Don’t proposition me

Today I voted. But before I voted I tried to find out which propositions on the ballot would incur NEW tax dollars and which ones would spending existing or “already collected” tax dollars.

Well good luck with that.

I could not find what I needed online and not only that…the wording of some of these propositions on the ballot, using a negative in the language, made it confusing to determine if a person was voting for or against the proposition.

But basically, some of these propositions on the ballot today were about improving infrastructure of health facilities, internet infrastructure, as well as water and power infrastructures.
And I could not tell why these things should be necessary, or if they even were necessary.

So I called my son for a simplified overview.

My son, gave me an analogy using Iphone. He explained that when he bought an I phone, as a consumer, he could freely choose to buy an I phone or some other type of phone. He said that the responsible company providing the Iphone, who wants to keep its customer base, would have investors funding ways to build and improve cell towers, and improve the the range of cell phones as well as techs who could improve the function of the cell phones themselves. That is what you do when you run a company.

He explained that if the stockholders found out that the managers of the Iphone company were saying that they did not care if all the cell phone towers fell down, refused to do necessary maintenance, pocketed all the surplus and did not care if the Iphone stopped working, those managers could be fired and could be charged with mismanagement of stockholder interests and investors funding.

They could be sued in civil court or criminal court if the fraud was big enough…. as was the case of Enron where the shareholders filed a forty billion dollar lawsuit.

In other words, the company who is responsible for the Iphone, is responsible to the investors, stockholders and more, to invest, build and make adjustments when necessary to keep the integrity of the business intact and moving forward in the best interests of the consumer and the investors.

So in the case of water, and “infrastructure” he said, we can buy Ozarka, Desani, Evian, or one of many other brands of water in bottles but for some reason, the water that gets piped into our homes, does not allow us the same freedom of choice.

That is because the government is running the water company instead of private enterprise. But in the case of government run entities, the people who make the wrong decisions that create loss for the company, unlike Iphone, are rarely if ever, held accountable.

Those government individuals are rarely fired and rarely sued. If there is a financial loss, that loss instead, is passed on to the consumer in the form of a new tax or proposition that asks for permission to do the job that privately run companies do naturally and without permission because they know they will be held accountable.

For this reason, most government run entities are inherently flawed and less efficient. Big government was never meant to run essential necessities like communications, or commodities. Government was essentially intended, by the writers of the constitution, to be small, lithe and minimalistic so that it could move fast and effectively with its main function being one of defense.

Instead it has become cumbersome, ineffective and full of unresolved fraud; costs that constantly get passed on to the consumer instead of getting placed on those government officials responsible.

So back to voting…according to my son, none of these propositions which basically are asking for permission to improve infrastructure, are necessary if the entity in question is doing its job right to begin with. But during voting, when we read the wording on the ballot, it always sounds so helpful…like the government is doing something good for us…when actually, the “government” is taking more of our money to do what it should already have done.

When we read about how “government” wants to give us something, always replace the word “government” with the word family, friends and neighbors. It might help put things in perspective.

So no, like me you should think about asking our leaders to stop and do not “proposition” us, on the next ballot. Do the job right the first time… give it to the free market economy and private enterprise.