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The Case Against County Economic Planning

Chris Wicker

Questions for thought before beginning:

1. What has the county government done that has accomplished itsoriginal intents?

2. What is the commissions vision for the future of the county?3. Who determines where this vision goes? (Whos driving the car?)4. If Allegan County is one of the fastest growing regions (as it says on

page 2) and the system aint broke, why fix it?

5. How will the Board halt corruption and bureaucratic deviation?6. Why are we so concerned with creating a good system and not so

focused on creating conditions favorable to economic development?

7. Does the government, itself, drive economic progress and growth?8. Page 12 says, The burden of funding should not fall solely on one

entity; are you kidding? .What about taxpayers?!?!

9. What do businessmen and women want? Do they want governmenthassling them and giving them marching orders or do they want to be

left alone?

Structured Arguments Against

You cannot, in general, achieve goodends by badmeans.

Milton Freidman

1) Government planning always destroys free enterprise and private propertyrights

a) Planning is the choice to go down a specific roadi) What road and how fast is decided by politicians and bureaucrats, not you and I in

the free market

b) Those officials must use force and coercion on those people that dont want to go downthe road that they have chosen

i) Those who wanted the government road to begin with may want to leave it: they,then, become the subjects of that same government force

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c) Legitimizing the use of force for the 11 UNELECTED members of the economicdevelopment commission

1centers largely unaccountable power in their hands

i) It extends the assumption that you may not do what you want with your propertyunless you convince a politician or bureaucrat that its a good idea.

ii) I and other advocates of a free enterprise/free market system believe that anyoneshould be free to do with their property what they choose unless there is a really

good reason they shouldnt.

2) Planning inefficiencies misallocate resources; allocation is better left up tocitizens and our individual decisions.

a) 4 ways to spend moneyi) Your own money on yourself you care about cost and qualityii) Your money on someone else you care most about cost, not quality as muchiii) Someone elses money on yourself you care about quality, not about costiv) Someone elses money on someone else you dont care about either

(1)Economic planning is spending someone elses money on someone else(a) Thus well get, like other places, insane investments with a low long-term

success rate.

(2)Many of the functions the report demands are already performed(a) County politicians and bureaucrats will never create and maintain a

development site and available building databaseas well as realtors already

do.

(b)The creation of a brand identity for the county is up to theaccomplishments in the area, not the bureaucrats

(i) Now, we have a meth-based identity because of the failure to containmeth proliferation.

(ii) What does Silicon Valley bring to mind? Success.1. Did that areas governments plan the success out? No, they had a

negligible role.

1Page 7 of the 2010 Economic Development Report

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(c) If there is some specific function existing entities (realtors, Chamber ofCommerce) do not already perform, why not suggest it to them instead of

blowing money on duplication?

3) Government incentive is the composite of the politicians and bureaucratsinterests (part of misallocation)

a) To gain power in the present and holding onto it in the futurei) The most forceful initiatives are those that will benefit all government employees

(1)Raising taxes and increasing spending are two(2)As government becomes streamlined, the interests of political bodies become

more homogenized and, thus, more dangerous to personal liberty.

(a) Fully extended examples of this are Hitlers unlimited power to carry out hisvision parallel to Mayor Dave Bings seemingly endless authority in Detroit to

do, for instance, mass evictions without condemnation.

4) Planning bureaucracies become the tools of the powers that bea) Businesses in the county today will take over these planning institutions

i) They will use them to keep out competition and ensure an effective monopoly in thecounty

(1)My mom owns a cleaning company (which I work at), do you think she wouldntpay to keep out Molly Maid or other competitors?

(2)Do you think the county commissioners will allow their businesses andworkplaces (as well as those of relatives and friends) to be defeated by a better

competitor?

(3)Do you think these commissioners will appoint planning bureaucrats based onthe bureaucrats virtue or will they appoint them based on what they will do for

the commissioners economic and political interests?

(4)Do you think Perrigo will allow their skilled workers to be stolen by anotherbusiness which will employ them with higher wages/better conditions?

ii) The Board is taking a number of things for granted about human nature that weknow not to be true.

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b) Pushing out competition keeps unavailable the life improvements offered by economicand technological progress

i) All the ills of monopoly(1)Planning will hurt most those areas now most impoverished.(2) If the board keeps a Meijer out of Allegan Township, do you think it will hurt

people in Hamilton or Plainwell?

(a) Absolutely not, well just spend our money out of the county while people inAllegan will pay higher prices at less efficient businesses.

(b)This, in turn, damages their ability to keep up their houses (which dropsproperty values), purchase the latest innovations (lowering the chances

cable/fiber will be brought in), and have less money to send their kids to

college

(c) Without the advancements necessary to fuel a growing economy, thiscreates liquidation problems across the board and accelerates the downward

spiral within political boundaries

(i) Example: Detroit. No liquidity, no capital, no growth.5) Planning lowers the overall quality of life earned by individuals

a) While it may make one area better, govt has to steal from another area to redistributethat wealth

b) This is called the fallacy of compositioni) Look at the examples given in Appendix A of the Report

(1)Compare (% is the fraction of the population living under the poverty line)2Report's Examples3

Heavily Planned % Lightly Planned %

Roscommon County 12.4 Allegan County 7.3

Van Buren County 11.1 Emmet County 7.4Huron County 10.2

Selected Examples

2Numbers are from the Census Bureau

3Page 15 to 19 (Appendix A pages 1-4)

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Heavily Planned % Lightly Planned %

Detroit 26.1 Grand Rapids 16

Cleveland 38.2 Houston 16

(2) There is a statistically significant correlation between the amount ofgovernment planning and the amount of poverty in any given area.

(3)Why?(a) Planning inevitably denies capital investment(b) It leaves it up to the bureaucrat to pick winners and losers; to choose who is

good and who is not.

(c) Denying capital investment in favor of other investment more favorable topoliticians is how Michigan got into this mess.

(4)Even if you take the best example, the model the report uses that has the lowestpoverty rate, Huron County, your support of planning will push 2.9% more

people in our county under the poverty line.

(a) By what moral authority will you doom 3,500 more people into poverty andstate dependence?

6) Conclusiona) Government planning destroys your rights and freedom to do what you want with your

property

i) Well live in regard to politicians wishesb) The money they take from you and me to redistribute to planning is spent on their own

aims

c) In this inefficiency, corruption prevailsi) Power is used for the benefit of those with powerii) They deny competitive capital investment in favor of their own interests

d) The resulting domination will lower our standard of living, will make it difficult for usfrom networking into the world of prosperity and will accelerate the downward spiral of

our area toward Detroits position.