The Public Market

I often think about government operations by comparing them to market operations and I have come to the conclusion that they are the same thing, with only a single differing quality. The way I see it, the government, and especially representative democracies, look an awful lot like the free-market, except that private property and freedom of association is not protected in the former.

The government representatives seem to act as "businesses" or "suppliers" that sell bundles of goods to their "customers", government service beneficiaries, in return for payment in votes. Productive taxpayers act as "employees" of the government. And the other states, both foreign and domestic, act as business partners to the federal government. The only difference that I can clearly see is that all of these people often lack the freedom of association and private property that is protected in the free market. The "customers" can some times exercise (1 day out of every 700 or so) their freedom of association by choosing a different supplier (representative) of goods, though realistically in the US this only means they have 1 one option to choose from and often not even that. The employees never get the freedom to not work for that "supplier" (And they can't truly choose their employer through their voting powers because the nature of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs gives rational voters no choice but to use their single vote for the sake of maximizing their benefits not minimizing their costs), and their property rights certainly aren't being protected when they are coerced into giving away large portions of their income in taxes. Even the business partners of the federal government are often abused due to their inability to exercise any from of freedom of association.

But the whole reason why the private market benefits society is that it allows people to interact in only mutually beneficial forms by preventing people from interacting with others in net-negative ways by securing private property rights and freedom of association.

For this reason, I assert that the highest priority of government reform should be to implement a democratic reform that will work to protect private property and freedom of association to the greatest extent possible without denying the government the necessary power it requires to provide for the services that only a publicly accountable institution can be entrusted with.

I'd like to hear what people have to think about my comparison between the government and the market, as well as my conclusion on what should be the highest priority for government reform.