The New Jersey Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization, and Consolidation Commission’s 2008 report Literature Review and Analysis Related to Optimal Municipal Size and Efficiency says that:
1.) For municipalities with a population below 25,000, the literature “suggests” that these municipalities are “less efficient” that larger municipalities, but “details are unimportant.” Small municipalities are only less efficient in the area of specialized or capital-intensive services, such as rural road maintenance or municipal water supplies. Smaller municipalities are better at delivering labor-intensive services.
2.) Their review of the extant literature on the subject of municipality size vs. efficiency found that municipalities between 25,000 and 250,000 people in size were equally efficient. There was no correlation between size and inefficiency. Larger municipalities are more efficient at delivering specialized and capital-intensive services.
3.) When the population of a municipality exceeds 250,000 citizens, it is “clearly less efficient.”
4.) Increasing size is correlated with increased efficiency for “capital-intensive services”. Examples of this are “utility systems or public works.”
5.) An “increase in size is related to a decrease in efficiency” as concerns “labor-intensive services”. They use police work as an example, and state that “smaller units are more efficient”.
The conclusions that can be drawn from that information are, that as government increases in size, it becomes more efficient. Up to a point. Once you pass a certain population size, governments start to become inefficient. There are economies of scale for large public works. For labor-intensive services, the addition of each individual worker results in less efficiency overall for each worker.
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I will present you with a real-world example. My brothers and I used to hang drywall. At that time 16 foot long sheets were commonly used. It seems almost impossible to hang a 16 foot board on a ceiling by yourself, but it can be done with the proper equipment. It is very labor-intensive and inefficient. You are lucky to get 25 boards a day hung this way. And it is physically draining. This is analogous to the tiny town with a small road maintenance crew working overtime to clear a snowstorm.
With two hangers, it is way easier, quicker, involves less setup, and is less physically demanding. We usually got 85 boards a day hung. This is analogous to the large town having the equipment and manpower to handle major snowstorms.
With the third hanger, things got even easier. Two could remain on the horses while the third one cut the boards and handed then up. There was some time to talk and relax momentarily. We usually got 125 boards a day hung. This is slightly less efficient, but we could do about 30 percent more houses in a month.
By adding the fourth person, our board count was only about 145 boards a day. We added the fourth person because these were big houses with a lot of high work, which was more time-consuming and labor intensive. The cutter climbed the scaffold part way in handing the board up. This cost us more money out of our pocket, but was necessary, as without the fourth person, it would take about 40 percent more time to finish such a house. This in actuality cut our overall income, if we did not take on the fourth person. This is analogous to the medium-sized city road crew dealing with a big snowstorm.
Adding the fifth person gained us only about 15 additional boards a day, so this seldom happened. The fifth person had little to do at the beginning and the end of the day. We only used a fifth person in mansions. This is analogous to the road crew for the metropolis. Someone always has nothing to do but lean on the shovel until there is work to do. But they are needed for the blizzards. It is inefficient.
Generally, the contractor would hire two crews for such a mansion, of two to three men each. Both crews were thus efficient, as they were not too large. One of the crews went to another house as the one we were working on neared completion. This is analogous to outsourcing additional work when it gets to be too much for your regular crew. This is done in a lot of cities through bid and contract. They do the normal road work all year long, but when the big blizzard comes, there are additional private contractors under contract who help the metropolis’s crew clear the roads. This can be an efficient system.
Provided there are no union agreements to the contrary.
In any organization, there comes a point where being to large results in a loss of production per employee. With the government, political units over 250,000 people start to become increasingly inefficient and unresponsive as they get even larger. There are specific economies of scale, and it is the job of the managers of political subdivisions to determine through a benefit-cost analysis where the cutoff point is. More employees means more costs, and decreasing efficiency. Fewer employees means fewer necessary or desired services. The garbage has to be picked up, drinking water has to be treated, and fires have to be fought.
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I will have to wing this paragraph, as I cannot find a source for it online. In one of my college course textbooks, it was stated that the maximum size at which a national government can govern a country theoretically ends at a population level of one billion citizens. Beyond that, the country is far too populous to govern. There are too many people in it, too many bureaucrats are required, and there is no way to efficiently keep tabs on all of these bureaucrats. Graft, bribe-taking, collusion, corruption, and general lassitude and ineffectiveness result. The textbook said that the most manageable and efficient national governments have between 300 million and 600 million citizens.
