The White House just announced a plan to reform government bureaucracy in the United States. Heading the effort is Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the President, and also his son-in-law by his marriage to the President's favorite daughter Ivanka - who, incidentally, also happens to have an office in the White House, although she has no formal job title and receives no salary.
Details are still being worked out, but the initial statement of intent was that "The US is going to be run like a great American company". This shows a lack of respect for the fact that government and corporations are fundamentally different and need to be treated differently. Corporations have the main goal of turning a profit and making money. A government should focus on the well-being of the country and its citizens, balance the budget to break even and make it possible for people to pursue their own goals, like working for a corporation to make money.
Jared Kushner is only 36 years old, and he has no previous experience in politics or governing. Let's hope he enlists the help of experts, or else we might end up being held hostage to amateur hour again, like with the health care bill that was drafted in a rush and then pulled minutes before the vote in the House.
Government could probably use a reform. The bureaucracy is thick in Washington, and existing political procedures are not always healthy for promoting change and making policy happen. Corruption is not rampant, but it's still a problem which could be handled better. There are far too many strong lobbyists working for wealthy corporations and powerful special interests, and far too much of US policy is being created out of public scrutiny, with little public debate. In many ways, the US is getting old and becoming stale and complacent, and it could probably benefit from a rejuvenation of some sort.
However, literally running the government "like a company" would not cut it. Corporate corruption is very common, a company is more of a plutocracy than a democracy, and companies are far less transparent than what a democratic government needs to be. Far more people are involved in making key decisions for the government than for key decisions in a company, and as a result the decisions take much longer to make, but there are good reasons for that. A government decision can have a direct and profound impact on every citizen in the country (and in the case of the US, potentially for the entire world). Decisions in a company have a much smaller impact outside the company, and therefore the leadership can be more agile and be at liberty to decide company policy more or less on their own. Companies are formally accountable only to their shareholders, not to their employees. A democratic government has no owners, or shouldn't have, and should be held accountable to the entire population of the country. Most employees at a company can choose to quit at any time if they think
the company is going down the wrong path, but to quit being a citizen
of a country is a lot harder.
Despite the recent mix-up by Donald Trump at a press conference calling the US "a very powerful company... country", how to run a company is not the model for how to run a country. Initial attempts by President* Trump at doing so have failed, often miserably and spectacularly. Bureaucracy reform and some "draining of the swamp" in Washington DC is probably much needed, but this attempt seems to have it all wrong from the outset. Let's hope they educate themselves on the matter, enlist help from experts without being too strongly influenced by them, and get back with a balanced plan.
One happy piece of information is that Kushner is apparently not cooperating with Steve Bannon, the self-proclaimed Leninist and anarchist who has set out to "deconstruct the federal state". He might be pulling some strings from behind the scenes, but he has no formal role in this project. Yet.
