Christopher Westley, an economist from Jacksonville State University, recently had an article published on the Internet website www.mises.org touting his new Law of Economics. “Westley’s Law states that government grows on low expectations.” He goes on to note “it means that consumers apply much lower standards to government output, no matter what it is, than they do to the output that results from private markets.”

Mr. Westley’s comments certainly apply in the Bahamian scheme of things.

Some examples of Government failure

� The primary example is the delivery of education where millions upon millions of dollars are spent each year and, according to press reports, the average grade for school leavers is a “D”. A Government representative, for instance, admitted at a private meeting recently that the public schools simply do not have the teaching capacity to ensure literacy as a condition for grade advancement.

� The international airport is a disgrace.

� Consider garbage collection. Press reports suggest that 16 trucks from the fleet are inoperable and in need of repairs resulting in undue delays in the collection of garbage from residential areas. Similar situations have been reported with the Police and Defence Force Fleets.

� Bahamasair continues to drain the public treasury for sums in the region of 25 to 35 million dollars per year.

And the list goes on and on.

Woe betide the Private Sector

Consider for a moment that private companies were responsible for the education of all Bahamian students and the collection of garbage. Would Bahamian’s tolerate the level of service that is accepted from the Government? Absolutely not! This is evidenced by the reaction at recent shareholder meetings of companies who are experiencing difficulty with their share prices.

Further more, if private firms were responsible for these operations, and provided the level of service presently offered, there would be shouts from the roof tops for government intervention, and Parliament would be debating how they will pass new laws to resolve these problems as Bahamians should not have to tolerate such shoddy service.

Why The Dichotomy?

This begs the question why there are different expectations when a private firm provides a service than when a similar service is provided by the government. This is because Bahamians actually believe that government services are free and they have to pay for the services of private firms. While the Bahamian consumer/taxpayer pays for both, one is direct and the other is indirect which is less noticeable.

Other explanations are that people act as if:

� The country is a democratically elected dictatorship where the dictator is so powerful that it is best to keep quiet; or

� Government is family that cannot be embarrassed in public and private business is not family because it is either white, foreign or from a different class of people; or

� Government is the mafia family so there is a code of silence; or

� The people just do not care to hold their elected officials accountable.

What can be done?

A solution to this problem is to make every government agency stand on its own two feet where possible. They would have a budget and be responsible for proper financial statements that are audited once a year. This would include statements of income and expenditure, published quarterly, that show the profit and loss for each department.

In other words, apply the same requirements to government as government regulatory bodies place on private firms when they sell shares to the public. After all, don’t Bahamians own the government agencies and departments? Or is that only at election time?

Of course the argument can be advanced that statements are not published as they should be today for the Bahamas Telecommunications Company and neither is the Auditor General’s report presented on a timely basis. So what makes one believe that they will be done for each government department? This debate just emphasises the point that Government is not accountable yet they pass laws to make the rest of society accountable, particularly the business class.

All things considered, maybe it is not the system after all, but an unethical leadership that cannot enforce their own laws as they are equally culpable?

So in the final, Westley’s Law that states ”government grows on low expectations” is absolutely true in the Bahamian context. And unfortunately Bahamian expectations of government might be getting lower as more and more apathy sets in.