We have a fundamental dichotomy in our psyche about capitalism and government. We don’t want too much government in our lives. Yet, we don’t trust the private sector.

Who’s more demonized – Wall Street or the Federal Government? I don’t know. Who’s more trusted – the private sector criminal selling his soul to get rich or his counterpart the non-accountable government job squatter? Why do we think the entrepreneur is trying to screw us and the government employee is sucking off the teat of the engine of the few?

These charicatures are political slang and dirt and commercialism more than anything else. These are the outliers of our images of people. But when you get to them, most people – I’ve found – are none of these simple things. I believe people are good and are trying. But, I believe we see the world as we are. So, I believe there is evil in the world too, coming from those who see the world as evil.

As we work to govern ourselves, we struggle with how to move forward in this polarized view of the entities that are our mechanisms for governing.

We now recognize that we don’t need to go through those entities to govern ourselves anymore. It’s like the Protestant Reformation over in European History, when the people began to understand that they don’t need to go through the church to get to God – that each person could go to God on his own. It’s a shift in the way we approach the world in terms of how we think it is structured, what we are subordinate or ordinate to, and thus our importance in the world.

As we look to our government, we should see and believe that each of us can make a significant difference.

Transparency encourages the honest endeavor. Beware, though, in thinking that regulation and complexities of organization create transparency. Authentic transparency is simply about open, communicative, healthy, collaborative relationships – people working for good outcomes for all involved.

In efforts of economic development, it would stand to reason that if there was private incentive to do most of the work, innovation, organization, and funding of a project that would have economic development benefit for the city, and they brought that to the government as a proposal for collaboration, and the city had only to put in the money, then that would be the best economic development deal on the table. This is as opposed to the government doing everything themselves.

Yet, we accuse those who stand to benefit from improving the world for others. Such bitching and accusing is counter-productive.