Lots of people say that government should be run more like a business—that it should spend money efficiently, the way private citizens and private businesses spend money. But the truth is that government can’t run like a business. It’s impossible. Private citizens and businesses always spend their own money. Governments always spend yours.

I recently heard someone say that a certain journalist always writes with an “unbiased opinion.” I laughed, because that’s an oxymoron. An oxymoron is a contradiction. It’s a statement about something or someone that combines opposite or contradictory terms. The word literally means “acutely silly.”

Being almost perfect, pretty ugly, or going on a working holiday are the same. Found missing, acting naturally, and having a minor crisis all fit into the same basket. Their companions are old news, plastic glasses, and thunderous silence. None of these things actually exist. In the English language, there are hundreds of these phrases that describe non-existent things. There may even be thousands.

One often used oxymoron that many people don’t recognize as an oxymoron, is “government efficiency.” It’s an oxymoron that sounds especially good on the lips of an aspiring politician, but for a very good reason government efficiency will never happen, and can’t happen. Let me explain:

In all of life, there are just four ways to spend money. The first is when people use their own money to buy something for themselves. When they do, they look for the best value at the best price. They hunt for bargains and even inconvenience themselves to find them.

The second way to spend is to use your own money to buy something for someone else. We still look for bargains because we’re spending our own money, but even if we’re buying a gift for someone we know well, we’re less capable of getting exactly what the other person might want or need than if we were buying for ourselves.

The third way to spend is to use other people’s money to buy something for yourself. People in this position buy exactly what they want, but price no longer matters. If we all bought vehicles under this type of arrangement, each of us would be driving a Porsche, BMW, or high-end pickup.

The fourth and final way to spend is to use other people’s money to buy something for someone else. As humorist P.J. O’Rourke says, if someone finds himself able to spend millions of dollars in this kind of a situation, “who would give a %$&# about efficiency?” This is the world that governments live in, and because they do, the idea that they can be made efficient is a fantasy.

Lots of people say that government should run like a business; that it should spend efficiently, like private citizens and private businesses. But the truth is that government can’t run like a business. Private citizens and businesses always spend their own money. Governments always spend yours.

These simple truths about the different ways to spend money, and their corresponding efficiencies or inefficiencies, explain why the most effective government is the government that does the least, and why the best politicians are those who work not to make government more efficient, but smaller.

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