Thanks Graham. An excellent read. It’s maybe an obvious point, but I think that the proliferation of the expert class is, in part, simply a result of the bureaucracy’s desire to grow.
It needs to justify the new department, the extra £5m of funding, and experts are ready to provide that justification by explaining logically that there is a problem which can only be fixed by an extra department, or £5m of funding.
This is clearest with DEI. Which, ideology aside, is simply an example of ‘experts’ creating a non existent problem, and then demanding experts are brought in to fix it. And so the bureaucracy grows.
Thank you. Yes it is in part a spin off from bureaucracy But as I've tried to illustrate, I do think there is a parallel track....one that has to do with mass-culture-meets-human-nature.
Yes Graham. As you say, ‘playing school’. We’re all infants now, seeking definitive answers to essentially unanswerable questions. I guess the ‘experts’ offer that. Like old fashioned sages maybe.
Covid was a good example. No one knew anything at the start. But the experts were on hand to offer strict guide rails for how we were to behave. And people thanked them for it, and cleaved to them.
You answered your own question in great part. The bureaucratic undertaking crowds out useful activity, in fact like an aggressive weed, it steals the nutrients from the soil and blocks the sunlight so actual useful work is harder to get done. The organization man schemes throughout the day, looks for ways to expand his power while the practitioner is tied up with actual stuff that is urgently needed. This puts the practitioner at a distinct disadvantage in this inevitable power struggle. It’s a full time game for the desk jockey, but not for the practitioner.
Since the bureaucrat can’t sell anything, sew up a laceration,write a novel, grow some food, they have to justify their grey existence with make work projects or slow walking things so it appears they have stuff to do. In government positions they are generally completely unaccountable.The British bureaucracy is notorious for this stuff. We Americans have caught up. The Brits and the Commonwealth nations have the “Permanent Secretary”. That name alone is emblematic of the problem.
So they grow their bureaucracy and then they have meta-benefits. Now they are such a large group that they are a political force, a financial force, and they take on a life of their own wholly removed from the original job description. Thus we get to where we are.
Wokeness is just another layer, another control tool for the administrative class. It’s particularly effective because it can be applied to everyone and has the additional benefit of removing power from the powerful and handing it to HR or some other parasitic department.
Underneath all of this is psychology. Some of us don’t want to spend our days scheming and controlling other people. We want to create, heal, build, whatever. We don’t believe it’s our right to tell others how to live, to force our beliefs onto others. But that’s not everybody. There is a large group of humans who crave authority. And almost never are they the people you’d like in that position.
It’s a form of a hammer in search of a nail syndrome !!
That is the entire basis of all forms of governance. Seek out some perceived societal defect and bring the hammer down in an expensive policy designed to create the impression that the ‘defect’ can and will only be corrected by bureaucratic intervention. Once that policy has been brought into effect, it is transformed into a ‘right’ which can only be protected by governance.
As I’ve contended in comments elsewhere, the concept of a ‘human right’ is the equivalent of a tautology ie a vacuous statement. A right equates to an entitlement granted by someone who owns whatever is being granted. In reality, a right can only apply to the materialistic world. Are human beings created with rights? If so, who provided them? Essentially, we are considering the difference between positive and natural laws.
Positive laws are defined as those created by governments and are, for the most part, accepted by society if they are perceived as beneficially assisting in the administration of society, but they are never rights, merely duties/responsibilities for the maintenance of a functioning society.
Natural laws are what it says on the tin!! They represent an acceptance that humanity is merely one of a category of living organisms which form the complex and multitudinous aspect of the universe. A universe which is uncontrollable, despite the hubris of far too many members of the human species.
Not content with the creation of ‘positive’ laws, we now have the ECHR taking on the superhuman/divine task of bringing the climate under the control of ‘universal’ governance under the auspices of pseudoscience.
We did, indeed, Graham and my comment above is slightly tangential to your excellent views on the role of ‘expertise’. Like you, I most certainly accept help and advice from experts with practical knowledge/experience.
Where humanity has taken a wrong turn is labelling people as experts on the basis of nothing more than having studied someone else’s knowledge/experience ie secondhand ‘expertise’ and/or those such as economists and psychologists who provide what are, essentially, theories based on hunches using cobbled together historical data. I’d probably add science modellers for the same reason!!
