PROGRESSIVE GOVERNMENT REFORM

Good government organizes people to solve problems
that they cannot or will not solve themselves.

Aesop was designed to be applicable to any human organization, private or public. The core of this management flexibility is the time cost of problems--unsolved versus solving. All human actions either create or destroy time, regardless of the whether the time is embodied in services or goods. This transparency has been applied to the private sector. The program is applicable to the public production of goods and services.

Governments exist to solve problems that people cannot or will not solve themselves. When the private sector fails, the citizen cries for government action. When the government bungles the problem-solving process, the citizen calls for privatization. So, there is no real reason for a service being either public or private except that the people and the elected officials choose to organize it as private or public.

Some cities are responsible for garbage services; others allow the private companies to develop collection routes; some cities have both private and public. Some children attend public schools; others patronize private schools. Some citizens not only depend on the public security forces (police) but add private security agents as an additional level of protection. Similarly, the mailing of letters and packages includes both public and private carriers as well as neither--telecommunications via modems or facsimile bypass carriers.

The comparison of private to public problem-solving (garbage, education and security) is a way of saying that if Aesop will work in the private sector then it should also work in the public sector. As always, the key to implementing any change in the public arena is to create sufficient citizen awareness.

Bureaucracy Reduction

Many government agencies can be reduced by breaking them into business areas with categorization of the services into Aesop's job departments: Answers, Duties, Education, Quality, Policies, Training and Work. The cost of these services will be established.

As the cost decreases the public worker receives 1/3 of the savings (profit). The manager receives 1/3 of the savings and the taxpayer immediately receives 1/3 of the savings.

This divisioning of profits reflects AESOP's divisioning of profits. It requires recognition that time savings and creation are both forms of profits for which currency is a symbolic counterpart. As with Aesop's self-managers, the public workers and officials will receive increased disposable income while the workweek decreases. With the reduction in the workweek, more unemployed citizens can be pulled into the work force.

A problem exists with most attempts to streamline public service, e.g., California's Proposition 13: it involves tax cuts without first solving the problems. Aesop solves problems first and could cut the needed tax cost as the problems are solved.

The role of time--ultimate cost of problems and means to solving them--is not well understood. Every problem has an on-going time cost that it exacts on humanity, and it has a cost in time to solve it. Aesop defines problems in their unsolved cost and the cost to solve them. These seemingly abstract costs in time can become concrete by a daily analysis of job modules to determine human time costs.

Regardless of whether we pay in currency or current time to solve problems, the problems will cost time. Either we tax ourselves to solve our problems or the problems will tax us. More specifically, either we tax our ignorance to eliminate ignored problems or our ignorance will continue to tax us with the cost of unsolved problems.

Good government organizes people to solve problems that they cannot or will not solve themselves. The process by which AESOP standardizes problems for efficient solution has a place in government service.

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Warning: Anyone found stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards of Better Democracy and Capitalism.
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