Let’s consider some basic principles and see how Ogden government fares.
Ogden government does not stay in its lane
Ogden government routinely competes with private enterprise. In particular, Ogden is aggressively competing with real estate investors who flip homes. This competes with Ogdenites who wish to make a living flipping homes.
- It is not fair to have the government–who manages regulations, and has a much easier time changing regulations–exploit their superior regulatory posture to compete with its citizens
- It is not fair to have the government–who possesses a formidable police and enforcement apparatus–to exploit their superior enforcement posture as they compete with its citizens. Ogden City can send citizen demands that, if not met, will impose $500/day fines. But Ogdenites can’t do this to the municipality. Government can arrest and imprison its citizens. The citizens cannot do this to their governments.
- It is not fair to have the government–which is funded by the people–to compete against the very people who fund it.
Presently Ogden City says it has 10 homes for sale. This is a big lose-lose.
Ogden City purchased 742 East 30th Street in 2016 and, nine years later, the property is still uninhabited with no recognizable improvement.
Consider those citizens who, by their hard and virtuous work, have made progress from moving out of low income-high crime areas into a less criminal Ogden neighborhood. For Ogden City government then to reward them by bringing a lower income higher criminality demographic to their neighborhood is a cruel tragedy.
Out of compassion for the poor, Ogden City government is beating the virtuous poor down and disincentivizing their history of personal responsibility going forward. No less than three programs for inviting said demographic are listed on the website.
Bringing criminality into Ogden is especially costly for retail businesses who, due to increased shoplifting, experience a disproportionate shoplifting loss.
Bringing criminality into Ogden puts more demand on the police force, and the Ogden taxpayer who funds them.
And how much is the average Ogden household being taxed to subsidize these programs? Not surprisingly, Ogden’s website does not reveal this information.
Crickets.
Ogden is highly over-regulated, choking off free enterprise
In a 2015 study performed by Libertas Institute that examined and ranked 50 Utah cities according to the freedom granted to the citizens, Ogden ranked 49th out of 50. Ogden’s regulations were only freer than Salt Lake.
What a contrast between Ogden’s motto, “still untamed” and the over-regulatory reality. Ouch. Given Ogden’s highly regulated character, perhaps a more accurate motto would be “still envenomated by potent regulations.”
Ogden’s regulatory overreach paralyzes Ogdenites from making economic gains. Such regulatory overreach puts a heavy wet blanket on the dreams of Ogdenites.
Ogden would do well to examine the less austere regulations of the top five most free cities and plagiarize their less restrictive regulations.
Ogden explicitly violates the rule to put the Ogden tax payer as their most important focus.
Mayor Ben Nadolski’s “Ogden Way” has as its explicit preeminent focus
At the heart of The Ogden Way is our mission for Ogden’s employees
This is so bad, its criminal.
During a City Council meeting in 2024 I told the Council that the person that should be “at the heart of … our mission” is the taxpayer.
The taxpayer does not exist to fund city employees. Rather, should services be more effectively executed by private enterprise, the city should contract with private enterprise and release employees to the benevolent private sector.
The city should look to minimize its burden on the taxpayer.
In his classic work, Our Enemy: The State, author Albert Jay Nock compelling reveals that essentially all national, state and municipal political institutions are already behaviorally indistinguishable from organized crime.
When a criminal steals from you, its called theft. When the government steals from you, its dressed up with an euphemistic term like “civic responsibility.” At least the petty alley thief is under no illusion that he is not a thief and he does not seek to gaslight you otherwise.
In 2024 at a City Council meeting, I informed the City Council that since wealth is created by the free market, they, consequently, have a parasitic economic role. But by not giving preeminence to the taxpayer, they have become a parasitic pregnant gun-wielding cartel.
This City Council and this Mayor does not understand the benevolent wealth creating nature of the free market and the routine tragedy of governments using force to stifle the free market and quench the dreams of would be entrepreneurs.
Ogden City’s prioritizing city employees over city taxpayers is an example of doubling down on their already oppressive government ideology.
Yet the city’s webpage continues with this vulgarity of giving preeminence to the city employees.
As I voiced this point at the City Council meeting, Ogden City Council choose not to engage with me.
So I had to run for city council myself.
Ogden spectacularly violates the rule “one man’s rights end where another man’s nose begins”
While a sad fact of US governance is the across each of the >3k counties in the US, not a single county protects the property owner from having to subsidize the “education”–if you can call it that–of a third party.
Let us consider some facts
- Ogden government school education is bad (only 25% of the students are even proficient in math)
- “Public” education forces the taxpayer to fund an under-performing monopoly on education
- In the post internet era, education is for free.
- 52% of Ogden property taxes fund the Ogden School District (OSD).
- The median Ogden household pays over $1k/year to fund the OSD’s under-performing monopoly on education
It is past time to deliver creative solutions that does not put teaching jobs as the top priority and the taxpayer as the lowest.
Ogden government is already a cartel. But OSD is even worse.
Dr. Pieder Beeli (Ph.D., physics)
Ogden City Council candidate, At Large: B
Dr. Pieder Beeli for Ogden City Council 