A Revolutionary Moment
Disruption can be good or bad. Or both. Courts will decide how far the new administration can go. At Common Good, our focus is to try to ride in front of the DOGE stampede and turn it towards new visions of how to fix endemic public failures.
Tearing down the status quo is not enough, and will have unintended consequences. America needs a new governing philosophy. Here are two big opportunities for new operating structures:
Get bureaucracy out of Americans' daily lives. The proper role of law is to set public goals and the outer boundaries of public authority and private freedom. Law should not micromanage daily choices. This is the theme of Philip Howard's 2024 book Everyday Freedom, nominated last week for the Hayek Book Prize. In this new column for City Journal, Philip describes how replacing red tape with human responsibility would work to modernize infrastructure.
End the stranglehold of public union controls. Many large states and cities are ungovernable. Failing schools cannot be overhauled or closed because of teachers union contracts. How can democracy work if governors and mayors have no authority to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities? Under the core constitutional principle of nondelegation to private groups, the Justice Department could challenge union controls. It would thereby rescue Americans from poor schools and unmanageable local governments. See the argument in Philip's 2023 book Not Accountable.
Americans should be free to roll up their sleeves and act like Americans again. Instead of just hacking away at public inefficiencies, the bigger opportunity for DOGE is to change the operating philosophy of government to re-empower human responsibility.
Tomorrow evening on PBS's Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, Philip discusses the need for a new governing framework with Democratic thought leader Will Marshall.
Commenting on Philip's new Manhattan Institute report, Escape from Quicksand, management expert Michele Zanini writes: "We're so afraid of bad judgment that we've discouraged judgment itself. Officials have become accountable for process, not impact. And this means public institutions that can't act. Fixing this systemic problem will require far more than one-time cuts."