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General Definition
According to an academic-type definition, public policy is the study of effective policy making by governments. This raises
the question of what "effective" means in this context. Of course, people of different political persuasions have varying ideas
about the proper purpose of government. Some would say that the goal of public policy is to identify and act upon the behavior of
groups of human beings; and that usually the actor is a government, and its
usual goals are to increase the wealth and power of the rulers and wealthy, hopefully by also increasing the health and
well-being of the general society.
One way to evaluate the success of public policy is to examine the extent to which it increases the well-being of its
citizens. This well-being may be increased due (1) to the creation or stabilization of a market-type environment or (2) through
the redistribution of wealth and resources. This is the well-known discussion of efficiency and equity.
Context
Public policy, of course, overlaps with many other subject areas. Other related areas include: government, philosophy of
government, economics, social welfare, public health, and statistics.
Freedom of the Press
Journalists should be free to report about anything at all. Market forces will drive them to communicate to masses of people
about major social problems. In time, adjustments will be found for these problems. While this frequently annoys the wealthy and
powerful, they themselves also benefit from the information, and improved society.
Republican Government
The basic political structure of a group should be controlled in some fashion by people with ordinary amounts of wealth and no
power. If this group does not have control, it will create rebels and organize, especially if modern communications methods are
available. While this definitely annoys the wealthy and powerful, it also is the only known method of creating a stable
government. Since social stability is essential to the creation and maintenance of wealth and power, it directly benefits wise
members of wealthy and powerful groups.
Since government administration can be a real specialty, the most long lasting governments generally assign it to specialists,
and yet give ordinary citizens some say in the decisions and selection of the specialists. This is called a republic.
A government of law, not people
The government should be subject to law, in such a way that it can be predicted and controlled. Again, this is a two-edged
sword that both hampers and benefits the wealthy and powerful. The advantage to the poor and weak is that they can form common
cause and use legal means to redress major social wrongs.
In general, the government's deliberations, laws and budget should be published. Without this, the above safeguards may
fail.
A free market
A free market creates extremes of both wealth and poverty. However, it is so much more efficient than other systems that it
should be encouraged to be the primary means to distribute wealth. The government generally adjudicates contracts and regulates
fair weights and measures. More recently, governments have regulated industrial wastes. One of the more successful programs has
issued permits for a fixed tonnage of a pollutant, and established a market in permits. Private groups are permitted to purchase
and retire pollution permits. As well, polluters then have an incentive to invest in technology to reduce pollutants and
sell their permits.
Adoption of positive economies of scale
Some networks and services have positive economies of scale. That is, as they are more widely used, they become more
valuable. The classic examples are money, weights and measures, roads, a common language, public education, and an agreed public ethical system. With industrialization,
a large number of other situations have developed positive economies of scale: screw profiles, a thousand types of industrial
linkages and methods, networks to provide credit, water, electric power, gas, sewage, telephone and data, computer operating
systems, computer languages, and media.
The most advantageous regulation seems to be for the government to wait for a standard to predominate in the market, then
require use of the prominent standard, and suppress the rest. This can be done benignly by simply having the government refuse to
purchase other standards.
This method was used from antiquity until the European religious wars of the 1700s
trained western society to value freedom.
The classic method seems to retain all of its ancient advantages for industrial standards, even though it arguably fails for
religion and ethics. The classic method
succeeded for measures, and eventually, even for a calendar. A universal money, gold was once available. An auxiliary language, such as Esperanto may also be possible.
One of the most valuable, peculiar and complex networks is a network for credit.
Traditionally, this was centered on a national bank that certified subscribers. A credit network allows money to flow anywhere in
the countries that subscribe. The advantage is that regional economies have access to more credit when they need to borrow to
plant crops or improve structures (both are seasonal in many areas). In the past, in such situations, regional banks would often
lend all their money, and then stop lending because no more money was available. This limits production, as well as limiting
recovery from natural disasters.
Military defense
Successful governments develop means to perform a military defense of their regions. The wealthy and powerful limit the power
of these groups by inculcating (and perhaps believing) propaganda about civic duties. Many long-term republics supplement this
with a civil militia, and political and military structures that are not centralized, and therefore not easy to conquer or
subvert.
Health and safety
Successful governments develop regulations to preserve health and safety. The more notable successes are public sanitation,
drinking-water, health-education, vaccination and quarantine programs, and building codes.
Successful governments develop means to provide some minimal care for paupers and during emergencies. The level of care can be
extremely crude, as long as it is not life-threatening. The classic, relatively successful programs are social security, with
private investment, unemployment insurance paid for by workers, and some sort of civil defense or emergency program. The emergency and civil defense programs can be far more effective if
made part of education and building codes.
Progressive taxation
It is known that certain types of taxation are very difficult for poor people.
Many poor people are poor not because they don't work hard, but because they plan poorly. For these people, assembling large
amounts of cash money on a fixed date can be nearly impossible. Therefore, poll taxes and franchise taxes are traditionally
thought evil.
Some scientific research costs little compared to the pain suffering and expense that new techniques can prevent. At the same
time, much basic research may not produce products that can be sold, and thus might never be supported by business. A progressive, science
policy that combines both utilitarian science, and inexpensive basic science and technology
development can thus help people quite a bit.
When public policy and large financial or other stakes are in the balance, vested interests will often resort to 'junk science' to support their positions. But few among the general public can
judge whether science is junk or not. Many people choose simply to disregard the results of any research that was not conducted
and paid for by disinterested parties, a tactic that often excludes most or all of the scientific evidence that exists on an
issue.
Consider the following example. A company is releasing a chemical into a stream. Environmentalists offer "scientific evidence"
that the chemical is harmful in the amounts being released. The company offers "scientific evidence" that the release is
harmless. Unable to evaluate the science, the public is liable to weigh the evidence according to their prejudices--for example,
that companies or that environmentalists are never to be trusted. In the face of such disputes, the government may call for an
independent scientific assessment. But this is not so tidy a solution as it looks. A dispute may then erupt regarding the
composition of the assessment committee, whether about the independence of particular scientists or about the balance between
committee members who tend toward one side or the other. See the related article on the scientific method.
See also
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