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The International Monetary Fund produced a 2008 IMF Working Paper titled Determinants of Government Efficiency. This was related to the financial systems of countries, but some of the general conclusions can be extrapolated to other areas that are affected by these governments. In it, 114 countries were compared for “public sector performance and efficiency”. The data analyzed covered the years 1980 to 2006. They looked specifically at health care and education.
They concluded that the more spent by the government on services relative to the country’s GDP, the lower the efficiency of that government. The demand for public services increases as a country grows richer. Only higher efficiency can avoid increased taxes in that case.
Good governance is also crucial to economic growth. The “security of property rights, income level, competence of the civil service, and the population’s education level [all] affect efficiency.”
Worldwide, government efficiency is poorest in “countries that are poor, close to the equator, ethno-linguistically heterogeneous, use French or socialist laws, or have high proportions of Catholics or Muslims”. Those same conclusions were put forward in another paper I researched for this article. It claimed that culture generally influences the laws passed in a country, and via that comes the negative influence of specific religions on government efficiency.
“[As] their governments spend more on education”, there is no correlation with any gains in that area. The paper notes that “throwing money at issues” is a political reflex that is unfounded.
Public sector performance decreases the less the government is held accountable. The more corruption there is in a particular government, the less efficient that system is.
Higher spending leads to lower efficiency. “[C]itizens on average get declining marginal improvements in performance for increasing public funding of education and health”. The reality of the situation is that there is “no improvement at all in education” from throwing additional money at it. There is also a potential correlation between lower health care efficiency and higher spending. Lower efficiency might actually lead to higher spending.
Controlling corruption increases efficiency. Corruption leads to waste. It is bad for economic growth. Poor countries are generally inefficient. Often they are poor and inefficient due at least in part to corruption.
The conclusions that can be drawn from that article are that a larger population demands additional services per person. Increasing wealth increases the demands for these services. The demand for these services is higher in urban areas. There is a point at which spending additional money on a social problem will result in diminishing returns. Past a certain point, all additional money spent is essentially wasted. The larger the government, the more inefficient it is, generally speaking. The larger the government, the more is spent (and wasted) on demanded services. The larger the government, the higher is the tendency for it to be corrupt and inefficient. Poor nations are corrupt and inefficient as a general rule regardless of population.
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In Corruption and Economic Growth: The African Experience, the authors conclude that there is no direct correlation between population growth, economic growth, investment, and corruption. Corruption does directly slow economic growth by lowering productivity. Also, outside interests are wary about investing in a country that is known for governmental corruption. Corruption is disadvantageous to those who do not have enough money or lobbyists to bribe or lobby the government.
Some say that corruption “greases the wheel”, and speeds up the decision-making and permit-granting process. A study in India shows that corrupt officials hold out for even more bribes. This delays the overall approval process considerably. Corruption increases the need for public investment. It acts as an additional tax on private investment.
This paper found that in the 18 African countries studied, “corruption is [obviously] rampant, while growth is anemic”. They studied Angola, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.
Corruption directly discourages a “productive utilization of capital” and encourages “resource misallocation.” It indirectly retards economic growth by “lowering investment in both physical and human capital.” The 18 countries studied have an abundance of unskilled labor. Due to this, increases in population do not increase the needed labor pool. Corruption reduces population growth. Economic growth stimulates population growth.
The conclusions to be drawn from this paper are that corruption breeds inefficiency, and inefficiency discourages innovation and investment. Innovation and investment, including in educating workers to do skilled jobs, are necessary for economic growth. In general, as larger countries also have a tendency to become corrupt, they also become less efficient with their increasing size and increased governmental control of the marketplace.
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The Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis published a 2010 paper titled Does the Size and Quality of the Government Explain the Size and Efficiency of the Financial Sector? This paper looked at the impact of the size and quality of the governments of 71 economies as compared to their financial sectors’ sizes and efficiency.
It is noted in this paper “that countries with English Common law origin provide the highest investor protection while countries with French law origin provide investors with the least protection”. The result is “that countries with superior creditor protection directives have better developed financial systems”.
This paper also notes “that government ownership of banks is negatively associated with bank performance and stability…[and] increased government ownership of a banking system can negatively impact upon financial sector development and economic growth.”
The availability of private credit “by a banking system could be low due to large government expenditures, an inefficient legal system or a corrupt bureaucracy”. Inefficient or corrupt governments can result in increased overhead costs for banks (can you say, “bribe”?).
The author concluded that quality of the government is more important than the size of it in determining financial sector size. Government quality and size are important for financial sector efficiency. The authors conclude that “good governance is a pre-condition for financial sector development.”
