Coordination Without a Coordinator

Abstract

Should the United States government spend for war or for peace? Crudely expressed, that was a major dividing line in the debates over public policy in the late fifties through the sixties and seventies. The course followed by enlightened liberal opinion was clear: much more for welfare programs designed to help deserving groups, such as the poor, the aged, and minorities; much less for military preparedness or, worse still, for actually fighting wars. Less clear but still pronounced was a preference for a strategy specifying income over service for transferring money rather than goods, so that people could exercise more choice. No specific decision declared that government would do these things and no announcement came that this reallocation of resources would be governmental policy from a chosen day onward. We have no Domestic Welfare Day like an Independence Day. That these trends were not summed up and announced as deliberate governmental policy one day may account for their continued lack of recognition. People are still waiting for this revolution in public policy to come when it has already been. That we may not like it as much as we thought (viz. “Strategic Retreat on Objectives”) doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.