The visible hand

A cube is a block of data that tells different stories based on the audience - stories for accounting, sales managers, operations and even product innovators. Let’s take this cube approach to study our lives from the government’s perspective. Assume you own a barber-shop in Chicago South Side or a pizza palace on the Jersey shore. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you work for the government because you pay your taxes and play by the rules of law. You probably don’t see this, but the government is the best business man. If the government were to write you a job description: it would read: hiring for a managerial position, to work passionately 24/7, to serve his community. All the sudden, you realize how smart this is! Because if they salaried you for that job you would have probably never done it! If they took that job today, and slapped on it that job description, people would quit.

Given that the government has set-up the market, now can it intervene?  In other words, the government has built the soccer field, and put the lights, security guards, seats, and bathrooms? Now what role can the government play in the match? There are three schools of thoughts: Keynesian economics, classical economics, Monetarism. John Keynesian says use government money and projects to increase employment. Adam Smith of classical economics, says reduce government intervention and let the markets sort themselves out. Milton Friedman of Monetarism says that the government plays a vital role in controlling the money supply to affect the state of the economy. In response to government intervention you have lobbying. Chicken and the egg; which came first?  

The government just hired you the same way a sales manager would hire a sales rep on commission basis. You signed an invisible contract to work like hell. Do you want to restructure the contract and work less? Nations have figured it out; it’s the distinction between Kings and Elected Governments. The way a democratic government work is like a stage, the president comes to the podium, does their thing for four years and steps down.  Again, what a smart process! It applies to business, for how have you – or have you not - structured your business processes so that it is clear and transferable for another person to pick up your job? If the break-even calculation is to your advantage: Income minus training a new person minus salary of new person vs. then live your life.