A Small Tip Jar for the Administrative State

A guest post by Ben Nadelstein

At last month’s Pasadena meet-up, Ben Nadelstein, head of Content at Monetary Metals, shared an amusing idea. With my encouragement, he’s written it up as a guest post. Enjoy!

P.S. Please think of this as a Beta version. In the comments, please share ways to improve on Ben’s proposal. He’s listening and will probably be happy to respond.

P.P.S. Ben just launched this Substack.

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Modern governments send a clear signal to their workers: individual citizens do not matter very much.

Feedback for government is often collective rather than personal, delayed rather than immediate, and symbolic rather than material.

As a result, government bureaucrats rationally optimize for rule compliance and blame avoidance, not for responsiveness, goodwill, or basic courtesy.

This is not mainly a problem with a specific ideology or particular policy but a problem with political alienation. Citizens are largely disconnected from the people who actually exercise power over their daily lives.

It’s true, citizens can vote, complain, file forms, or sue.

But almost none of these actions meaningfully discipline the individuals who decide whether your permit sits in limbo for seven months, your passport gets renewed in time for your vacation, or your important tax paperwork gets “lost.”

And most encounters with the state are not grand constitutional moments. They are routine, low-level interactions: permits, inspections, audits, traffic enforcement and the like. And if they feel arbitrary, slow, or contemptuous, citizens can reasonably conclude that the government is indifferent at best and hostile at worst.

So here is a small and heretical proposal.

Suppose taxpayers received a small share of their yearly taxed salary, say 1%, that they could allocate annually to adjust the compensation (up or down) of specific government employees, agency heads, or even departments as a whole.

Any government employee would be eligible, from the TSA worker who was extra helpful to the TSA worker who was extra handsy, all the way up to the US Secretary of War or the Senator who goes back on their campaign promises.

An individual taxpayer’s total adjustment power could be capped (ex. $100K) and adjustments could be capped per government employee and accompanied by a brief written explanation.

Salaries might be adjustable by no more than 10% annually, with a floor (ex. $70,000) and a ceiling beyond which bonuses no longer apply.

That’s the entire proposal. No firings, elections, or lawsuits necessary.

Just a small pay adjustment and a sentence or two explaining why.

This idea, while maybe strange sounding at first, resembles a familiar institution: tipping.

Tipping is obviously imperfect. Customers are often biased, hangry, irrational, confused about who did what, and often just wrong (with confidence). Yet American restaurants continue to rely on it because, compared to no feedback at all, tipping produces faster, better, and more reliable service with fewer eye rolls.

And the alternative often looks like European waitstaff paid primarily on salary, who bring out menus before disappearing for half an hour on a smoke break, secure in the knowledge that nothing they do in terms of service will really matter to their paycheck.

This system would not perfectly track merit. Neither does any real-world incentive system! But the status quo offers something close to zero individualized accountability for government employees.

What this proposal does is make it personally costly to be gratuitously unpleasant. And for most citizens, that’s already a large share of what they want from their government.

Would it improve government performance? Somewhat!

Would it improve how government feels to citizens? Almost certainly.

This matters because perceived legitimacy shapes citizens’ political behavior. When emotional legitimacy is undersupplied, societies demand symbolic and often destructive corrections.

Populism thrives on the belief that elites are untouchable. If you want fewer demagogues, you need more everyday accountability.

This is a cheap way to get some… cheap by federal standards, anyway.

This proposal will not fix the administrative state, simplify the tax code, or streamline permitting.

Better proposals from thinkers like Bryan will do that!

But this proposal would make civil servants more responsive, civic engagement more tangible, and citizens more satisfied.

Keep this proposal in mind the next time you visit the DMV.