I think it boils down to the difference between negative and positive rights. Negative rights can be universal without a zero sum equation that defines winners vs. losers. The negative right to freedom of speech or freedom from unreasonable search and seizure in the U.S. Constitution can be applied to all people and at very little material cost. In that sense it’s not really an entitlement. I own my life or my speech. The government doesn’t grant me those things.
Once you start picking out groups for positive rights, somebody else is picking up the tab. Society at large may agree on the need for the positive right, like public defender legal counsel in the defense of an alleged crime if you can’t afford a lawyer. It gets dicier when you start discriminating against one group to provide benefits for another, or making people involuntarily pay the costs of “rights” that do not apply to them.
A lot of this growth in bureaucracy is mission creep for more power, which in the case of the U.S. government at least is not Constitutional. But as we see over and over again, the law is only as good as the people administering it.
In the breakdown of our South African state, its difficult to find the line between the illegal co-activity of politicians and bureaucrats in local municipalities. Take the politicians away, the bureaucrats would devolve into politicians.
People speak of our government as run by the ANC but its actually three forces, primarily the ANC but in allegiance with the unions and the Communist Party. But they all drive fancy cars, and we have elections. We are no more communist than the ANC is a revolutionary party. It's just men in fancy suits. And they protect the corruption of the 'opposition' liberal party. It's like business as usual in the USA and UK, the powerful against the People. But if elections next month finds the ANC dipping below their 30-year majority rule, they will need a coalition. That would either be a collection of small parties, union with the liberals, or a deal with the more radically socialist parties.
Well we have plenty of fake Communists here as well, so I get it. At least in the media we see here in the States, it seems that South Africa is really going down the tubes. Is that accurate?
One of the reasons I started to cotton to Vivek was his emphasis on eliminating the whole bureaucracy and rebuilding on Day 1 (I love all the promises politicians make for Day 1). Something that drastic would never have happened of course but I do think he'd at least take a hard look at a lot of this. Not just from a cost perspective, but from a "making people's lives worse, the opposite of what government should do" perspective as well. Trump also bellows that he'll fire everyone but that will end terribly.
A bit of a tangent, when I was a kid and our much loved dog died, my father scooped him up and hid him. Then when we woke up and asked where Benji was, he said that the Waltons TV crew had come by and wanted him to be the Waltons dog. So we used to bring our friends over to watch our celebrity dog.
Saw a cartoon where a man is crawling across a desert and sees a table with 4 people ahead. He exclaims “ Thank God! A panel of experts!”
Some good news is that there is a trend toward fewer people going to college. We need college for real education, but it’s no longer true that it’s the door to a good life.
The bureaucracy will shrink if we take away their money, but good luck. And make woke jokes whenever possible.
David Poe, retired cyclotron physicist, not impressed with experts.
God speed to a trend towards fewer people going to college. The 'all must have prizes' post 1990s rapid expansion of education was perhaps the single worst political development of recent decades.
Don't you think that has pulled back a bit? I am hearing that more and more kids are eschewing that and looking at trade schools. It's not a $400K investment and can lead to quite a good income and much job satisfaction.
One of the advantages of being old is that one can avoid most of this crap by not watching TV, ignoring the news sites and laughing at the "experts." I sometimes wonder, how did I get this far in life without all the "experts?" When I needed to learn something, I looked for an expert, otherwise, I had and have no need for one. I can figure out how to scramble an egg. BTW, I prefer your column to most of the others that I read, and I'm in the process of deleating them, thank you.
A few months ago I learned that James Buchanan was the economist who started the study of public choice economics. I understand he pointed out the discrepancy in levels of impact and involvement by special interest groups that are very interested in achieving some specific rule language or piece of legislation, usually for their monetary or psychic profit. Thus, they spend time and money selling their views to the regulatory agencies (perhaps with a dash of corruption on the side). In contrast the average citizen does not notice the small cost or discomfort caused by such legislation or rulings, so there is really no countervailing constituency jawboning the experts to avoid or rescind such language, etc. Plus, by the time the ideas have reached the "search for public comments" stage, most of the damage has probably already been done. Without a major and expensive public awareness campaign, no real changes will result and the vested interests' interests will prevail.
