The recent reports that 170 slips will lost at Ala Wai Harbor points up the disfunctionality of government. Time and time again government is proven to be inadequate to handle what should be the simplest of issues, and yet still a different result is expected.

There are few places where this is better demonstrated than Hawaii. The roads are filled with potholes, with the state and the city of Honolulu continually tossing the hot potato of responsibility into each other’s lap. There isn’t enough money to go around to do all things that those in government currently want to do but these same people want to take on more.

There is the classic quote by Albert Einstein that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” I periodically refer to this quote because it is so apropos. Government doesn’t work except in a narrow sense. Government cannot manage the private sector better than the private sector can manage itself. Continually attempting to ignore, overlook and evade this fact is a form of insanity.

The core of this issue is represented by a word that means, “What we know, and how we know it.” The word is epistemology. It means letting the facts determine the conclusion, not arranging the facts to support an already desired conclusion. Political correctness is the logical opposite to solid epistemology. Thinking government is the solution when it has been proven time and time again to not be is the opposite of epistemology.

The slow deterioration over decades of the Ala Wai Harbor despite all evidence is an example of denying or evading reality. Refusing to acknowledge that “Smart Growth” housing rules have resulted the burgeoning housing crisis is another. Believing that a multi-billion dollar rail system servicing a tiny portion of Oahu will relieve traffic congestion is yet another. In case after case the refusal of politicians and elected officials to face up to the failure of government to improve these problems rather than make them worse is ignored.

To return to the opening issue, the problem with Hawaii’s harbors has been long known. It didn’t happen in a day. But boat owners, fishermen and other harbor users don’t constitute a large enough voting block for our elected officials to be concerned with the issue. In a certain respect the boat owners have brought the upon themselves by opposing every increase in dock fees but the manner in which dock fees are allocated for harbor repair is totally unfair.

The argument for privatization is illuminated here. The government should be in the business of protecting the people from harm, administering the courts and enforcing contracts. Administering harbor functions, as well as running a public rapid transit system, isn’t part of its purview. With all these continual failures it would seem obvious but politicians, bureaucrats and elected officials simply seem incapable of seeing the obvious. It is a failure of epistemology more than anything else.

Don Newman, senior policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii can be reached at: mailto:don@grassrootinstitute.org