If Traders Ran the Country

I am not talking here about a slick trader who wants to make a trillion dollars, is willing to package crap mortgage securities to do it.  I am talking about a long-term minded, profitable, honest trader.  Here is what we could expect:

1.  If a government program started missing its goals and losing money, it would be shut down.  Immediately.  It could always be started back up later.

2.  Congress would be doing something every day.  Think about that, every day they would actually get something done. 

3.  Oil: the Trader-in-Chief (President) would recognize that oil is a long term bad trade.  He would invest heavily in long term solutions.  No matter what you think, a Profitable Trader in Chief would never dig into his own land to extract a finite resource.  A short-term losing trader would do that in a second, and extract every last drop of oil from Alaska, the Gulf, and Colorado.  And we'd be better off in the short term, no doubt about it.  But a long-term minded trader would never make that deal.  He'd be thinking farther ahead.

4.  Every government agency would have to re-justify its existence every year.

5.  Taxes would be low.  Way low.  The government would have to pay for a bunch of its own crap. 

6.  The government would be light on regulation; it would probably delete or remove millions of lines of useless legal crap from the code; a flat tax is a cinch.  And strong on enforcing the basics: if your company pollutes, harms the public, etc, then you get warned, second warned, and then shut down.

7.  It would be very easy to start a business.  The government would encourage you to start your own business and then it would get out of the way. 

8.  The government would spend most of its time getting better at what it does. 

9.  I've already said this, but the government would spend a lot of time making sure it quickly shut down things that are not working.

10.  I suspect we'd all be asked to reach higher, and politicians would  be the example: they would be held accountable for what they promised.

11.  The government would not be in the business of rewarding or not rewarding certain classes of people.  People would reward themselves; government would facilitate that.

12.  Government wouldn't be "red" or "blue".  It would be "green," as in US Dollar Green.

Comments

[Jean McDowell]

That is the best campaign speech I've heard in a long time -- let's all vote for Rob Booker for President (oh -- I mean "Trader In Chief")

[Bart]

Great post!

You forgot to add that sooner or later the Trader in chief wants to start his own 'hedge-fund' and 'manage' the assets of other countries. :D

[geoff]

if traders ran the country..? big change to the economy
specially at market...