Government is not, and should never be, like business

"We need to run government more like a business."
      -Said by nearly every political candidate at nearly every political debate since the beginning of time, especially on Kaua'i.

I'm able to swallow most of the rhetoric at political forums on Kaua'i.  But that statement above always makes me cringe. Government should not be run like a business. The entire function of government is to fill in the gaps that business can not. As a small business owner of seven years (ugh, I'm getting old) I will proudly admit that running a business has nothing to do with running a government. And, if anything, being a successful businessman makes a candidate particularly unsuited for running a government.*

When my business partner and I are making a decision at Kamanu Composites, our financial bottom line should be our first priority. And the nature of the beast forces us to toe that line. If we stray too far from a profit motive, then our insolvency will make room for the next guy that stays on track. Our own moral inability to follow that capitalist ideal to its natural conclusion (for us, that conclusion would be outsourcing production to China) is part of the reason that we are not successful businessmen.

Successful businesses exist for one reason: to make a profit. Even Patagonia, the model of a conservation minded business, makes no qualms about the fact that backing environmental causes helps them increase their sales. Businesses exist on a psychopathic sphere where the bottom line is accumulating more cash. And, government is the opposite. Government's bottom line is to balance the field (i.e. public education and business regulation), to protect the unprofitable (i.e. human health and the homeless), and to maintain the commons (i.e. natural resources and our climate). To quote myself (yeah, I know it's egocentric) from a post I wrote in May:

...capitalism can not adequately value the environment.  There is an intrinsic worth to nature which can not be quantified. Even if we try (as people are doing) to calculate the market value of a tree (such as calculating air/water purification, carbon sequestration, etc), it's not enough.  It's like trying to quantify the value of your child's life or your family pet. You can't, and shouldn't do it.  Putting a monetary value on a forest (or our climate, or a human life) only lends legitimacy towards cutting it down when the price of wood goes high enough or when oil is found under it. We desperately need to acknowledge that the open market of capitalism can only take us so far. 

Because business can not adequately account for the non-monetary value of human health, environmental protection, or reductions in inequality, we need government to fill in the gaps. Yet, somehow we've made government a dirty word and business a political buzzword. Just once, before I go to the polls in November, I want to hear a candidate tell me how they will use government to reverse inequality and protect our environment and not how they will run the county like a business.

*Before an angry conservative commentator calls me out on that statement, I'm not saying that fiscal responsibility isn't vital for elected officials. What I mean is that the basic pursuit of accumulating more profit that lies at the heart of successful businesses is the anti-thesis of good governance.