Independent But Humbly Curious
Consulting Experts vs. Outsourcing Responsibility
Last edition, we looked at a bill TFI is running that would somewhat clarify the current powers of the Tennessee governor in favor of protecting constitutional rights.* One way to analyze that bill is as a question of responsibility: Is law-making the responsibility of the Governor or the Legislature? Today’s newsletter deals with another bill and another responsibility issue: Who is responsible to identify the issues our state faces, craft solutions, and implement them?
The answer, in some sense, is “Every Tennessean”. We all have responsibilities to our neighbors, to our children or families, to our customers or business associates. We have families, churches, religious organizations, nonprofits, emergency services, and all of these groups are tasked with fixing problems — whether immediate or generational. Each of us, in our various roles, bears some responsibility for loving neighbor, maintaining culture, and encouraging sanity. We live in communities, our actions and beliefs affect those around us, and we are responsible for how we tackle the issues that life throws at us.
However, the people most directly responsible to deal with issues in our state are those we elect to lead it. Our Governor, our legislature, our local governments, and those whom they appoint to lead at universities, public utilities, etc. It is these people’s unique responsibility to identify threats or dangers to our state and strategize how to fix or avoid them. If they can’t effectively do this, we made a mistake when electing them. They serve at our pleasure and are to manage the state in our best interest. As citizens of this state, and our nation, they have a vested interest in seeing Tennessee thrive.
So why do they sometimes make decisions that don’t seem to be in our best interest? There are a variety of factors, surely, but one of them is Outsourced Responsibility.
The reality is, taking care of a state is hard work. Managing a $50 billion budget while staying on top of technological dangers, pandemic-level threats, natural disasters, and criminal enterprises is something few of us went to college for. Most of our elected officials are homegrown Tennesseans — business owners, parents and grandparents, members of the local chamber of commerce. They’re not experts in cyber fraud, epidemiology, ecology, or transportation systems engineering. And so they do what most of us would: They outsource these complicated problems to experts and then implement their suggested policies. This is fine, as long as they a) maintain responsibility in making decisions, since they have been elected to be responsible, and b) trust the right experts.
As one might imagine, these two criteria often go unmet. This is because our elected officials often feel (and are sometimes outright told) that they have to listen to the experts. This functionally removes both their agency and their responsibility — the smart folk at the CDC, FDA, UN, WEF, WHO, or whatever other group hand down orders as the intellectual overlords, and our officials duck their heads and do as they’re told. And when things go badly, the response is: “but we were just following the recommendation of the experts!” These “experts” then functionally run our government through their model policies and overbearing rhetoric.
In addition to creating issues with responsibility, this outsourcing tends to have another problem: International policymaking organizations like the UN, WHO, or WEF have no vested interest in the welfare of Tennessee. We didn’t elect them, they don’t represent us, and they have no stake in our survival or development. Their policy wonks don’t live here, their scientists don’t know our people, and their ideas don’t take into account our culture or our existing laws. While they may have a host of clever solutions to our perceived problems, those solutions need to be seriously vetted by people who love this state, respect our unique identity, and have our best interest at heart — not blindly adopted because people with letters behind their names said it was a good idea.
In order to bring this responsibility “back in house”, we’re putting forward HB1264. It will require that Tennessee state government and all subdivisions of that government avoid implementing policies from these international organizations if they would infringe on any constitutional or private property rights of Tennesseans. This will hopefully allow our officials to implement the best solutions from these groups while avoiding the tyranny of bureaucrats who don’t even live in the United States.
In closing: Consulting experts is important. But if we naively outsource our policy-making, we will soon find ourselves slaves. We need to maintain our independence while cultivating an attitude of humble curiosity about ways to improve and grow.
*This bill passed its Senate subcommittee last week in an overwhelming yes vote, garnering bipartisan support and receiving only a single nay vote. In past years, similar bills usually failed immediately, so we’re feeling grateful and proud of even this small win.