Another aspect that has probably been in play for quite a while (but which I only recently came to more fully appreciate) is the large number of liberal foundations and NGO's that get government money via grants (along with their previously available endowments), which they in turn distribute to even more Leftist NGO's and other groups to pursue Woke and DEI and related aims. Apparently some of these groups were grifters all along, while others have been transformed into cesspools of antipathy to conservative reason and logic and ideas about liberty, the constitution, the economy, even science, etc.
The concept of Schedule F designations for some of the midlevel bureaucrats initiated by Trump (before Covid put that all on hold) seems promising in reducing the problems with firing incompetent and/or misaligned or belligerent staffers. I did recently hear a participant at a Heritage Foundation session claim that sort of initiative might be misguided and return us to the spoils system, but I am inclined to go with greater control by the "unitary executive" for a few years to see how that results.
Anyone one with a serious plan to de-bureaucratise our 'democracy' would be likely to get my vote. But the law of unintended consequences always lurks.... even in the cleverest political plan.
From your comment below: "trend towards fewer people going to college."
But given the existence of "influencers", you might think that the internet and/or Substack, etc., would allow some of them to become prosperous and famous as teachers of Roman History, or Economics 301, or even just personal finance and investing. The idea is folks could continue getting the benefits of a more liberal arts oriented education at their pace, without the stigma of having gone into the trades to make their spending money. Even paying $80 per attendee per semester beats college costs, you might be able to receive some form of certificate of completion, and avoid watching most of the dreck that passes for TV nowadays (including avoiding commercials). You Tube does offer some of this, but it is perhaps not as formalized and ego satisfying as an alternative to college might need to be.
Then again, there are only so many hours in the day, week, year, etc.
I hadn't thought of that one or would have put it in my https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/teach-your-children-well post. Social media influencers as part of a new 'education system'. An interesting perspective. Not sure whether to wish it well...or dread it.
An excellent because very thought provoking (self thought) article. It's a damn shame that we probably can't fix most of it you describe. Certainly, there are too many bureaucrats who won't give up their reins on power to let us undo them and the universities have morphed their DNA into wokeness so that nothing will really alter that future. BTW I had to look up definition of MSM. Probably everyone else knew or perhaps just read without thinking... Main Stream Media. Thanks for a great article.
I would say that Hayek did -- *don't* think you can "run it". There is this strange conceit in too many quarters, not just among the bureaucrats and wannabe bureaucrats, that the more complicated a society is, the more it needs top-down management. Whereas Hayek's assertion is that top-down management can barely manage a feudal society and the few things that such societies attempted to manage, while a modern industrialized society is completely beyond any such managers' abilities to comprehend and direct.
Take, for example, the regrettable US federal Department of Education. Has any measure (or reality!) of US education improved under its auspices? It is to laugh. But consider: I live in Washington State; our population is about 70% the size of Sweden's, and larger than any of the other Nordic countries. Every single one of those countries runs their own education system. **Why in the world aren't Washingtonians capable of doing the same???**
The answer, of course, is WE ARE; and the fed DOE is pure deadweight loss even if it doesn't do anything actively harmful (which, alas, it does.)
Yes I wish.... if only Hayek's ideas had been followed. But history has gone in the opposite direction. What I was getting at is that, in order to radically shrink our vast public and private bureaucracies, there would need to be a philosophical revolution...a rejection of the idea of the state as responsible for bringing about so-called 'social justice' plus a rejection of its role as Nanny. Also a rejection of capitalism's long-standing corporatist business model. So what I meant was that nobody has any idea how to bring about such a philosophical revolution.
Then there is this site which bases its inspiration on the toxic "spirit", or more correctly ghost of Reagan. http://www.project2025.org it contains a very detailed 900 page manifesto for transforming every aspect of US culture. It is of course put together by a bevy of presumed "experts".
Some people argue that too much diversity lowers one intelligence. Such is an example of both "religious" and cultural provincialism and is not in any sense true because we now live in a quantum world where every possible point of view on every possible subject is now freely available on the internet. Which means/demands that one has no choice but to thoroughly investigate all of ones inherited ideas/opinions about quite literally everything. Something which those on the right side of the culture wars seem to be constitutionally incapable of doing.
