The concept of government as provider comes next: government as provider of goods and services that individuals cannot provide individually for themselves. Government in this conception is the solution to collective action problems, the medium through which citizens create public goods that benefit everyone, but that are also subject to free-rider problems without some collective compulsion.
The basic economic infrastructure of human connectivity falls into this category: the means of physical travel, such as roads, bridges and ports of all kinds, and increasingly the means of virtual travel, such as broadband. All of this infrastructure can be, and typically initially is, provided by private entrepreneurs who see an opportunity to build a road, say, and charge users a toll, but the capital necessary is so great and the public benefit so obvious that ultimately the government takes over.
A more expansive concept of government as provider is the social welfare state: government can cushion the inability of citizens to provide for themselves, particularly in the vulnerable conditions of youth, old age, sickness, disability and unemployment due to economic forces beyond their control. As the welfare state has evolved, its critics have come to see it more as a protector from the harsh results of capitalism, or perhaps as a means of protecting the wealthy from the political rage of the dispossessed. At its best, however, it is providing an infrastructure of care to enable citizens to flourish socially and economically in the same way that an infrastructure of competition does. It provides a social security that enables citizens to create their own economic security.
The future of government builds on these foundations of protecting and providing. Government will continue to protect citizens from violence and from the worst vicissitudes of life. Government will continue to provide public goods, at a level necessary to ensure a globally competitive economy and a well-functioning society. But wherever possible, government should invest in citizen capabilities to enable them to provide for themselves in rapidly and continually changing circumstances.
Not surprisingly, this vision of government as investor comes from a deeply entrepreneurial culture. Technology reporter Gregory Ferenstein has polled leading silicon Valley entrepreneurs and concludedthat they “want the government to be an investor in citizens, rather than as a protector from capitalism. They want the government to heavily fund education, encourage more active citizenship, pursue binding international trade alliances and open borders to all immigrants.” In the words of Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt: “The combination of innovation, empowerment and creativity will be our solution.”
This celebration of human capacity is a welcome antidote to widespread pessimism about the capacity of government to meet current national and global economic, security, demographic and environmental challenges. Put into practice, however, government as investor will mean more than simply funding schools and opening borders. If government is to assume that in the main citizens can solve themselves more efficiently and effectively than government can provide for them, it will have to invest not only in the cultivation of citizen capabilities, but also in the provision of the resources and infrastructure to allow citizens to succeed at scale
<h2>To appeal to the dissatisfied, multi-ethnic population of the Soviet Union.</h2>
A comment from the <em>History Channel</em> explains the situation in the USSR when Gorbachev was in power. "In 1985, even many of the most conservative hardliners realized that much needed to change. The Soviet economy was faltering and dissidents and internal and external critics were calling for an end to political repression and government secrecy." As far as the aim of Gorbachev's reforms, "The plan was for the Soviet Union to become more transparent, and in turn for the leadership of the nation and the Communist Party to be improved," according to <em>YourDictionary</em>.
In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev proposed policies of <em>perestroika </em>(restructuring) and <em>glasnost</em> (openness) in the Soviet Union. These seemed like policies that leaned in the direction of Western ways of economics and politics. <em>Perestroika </em>meant allowing some measure of private enterprise in the Soviet Union. <em>Glasnost </em>meant allowing a bit of freedom in regard to speech and publication. Gorbachev was not trying to get rid of the Soviet communist system. He actually was trying to prop it up and preserve it, because it was starting to have many problems sustaining itself, and there was too much dissatisfaction and dissent occurring among the country's people. But in the end, opening things up a bit with <em>perestroika </em>and <em>glasnost</em> policies pushed the USSR further in the direction of shedding the communist model under which it had lived for so long, and would begin to spell the end of the USSR.
