed by the government, until the world discovers how to privatise these as well – and until there is enough knowledge to avoid radical and irrational resistance to privatisation. These resources, though they must be as few as possible, should come under this ministry. This is also the ministry that would plan the allocation of money to the other two ministries, determination of taxes, role of central bank, etc – in other words it would retain the function of the current ministry of finance. Administration means management, and management means planning and overseeing the distribution of money and other resources.

This ministry would look after the roads, and other institutions that are still under public ownership. One of the things they should be concerned with, of course, is to figure out how to privatise or lease out some of the things that are under public ownership. They should, for instance, be in charge of quickly disposing of ZESCO, ZAMTEL and other public utility companies that can rightly be managed by the private sector.

Other ministries that currently exist are completely irrelevant. There is nothing we can lose by getting rid of Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Mines, Ministry of Tourism, and so on and so on. With proper computerisation and web technology, we can easily administer licensing for business activity in the sectors these ministries represent in just one small office at the Ministry of Public Administration. Currently we have many, many people getting monthly salaries for literally doing nothing except to come and use government phones for private purposes. A good computer system, incorporating intranet and extranet technologies, would easily do all the work of all these ministries and get rid of their useless works like research and so on.

(Due to limitations of space, we shall discuss Intranet and extranet technology in detail later, showing precisely how these technologies can completely revolutionise government management - as they are doing in developed nations.)