Meanwhile the much hyped anti-elitist everyman of consumer society is a propagandized individual, participating in illusions and, effectively, self-destructing.
At present, a "culture" of total war, a "culture" of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in self and other destructive consumerism.
Incongruously, in our new Kingdom of Self, perhaps because we instinctively know that we're stupid, we NEED experts, and that need goes against our grain.
I think that everything you described is a result of the entire institutional ecosystem having been infected by the Marxist virus that has gradually spread more and more throughout the entire system.
It's been a slow creep that has now reached critical mass and, as a result, is now wreaking havoc on the truth and trying to confuse the public by the inept lying Marxists proudly and loudly awarding themselves the titles of so-called "expert." They have always valued "titles" more than actual "merit."
Marxism is a mind disease that takes over its host and causes the host to behave and act in the real world with insane policies where horrible ideas are labeled as good ideas and complete lies are labeled as the truth. It's the real world version of The Walking Dead where the dead want to eat the living with their never-ending focus on envy and the destruction of self.
This ecosystem that the American public has traditionally recognized as being a variety of trustworthy institutions is now tainted and the only cure for this is for the living to throw all of their energy into an alternate ecosystem that thrives on achievement and individual freedom with the support of others who also want to move away from The Walking Dead.
Thanks again for another great write up. Godspeed brother.
Representative democracy has failed the people, the Citizens, the sapient human beings from whom the authority for Government springs.
And because there is nothing more important to us and our sacred posterity than our national sovereignty, We, The Citizens, must now stand up and inform our representatives that they, having broken their Oaths and failed in their Duty to the office in which they were entrusted, are in Breach of the contract and must now Vacate the building.
This is easier said than done and we must also put into place a Fourth Branch of Government that will empower the Citizens to participate in “promoting the general welfare, and providing for the common defense.”
We, The Citizens, are sapient human beings made by God and in the image of God and we realize that with God all good things are possible
With this new and improved understanding of government of the people, by the people and for the people we will also be able to accommodate direct citizen proposals for program and infrastructure maintenance and improvements.
Because Citizenship, true citizenship, is not about writing letters to elected officials or voting some good person into office.
Citizenship is about the Ratification or Annulment of each line of every law, rule, regulation and supreme court decision on the books or that is on the docket waiting to be turned into law, policy and taxes.
Nothing short of this is going to ameliorate the situation for the body politic.
Welcome! I would say that representative democacy was good while it lasted but - like everything in life and in history - it has now run it course (could not survive the degree of bureaucratisation that is now stifling it)....and some new form of societal organisation will evolve. Yours sounds good but - as you say - easier said than done.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Ross Perot observed that: "a general lack of accountability among elected officials and those in the bureaucracy is the one specific reason that the people of America suffered…. and our only means of correction is to inspect their work and hold them accountable.”
Mr. Perot went on to note that this can easily be done with computer programs.
He called it: THE ELECTRONIC TOWNHALL.
“It is only logical that it will become our Fourth Branch of Government”, he said.
Objective reality:
the voting members of the US Congress and the State Legislatures do not have enough time to read, comprehend or debate any of the laws they vote on. They vote 100 times a day, every five minutes, while in session.
Approximate absolute facts:
a. Every day that the Congress and Legislatures are in session 100
new bills are introduced and distributed.
b. The representatives are given two weeks to review the laws before they are brought up for The Vote.
c. Two weeks into the session they begin voting on the Laws that were previously introduced, while newer laws are introduced.
d. Many laws are in excess of two thousand pages.
e. The arithmetic demonstrates that the elected representative does not have the time to even read the name of the Law much less the content of it.
f. Since the Representatives cannot evaluate 200 thousand pages of law speak per day, they vote the way their advisors tell them to vote.
g. Thus, they have all forfeited their delegated obligation to represent us.
h. Representative government is obsolete. It does not work for us.
And the only way to prevent these over worked and fallible people from making even more tragic mistakes, from which we, and the rest of the world, might never recover is to include ourselves, The Citizens, from whom the authority for government comes in the first place, in the final decision making process.
