Like most Americans, I spent the last couple weeks following the shut-down debacle with a mixture of bemusement and disappointment. It's hard to get excited about a reasonable end to an entirely avoidable crisis. Thinking about the history of government in the United States, it's hard not to wonder whether the legislative quagmire we find ourselves in today could have been avoided through systematic tweaks back in the days of the original constitutional convention. We find ourselves in a bad
equilibrium state, and perhaps our founders neglected to see the ways in which voters and politicians would feed off of each other's fears and short-term desires, and the ways in which they would throw away traditions of respect in favor of procedural allowances. That being said, this seems like the right time to post a video that was shared with me by the Online MBA organization, emphasizing the ways in which government and business do (and should) differ in how they are
run. Perhaps now is the time to rethink how our government should be structured in order to allow it to solve problems. Our generation will not be able to keep kicking the can down the road.
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