Over at Urbanagora, Billy Joe Mills has a piece up criticizing liberals for trying to use inefficient methods, such as welfare and the minimum wage, to help the disadvantaged, particularly African Americans.

"Progressives" have always had good intentions; unfortunately they have also always had no clue what they were doing. What often seems progressive, like raising the minimum wage, supporting labor unions, big box ordinances, fair trade coffee (see Brian below), etc, ends up harming the very people who are the objects of the aid. When government gets involved massive, inefficient bureaucracies are created which even when they work, as with welfare, do more harm than good. Non-free market based aid creates larger bureaucracies and fewer benefits, a dual disaster.

I happen to agree with him in a lot of respects. Entitlement program such as welfare (that old conservative boogeyman) are temporary solutions to much larger problems. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and pretty soon he's got his own seafood business.

The problem isn't with government programs themselves, however, but with how they've traditionally been run. Large government bureaucracies are just about the worst things there are: inefficient, wasteful and woefully unaccountable. Even when given a good idea, they tend to screw things up. But why do things have to be this way? We have thousands of multi-billion-dollar organizations in this country that run efficiently and smoothly — they're called corporations.

I'd love to see some government programs closely monitored and evaluated on an ongoing basis and judged solely by results. You know, the way things work in the real world. If something doesn't work, you knock it off and try something different. Rather than, you know, just spending, spending, spending until Congress takes the budget away.

Imagine a government agency tasked with helping the poor and given the directive (and leeway) to function as a corporation rather than a standard bureaucracy. Imagine a research and development department, a marketing department, an information technology department — all with the goal to help people, rather than to make money, and all accountable for producing concrete, verifiable results. If someone isn't performing, you fire them and hire a new person. If an idea (like welfare) doesn't work, you ditch it and try something else.

We're lucky enough to be witnessing a trial of this idea right now. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation now has an endowment of more then $30 billion, much more than the United Nations' World Health Organization. Here's their stated goal: "In developing countries, it focuses on improving health, reducing extreme poverty, and increasing access to technology in public libraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a great education and to technology in public libraries. In its local region, it focuses on improving the lives of low-income families."

Almost more important than the money is Bill Gates himself. One of the greatest businessmen in American history will now be dedicating his time and energy to helping others. And how he's doing that is a lesson on how government can do they same. Gates is spreading his money widely, trying to create the most effect with each dollar and trying to find out what works and what doesn't. The foundation is supporting work into malaria vaccines, paying for thousands of disadvantaged to go to college, installing state-of-the-art computer labs in poor schools, helping increase distribution of vaccines to poor children... it's attacking the problems of poverty and early mortality at their source, rather than trying futilely to deal with them later in life.

Even better, they're ruthless with their grant money. Bill and Melinda personally inspect the results of many of the programs they're funding, and if something isn't working, the money gets shut off. Why continue spending if you don't see immediate and positive results?

Imagine if our government worked this way.

Of course, some will use this as an example of why we should leave private enterprise to tackle these problems rather than government. After all, if Gates and others like him are out there, why does the state have to get involved?

Well, the Bush administration has done has made it abundantly clear that conservatives aren't capable of getting rid of it the big government they're always railing against. Quite to the contrary, Bush has increased the federal government to its largest size ever. So we may as well work with what we've got and try to evolve government to the point where we can actually accomplish some of our stated goals.