The paper’s author also noted that the legal tradition of the British colonizers stressed private property rights. It also favored financial development. In the former French colonies, the imposition of French Civil law resulted in a legal tradition that was “less conducive to financial development”. Interestingly, “countries of German legal origin have higher levels of financial development compared to English legal origin countries.”
Bureaucratic efficiency is a hallmark of the German legal system. This system is also adaptable to changes in circumstances. Scandinavian and Socialist legal system financial sector development is a little bit lower than development in English legal origin countries, but not by much.
Better government and legal systems, plus reducing government spending on and ownership of bank,s improves financial sector efficiency. Increasing government investment in and ownership of banks increases the size of the financial sector. This is especially true in developing countries, where private banks are unwilling to invest in banks in low-income areas, which stagnates development in those areas. “The continued subsidization of development banks and micro-finance institutions can lead to a lack of competitiveness, and rising overhead costs and interest margins.”
Greater ethnic fractionalization in a country results in policies and institutions that are more interested in gaining power and control than in improving competition. “[C]ountries become more interventionist with increased ethnic diversity. Religious diversity therefore could be said to increase the power of certain interest groups, thereby slowing down financial sector efficiency.”
The conclusions that can be drawn from this paper are that heavy government borrowing reduces the availability of funds for private sector investment. It raises the interest rate at which everyone has to borrow money. Protection of private property and the protection of investors from capricious laws or unscrupulous brokers are essential to the stability of the financial system in a country. Stability results in increasing investment in the country by the private sector, which is the only way to achieve real economic growth. The ownership of banks by the government stifles economic growth in the more developed nations. A government’s borrowing money to bail out specific banks does nothing to stabilize the economy or the banking system overall. It decreases the amount of credit available to private investors by a corresponding amount. When special interest groups get their pet legislation passed, it generally has a negative impact of economic development, and thus on the banking system. Making a government more efficient and more responsive to the needs of its citizens is the surest way to stimulate an economy.
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Max Weber saw bureaucracy as being essential to the modern state. It is the most efficient form of organization within democratic-leaning societies. It is also a threat to individual freedoms. Weber viewed increasing bureaucratization as a path leading to a “polar night of icy darkness”. In our world, which even today is being molded by bureaucrats, an increasing rationalization of the human condition will eventually trap all individuals in an “iron cage” of bureaucratic, rule-based control that is based on this rationalism. In Weber’s view, entrepreneurs and politicians are essential to counteract the power and influence of bureaucrats.
The need for more bureaucracy to deliver increasingly demanded services in countries of increasing overall wealth is acknowledged.
As of 2010, there were 21,292,000 active governmental employees in the U.S. This was an 0.6 percent increase over 2009. Of these, 2,748,978 were civilian Federal employees. The U.S. population was estimated at 305,529,237 on 1/1/09. This was an increase of 2,743,429 people since 1/1/08.
Approximately one out of fifteen people work for some governmental entity in the U.S. Currently, employees hired to deliver demanded services and the increase in the U.S. population are close to parity, percentage-wise.
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The Institute of Market Economics produced a 2009 paper titled What is the Optimum Size of Government? In it, they determined that the “optimum size of [any] government, e.g. the share of overall government spending that maximizes economic growth, is no greater than 25% of [that] country’s GDP”. The optimal level of consumption of goods and services by the government is 10.4% of the country’s GDP. The authors acknowledge that further research will likely show that the optimal level of government is even smaller than this. Optimal governmental levels are also dependent upon the quality of the government, which these researchers did not study.
In 2009, the Federal share of the U.S.’s GDP as tax coming from income was 24.0 percent. This does not include any other Federal taxes, such as the tax of firearms. This does not include State and local taxes, such as on income, gasoline, cigarettes, liquor, sales taxes, property taxes, etc.
It can be concluded from this paper that the U.S. is taxing its citizens at a rate that is sub-optimal for stimulating economic growth in this country. Reducing the overall tax burden on U.S. citizens is the only sure way to stimulate purchasing, and via that, to stimulate investment in industries here.
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It is the nature of governments to increase the size of their work forces and their take of their country’s GDP as they get larger. Increasing the size of a bureaucracy further intrenches bureaucratic inertia. Increasing the size of a bureaucracy makes it more and more unmanageable, until it starts descending into inefficiency and corruption. The larger the mass of people ruled, the more inefficient and corrupt the government ruling them becomes, the more expensive it gets to “feed” that government, and the less likely it becomes that there will be economic opportunity for all. The largest of countries have the largest percentage of workers who are unskilled. The same holds for the poorest of countries. Countries that become too large become unmanageable, their economies stagnate, and the people suffer as a result.
