Why Our Government Is Broken (And How to Fix It)

Imagine running a major corporation with a skeleton crew of underpaid advisers and minimal support staff. You'd go out of business in weeks. Yet this is exactly how we run our government, and nobody seems to be talking about it.

According to Oliver Hartwich, the real issue isn't bureaucratic bloat—it's the opposite. Our ministers are drastically under-resourced. Senior politicians end up relying on junior office staff to manage complex policy decisions because there simply aren't enough qualified people to go around. The pay is terrible compared to the private sector, so top talent looks elsewhere.

This isn't a complaint about spending more money on government (though that might be necessary). It's about recognizing a fundamental management failure. No board would tolerate these conditions. If your company's C-suite was working with a fraction of the support their counterparts in other organizations enjoy, your shareholders would be demanding heads.

So why do we accept it from our government? Perhaps because we're conditioned to view all government spending as wasteful. But there's a crucial difference between padding bureaucracy with unnecessary positions and actually resourcing leaders to do their jobs effectively.

When ministers don't have adequate support, decisions suffer. Policy becomes reactive rather than strategic. Advisers are stretched too thin to properly research and analyze major initiatives. Mistakes happen that could have been prevented with better preparation.

The solution isn't revolutionary—it's straightforward management practice. We need to properly staff ministerial offices with talented, well-compensated professionals. We need to invest in the infrastructure that allows ministers to think strategically rather than constantly fighting fires.

This isn't about bigger government; it's about smarter government. It's about recognizing that you can't run a country on a shoestring budget any more than you can run a Fortune 500 company that way. Until we fix this fundamental problem, we shouldn't be surprised when our government seems to be limping along on fumes.