The Electronic Congress
How it works:
1. Before a new law, tax, or expenditure can be put on the books it must first be Ratified by the Citizens.
2. Existing laws can be Annulled by the same super majority required to Ratify them.
This program can be applied to every level of government and will ultimately solve every problem we have.
To prevent chaos, the basic law, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, would be exempt from review.
Mr. Perot speculated that the Founding Fathers would probably have done the same had the technology been available in their day.
Just imagine:
We, The People, could actually direct the priorities and review the progress of the major agencies like the: CDC and NIH as well as the libraries, school boards and local police departments.
If our government truly is of the people, by the people and for the people then this is the only way forward.
How to implement it:
We talk about it until it is done.
A concerned Citizen could have AI parse a recent law or Supreme Court ruling into its actionable elements, apply the Ratify or Annul Questionnaire, then distribute the links.
Can I make money with this?
Of course, you can. Use AI to parse the laws you find most egregious into their component pieces. And then have it build the ballot / questionnaire along with some demographic background to make the game especially interesting. Charge a $1 per voter per law to deliver the results of the poll to the government officials and watch the evolution in real time.
The Electronic Townhall becomes the means by which the Authority of the Citizens is used to Ratify or Annul the Propositions of Government.
Ask the local school board for their agenda items, have AI parse the actionable elements, create a questionnaire, distribute it to the concerned citizens and then evaluate the results.
When Human Beings made in the image of God can see the results of their noblest and most sober thoughts, at such a scale, then there will be the moment where Our Benevolence and Good Will shall
overcome Evil and then we can all live happily ever after.
Ross Perot publicly promised that if the People of America would elect him to The Presidency, he would give us The Electronic Townhall.
The Fourth Branch of Government will allow us to go from Chaos to Prosperity and a Life Worth Living … until the end of time.
We were created by God and in the image of God; we are human beings, not animals in a pen.
In the end the answer is "better experts," if given a chance. For example, the Nobel Prize winner who had to infect himself to prove bacteria could cause peptic ulcers. But it takes a seismic shift to overcome the groupthink Madness of Crowds. Look at climate change. You might like to read:
Thanks Graham. An excellent read. It’s maybe an obvious point, but I think that the proliferation of the expert class is, in part, simply a result of the bureaucracy’s desire to grow.
It needs to justify the new department, the extra £5m of funding, and experts are ready to provide that justification by explaining logically that there is a problem which can only be fixed by an extra department, or £5m of funding.
This is clearest with DEI. Which, ideology aside, is simply an example of ‘experts’ creating a non existent problem, and then demanding experts are brought in to fix it. And so the bureaucracy grows.
Celebrity chefs however, defy all logic.
Thank you. Yes it is in part a spin off from bureaucracy But as I've tried to illustrate, I do think there is a parallel track....one that has to do with mass-culture-meets-human-nature.
Yes Graham. As you say, ‘playing school’. We’re all infants now, seeking definitive answers to essentially unanswerable questions. I guess the ‘experts’ offer that. Like old fashioned sages maybe.
Covid was a good example. No one knew anything at the start. But the experts were on hand to offer strict guide rails for how we were to behave. And people thanked them for it, and cleaved to them.
Sounds like Japanese knotweed that is just keeps growing and we don’t know how to stop it.
"Celebrity chefs however, defy all logic."
We all like to eat, even if we don't all like to cook. :-)
Now, the martinet staff browbeating versions are a turnoff.
Yes! All the fake jeopardy. Calm down mate. You’re only making a pie….
...but it's American pie!
You answered your own question in great part. The bureaucratic undertaking crowds out useful activity, in fact like an aggressive weed, it steals the nutrients from the soil and blocks the sunlight so actual useful work is harder to get done. The organization man schemes throughout the day, looks for ways to expand his power while the practitioner is tied up with actual stuff that is urgently needed. This puts the practitioner at a distinct disadvantage in this inevitable power struggle. It’s a full time game for the desk jockey, but not for the practitioner.
Since the bureaucrat can’t sell anything, sew up a laceration,write a novel, grow some food, they have to justify their grey existence with make work projects or slow walking things so it appears they have stuff to do. In government positions they are generally completely unaccountable.The British bureaucracy is notorious for this stuff. We Americans have caught up. The Brits and the Commonwealth nations have the “Permanent Secretary”. That name alone is emblematic of the problem.
