observe current systems of both human and non-human invention
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learn from their success and failures
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design systems that put humans and the natural world in harmony
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apply designs to current and new human infrastructure
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http://www.reliableprosperity.net/

But with government enterprise, it can be hugely inefficient without being noticable due to the lack of transparancy and accountability. Government can be voted out of service, but only after a few years, compared to the yearly and quaterly updates in the share market.

Due to the lack of punishment from the market, government enterprises are also less inclined to improve and innovate. In the market economy, where a good or service become scarce or unsatisfactory (for example, fire fighting services), entrepreneurs will jump in and innovate. One thing that comes to mind is the invention of the sprinkler system [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_sprinkler_system]. Having sprinklers and other local fire fighting systems reduces reliance on external fire fighting services and also reduces cost of insurance.

Nobody is proposing to leave the Fire fighting up to insurance companies. What is being proposed is a solution to a major problem facing cities and counties… pensions and forced unionization of public workers.

Due to years of poorly represented negotiations, Pay and Pensions for Fire and Police tends (note NOT ALWAYS) to be far above what cities and counties can afford to pay and unions are unwilling to negotiate to lower costs. Many cities are proposing disbanding their public fire force and contracting out THE EXACT SAME SERVICES they currently offer to a private company.

This private company will not be subject to the old pension and pay negotiations NOR will they be subject to unfair legislation pushed through by Union Lobbists such as (S. 3295). Service should remain equal or higher quality, but the costs to cities could be as low as 1/3 of the current annual costs.

“And the fundamental answer is, that there is a fundamental law about the creation of complexity, which is visible and obvious to everyone – yet this law is, to all intents and purposes, ignored in 99 % of the daily fabrication process of society. The law states simply as this: ALL the well-ordered complex systems we know in the world, all those anyway that we review as highly successful, are GENERATED structures, not fabricated structures.”

From “The Process of Creating Life” by Christopher Alexander, page 180.

Here in Norway we suffer from the contrary of what we see in the USA. Today I read in the newspapers that if you do anything at your house without permission, or not using an “expert”, the local governments now have the right to give you a fee limited up to 400000 N.Kr, equal ca 65000 US Dollars. Soon you must have a permission just to buy a hammer.

Norway is now a country of “experts” only: http://permaculture.org.au/2008/08/19/developed/

Of course the “experts”, mostly represented by huge industrial structures, are happy for this situation:

”But, by contrast, in the early phases of industrial society which we have experienced recently, the pattern languages die.”

Instead of being widely shared, the pattern languages which determine how a town gets made become specialized and private. Roads are built by highway engineers; buildings by architects; parks by planners; hospitals by hospital consultants; schools by educational specialists; gardens by gardeners; tract housing by developers.

The people of the town themselves know hardly any of the languages which these specialists use. And if they want to find out what these languages contain, they can’t, because it is considered professional expertise. The professionals guard their language jealously to make themselves indispensable.

Even within any profession, professional jealousy keeps people from sharing their pattern languages. Architects, like shefs, jealously guard their recipes, so that they can maintain unique style to sell.

The languages start out to being specialized and hidden from the people; and then within the specialities, the languages become more private still, and hidden from another, and fragmented.”

From the book “The Timeless Way of Building” by Christopher Alexander, page 231 – 232.

The answer is that we need governments to protect us, not to guide us. When governments take the role of a big mama who knows the best for my life, I hate it. This is called a totalitarian democracy, and I surely live in one of the worst: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_democracy

Only the people itself can create true living structures!