This is the economic argument for why a One World Government will not work. It is seven to eleven times too large for any government to manage efficiently. An inefficient and corrupt government stifles opportunity of all of its citizens. Only certain members of such a government benefit from such a system. And they do so at the expense of all of their citizens.
In 2012, the population of China was estimated to be 1,354,040,000 people, which is 19.15 percent of the world’s population. The 2011 estimate for India was 1,210,193,422, which was 17.12 percent. Next comes the U.S., with an estimated 315,452,000 people, as of 2013. This is 4.46 percent of the world’s population. Indonesia had 237,641,326 people in 2010, which is 3.36 percent of the world’s population. All the rest of the countries had less that 200 million people.
China Daily had this to say about official corruption in China:
Basically, money embezzled by corrupt officials belongs to the people, but they cannot readily report their loss to supervisors and could even be targeted for revenge for doing so. More importantly, supervisors cannot touch local officials of the same administrative levels. The Party’s top discipline watchdog does play an effective role in monitoring officials, but China is too vast a country for it to supervise and monitor every official. As a result, many local government leaders are often free from supervision. So rectitude is the only thing that can prevent them from being corrupt, but not all of them can turn a blind eye to the lure of material benefit.
There are currently some efforts in China to end corruption. But it is so endemic now, that the officials and the people no longer pretend that they are hiding it.
NPR reports that corruption is so rampant in China that everyone is on the take. Prosecutions for corruption are way down. “An official People’s Bank of China report posted online last year, then hastily deleted, estimated that around $125 billion had been stashed overseas since the mid-1990s, by at least 16,000 officials, who had subsequently fled overseas.”
The government of India is hopelessly corrupt. There are currently some efforts in place to correct this. In 2011, The Economist had this to say about Indian governmental corruption:
Indians’ anger over rising corruption has reached feverish levels. What people are calling a “season of scams” includes the alleged theft of billions by officials behind last year’s Commonwealth games in Delhi; $40 billion in revenues lost from the crooked sale of 2G telecoms licences; and over $40 billion stolen in Uttar Pradesh alone from schemes subsidising food and fuel for the poor. Foreign businessmen, who have slashed investment over the past year, rank graft as their biggest headache behind appalling infrastructure. Now India’s anti-corruption chief has been forced out over, well, corruption (see article).
India and Chinas’ economies are growing rapidly. Corruption arises easily in such situations. It is endemic to both societies. The governments and the people of both states acknowledge its seriousness. It is hampering an economic growth process that would be even more rapid without it. A handful of public officials are getting filthy rich, and are then bailing out. Many are coming to the West. And they are bringing their morality and their stolen wealth with them. They will use it to buy property, goods, and legislators. Beware.
Both of these one billion plus population societies are rampantly corrupt. To create One World Government will exacerbate the problem. Both of these societies are unmanageable. Extreme poverty like we here in the U.S. can only imagine exists is a daily struggle for hundreds of millions in these two countries. One World Government, which is too large to be manageable, would be extremely inefficient. The result would be the growth of a corrupt bureaucracy that benefits itself at the expense of all other citizens immensely, establishes familial dynasties like they currently have in China, and the eventual degradation of billions of people into a near-starving underclass.
If this cannot happen, why are people still starving in India, where the government rips of billions of dollars each year?
If this cannot happen, why do over 200 million Chinese still have to live on an income equivalent to less than one U.S. dollar per day?
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There is another reason why the creation of One World Government is a huge mistake. Many will say, “But if there are no governments save one, there is no one to fight with. All wars will end!”
With One World Government, you have one power structure. One leader. Do you think that this leader will be the one person in the world least attracted to power? Do you think that the rise to power in One World Government will be all pink and rosy and full of fluffy clouds and fuzzy bunnies? “No, Sir. After you, Sir. You lead first, Sir?”
Is your head that deep up your asshole?
Power attracts those who seek power. The most worldly seek to rule the world. One World Government is absolute. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
If Adolf Hitler had ruled the world, who would have been left to fight him?
If Josef Stalin had ruled the world, who would have been able to contain his ambitions in Eastern Europe? Who would have been able to thwart Soviet intentions via the Cold War?
The goal of the One World Government is to disarm all Peoples. Ostensibly, for their very own protection. So they can make war no more.
So, who is going to disarm the army of The One World Government? Do you think they will disband? No, they need to keep a strong army on hand for “civil unrest.”
