Andy Grove, the ex-chairman of Intel writes in the WSJ:
The first question that needs to be examined is this: If business’s task is to generate revenue and profits for its owners, what is the equivalent task for a nation and its government? The principal measure is the Gross Domestic Product of the country. Changes in this number are commonly used yardsticks of economic health. Moreover, when one compares two national economies, say the economies of the U.S. and China, the first measure we use in this comparison is GDP. But when we talk of GDP, we must consider not just the GDP of today, but the long-term stability of the productive capacity of our economy. This is how factors like national security enter into the objectives of a government.
I don’t think Grove could be more wrong about the purpose of government. Jefferson had it pretty close when he wrote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
In other words, government should not be run like to business to create wealth, governments should be created to protect people’s rights.
The political reality however, is that politicians work hard to be re-elected, not to protect people’s rights. And many think they will get reelected by doling out pork to their constituents.
Russ Roberts has a similar argument on Cafe Hayek:
What he [Grove] appears to be saying is that the task of the government is to produce economic health and that the change in GDP is a measure of economic health.But government can’t have tasks. That’s like saying the task of New York is to do increase property values or cure cancer. How can a diverse group of people with diverse interests have a task?
More importantly, even when you consider politicians individually and not as members of some imagined monolithic willful government, their tasks are very different from the tasks facing the executive in a business. You might hope that a politician cares about a particular issue the way that you. But why would you expect a politician to do so?