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William Price responds to Max Raine’s article, arguing that treating governments like a start-up is naïve, misleading, and ignores democratic realities.
Max Raine recently argued in Drew’s News that politicians should think like start-ups and that government policy should be more flexible in order to adapt to changing circumstances. This is an appealing proposition, but one that is fundamentally misguided. It fails to engage with the reality of policymaking and makes dangerous assumptions about the efficacy of free-market mechanisms in a more general sense.
Here I will present an alternative view: that policymaking is not in fact as rigid as Raine assumes, and that oversimplifying it as such both ignores the current mechanisms we have to improve policy and empowers reductionist and harmful political ideologies.
Raine’s first critical assumption is that start-ups like Uber and Airbnb can completely reinvent themselves while government policy is inflexible, with every failure or tweak ‘seen as a grand failure of leadership or direction.’ He analogises this to mapping out every move in a game of chess before the game begins. The reality stands in stark contrast.
Politicians do indeed win elections with mandates to enact the policies they campaigned on. However, the process of policymaking beyond that point involves slightly more than staring into a ‘taxpayer funded crystal ball.’ Three Readings in both the House and Senate, select committees, public consultations, parliamentary debate, and royal assent all ensure that any Bill passed is both representative of the wishes of voters and informed by the expertise of specialists in the relevant fields. Even once passed, entire governmental departments are devoted to reviewing and updating policy as circumstances change.
Beyond that, the impact of a shift in expectations towards iterating policy in defiance of democratic mandates undermines the accountability procedures necessary in a functioning representative democracy. If politicians can ‘update’ a policy whenever they see fit, then it becomes increasingly difficult to hold them to account when they do fail to deliver. Any genuine failure can be spun as an ‘adaption to the changing needs of the market.’ Concrete policy goals exist for a reason; even if corporate CEOs have an incentive to maximise profits and make their iterations productive, politicians are beholden to a range of special interest groups and stakeholders, and are unlikely to always have the best interests of everyone at heart when making these decisions. In Raine’s world, promises made to win over working-class voters would be broken in the name of ‘efficiency,’ and to the benefit of the rich and powerful.
A second, related assumption is that no single politician can know enough to craft good policy. This blatantly ignores the reality of policy creation and discredits the work of thousands of dedicated public servants. Government policy is perhaps better viewed as a rough outline for experts in the Executive to fill in than as a specific blueprint that can never be adapted to suit changing demographics and markets. Politicians already offer ‘a subscription to an ideal instead of an immediate policy presentation.’ Elon Musk’s ‘feedback loop’ already exists in opposition party criticism, opinion polls, and elections themselves.
But perhaps the most troubling preposition in Raine’s article is that the comparative success of start-ups should lead us to conclude that free-market mechanisms are a better way to approach government policy. Empirically, it’s not even clear that start-up approaches are successful; Raine himself admits 87% of new businesses fail.
More fundamentally, there’s an immense difference between productive feedback loops and the trickle-down Neoliberal austerity that has been used to justify the gutting of public services, unions, and worker protections in Australia and around the world in the last 40 years. Sure, our rate of innovation is unbelievable, but all too often when we celebrate our progress we ignore those who are left behind. Even before the pandemic, the wealthiest 20% of Australians held on average over 90 times the average wealth of the lowest 20%.To say that free-market solutions are undeniably better than other government policies is to ignore the struggles of the millions of Australians who have been left behind by conservative economic policy and still struggle to make ends meet.
To be clear, there are legitimate disagreements about the relative effectiveness of free-market policies and alternative forms of economic management. What is misleading is to equate seemingly common-sense ideas like feedback, iteration, and transparency with a very political right-wing economic agenda.
Moreover, to suggest that free-market approaches to building companies are fundamental to the success of American capitalism is to ignore the reality of economic, environmental and human exploitation that in many ways funded that success. When two of the Warren-Buffet-lifetimes Raine mentions were spent depriving African Americans of their humanity through slavery, and when the USA remains one of the most unequal nations in the world despite embracing free-market economics, it seems erroneous to consider these instances of ‘aggressive trial and error’ as processes that work and serve people well. Such gross oversimplifications are dangerous; history ignored is history repeated.
None of this is to say that governments are perfect; there are certainly many deep structural issues concerning regulatory capture and a lack of transparency surrounding the creation of policy. But treating our government like a business is unlikely to help, particularly for policies that require the consideration of multiple competing stakeholders and non-financial needs.
Modern policy is complex, and pretending it isn’t is unlikely to lead to sustainable or inclusive solutions. Productive discourse should consider those that are left behind by such oversimplifications, and when praising societal innovations we should be careful of reducing our story to one of an unblemished march towards success. Only by comprehensively engaging with historical and contemporary issues can we ensure that we support the most vulnerable and do not repeat the same mistakes.
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