So, why do you think they feel they need to keep that army? Is their universal munificence somehow sorely lacking on that one point?
What makes you think that a dictator will not someday take over the One World Government? And who will be able to stop him?
Generally, dictatorships last for decades. Most dictators are eventually removes by foreign forces who invade strictly to remove him, once he has pissed them off enough. In the meantime, millions die.
The world needs to keep at least several large, strong, free, and armed societies. Right now, the United States of America is the last freely armed citizen warrior society. Russia is watching what happens here warily. They know that the European powers want to knock the U.S. down to their level. They know that the ruling financial families have designs on the money supply, resources, and markets of the world. Under One World Government, it is easier to get raw materials and finished goods distributed, as there are no tariffs or borders.
The enemies of the United States and its Constitution are planning to take over under the pretense of “restoring order” here in the U.S. But first, they have to create disorder. Americans will not freely do that, all on their own. America’s enemies will have to initiate it. Then they will use the U.N. to take over the U.S. They will say that they cannot contain the unrest, it will spill over into the rest of the world, help, help! They will invite the U.N in to help quell the “rebellion” that they themselves had created.
Our enemies are completely suicidal.
Russia is watching. They know what to expect. They just got rid of the Communists. They know Commies when they see them. They know who they are. They will not even shake hands with them.
Russia knows that if the U.S. falters, the boot of the One World Government will be on their neck next.
Russia knows that they cannot let this happen. To arms, comrade.
Who would have thought twenty years ago that the American people’s greatest ally philosophically is the free Russian people?
It is inevitable that One World Government degenerates into a dictatorship. Where is the strong warrior nation that will invade a neighbor to stop this evil in its infancy? Where is this foreign savior, if all are under the boot of the OWG?
This is about freedom for the whole world, not just here in the U.S. Most nations have already capitulated, have been disarmed. We are the shining light of free men with the teeth of arms that the whole world looks to. The enemies of freedom and free Peoples want to snuff that light out. Permanently.
The security of freedom in the world is only ensured if there are at least five strong, well-armed, mobile, free, and determined warrior nations left in the world. As checks and balances. As bulwarks against the one who would dictate to the entire world what to do, and how to do it. The one who determines who will live, and who will die.
They said he was coming. The whole thing is kinda End-of-Time-Biblical, ain’t it? If you lean that way.
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So, what can you expect from the OWG dictator to come? All you who resist him, and all you who cross him? All you he imagines resist or have crossed him? All you who he claims have resisted or crossed him? Because he likes your house. Or your wife. Or your daughter, or son.
In Statistics of Democide, R.J. Rummel estimates pre-20th Century democide to be all:
“massacres, infanticide, executions, genocides, sacrifices, burnings, deaths by mistreatment, and the like–that for which corpses have been counted or estimated, surely but a fraction, add up to a range of near 89,000,000 to slightly over 260,000,000 million men, women, and children dead. An appropriate mid-democide estimate might be around 133,000,000 killed.”
His high value is over a billion people killed prior to the 20th Century. His lowest estimate is a third of a billion people.
His 20th Century estimate was 174,000,000. He has seen reason to bump it up to 262,000,000 people.
These are all of the people who have been killed by various governmental entities for various reasons. Many of these were exterminated strictly for political or land possession reasons.
An OWG dictator will likely decide that there are too many people in the world to support properly. After all, look at all of the poor and destitute in the OWG. How did they get here? It cannot be our corrupt policies. It must be some lack on their part. Otherwise, they would be well off, like all of our bureaucrats. Look how well they are all doing!
“Off with their heads!”
Welcome to the New World Government. The New World Order. Aren’t you glad you insisted on it being in your life, ruling your life, making everything “safe” for you?
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“SUCKERS!”
Gary W. Harper
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http://www.nj.gov/dca/affiliates/luarcc/pdf/final_optimal_municipal_size_&_efficiency.pdf
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2008/wp08228.pdf
http://www.jsd-africa.com/Jsda/Spring2005/ArticlePDF/Arc_Corruption%20and%20Economic%20Growth.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy
http://www.numberof.net/number-of-government-employees-in-the-us-2/
http://www.numberof.net/number-of-federal-employees-2/
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/12/31/us-population-2009-305-million-and-counting
http://ime.bg/uploads/335309_OptimalSizeOfGovernment.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population
http://www.china.org.cn/china/NPC_CPPCC_2013/2013-03/06/content_28144918.htm
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/29/155773618/a-portrait-of-chinese-corruption-in-rosy-pink
http://www.economist.com/node/18332796
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP2.HTM