So they grow their bureaucracy and then they have meta-benefits. Now they are such a large group that they are a political force, a financial force, and they take on a life of their own wholly removed from the original job description. Thus we get to where we are.
Wokeness is just another layer, another control tool for the administrative class. It’s particularly effective because it can be applied to everyone and has the additional benefit of removing power from the powerful and handing it to HR or some other parasitic department.
Underneath all of this is psychology. Some of us don’t want to spend our days scheming and controlling other people. We want to create, heal, build, whatever. We don’t believe it’s our right to tell others how to live, to force our beliefs onto others. But that’s not everybody. There is a large group of humans who crave authority. And almost never are they the people you’d like in that position.
It’s a form of a hammer in search of a nail syndrome !!
That is the entire basis of all forms of governance. Seek out some perceived societal defect and bring the hammer down in an expensive policy designed to create the impression that the ‘defect’ can and will only be corrected by bureaucratic intervention. Once that policy has been brought into effect, it is transformed into a ‘right’ which can only be protected by governance.
As I’ve contended in comments elsewhere, the concept of a ‘human right’ is the equivalent of a tautology ie a vacuous statement. A right equates to an entitlement granted by someone who owns whatever is being granted. In reality, a right can only apply to the materialistic world. Are human beings created with rights? If so, who provided them? Essentially, we are considering the difference between positive and natural laws.
Positive laws are defined as those created by governments and are, for the most part, accepted by society if they are perceived as beneficially assisting in the administration of society, but they are never rights, merely duties/responsibilities for the maintenance of a functioning society.
Natural laws are what it says on the tin!! They represent an acceptance that humanity is merely one of a category of living organisms which form the complex and multitudinous aspect of the universe. A universe which is uncontrollable, despite the hubris of far too many members of the human species.
Not content with the creation of ‘positive’ laws, we now have the ECHR taking on the superhuman/divine task of bringing the climate under the control of ‘universal’ governance under the auspices of pseudoscience.
Yes all true this. We discussed the 'human rights' fallacy on Daivid McGrogan's comment thread didn't we.
We did, indeed, Graham and my comment above is slightly tangential to your excellent views on the role of ‘expertise’. Like you, I most certainly accept help and advice from experts with practical knowledge/experience.
Where humanity has taken a wrong turn is labelling people as experts on the basis of nothing more than having studied someone else’s knowledge/experience ie secondhand ‘expertise’ and/or those such as economists and psychologists who provide what are, essentially, theories based on hunches using cobbled together historical data. I’d probably add science modellers for the same reason!!
Anyway, thanks for another well written essay.
I think it boils down to the difference between negative and positive rights. Negative rights can be universal without a zero sum equation that defines winners vs. losers. The negative right to freedom of speech or freedom from unreasonable search and seizure in the U.S. Constitution can be applied to all people and at very little material cost. In that sense it’s not really an entitlement. I own my life or my speech. The government doesn’t grant me those things.
Once you start picking out groups for positive rights, somebody else is picking up the tab. Society at large may agree on the need for the positive right, like public defender legal counsel in the defense of an alleged crime if you can’t afford a lawyer. It gets dicier when you start discriminating against one group to provide benefits for another, or making people involuntarily pay the costs of “rights” that do not apply to them.
A lot of this growth in bureaucracy is mission creep for more power, which in the case of the U.S. government at least is not Constitutional. But as we see over and over again, the law is only as good as the people administering it.
Love this.
In the breakdown of our South African state, its difficult to find the line between the illegal co-activity of politicians and bureaucrats in local municipalities. Take the politicians away, the bureaucrats would devolve into politicians.
You guys are a decade or two ahead of us on the pathway to anarchy. The same Commies and Commie enablers driving the bus in both places.
There are only capitalists here, all influenced by foreign interests.
Hmm. I thought the ANC was linked to the Communists. Of course Communists take bribes too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_National_Congress
People speak of our government as run by the ANC but its actually three forces, primarily the ANC but in allegiance with the unions and the Communist Party. But they all drive fancy cars, and we have elections. We are no more communist than the ANC is a revolutionary party. It's just men in fancy suits. And they protect the corruption of the 'opposition' liberal party. It's like business as usual in the USA and UK, the powerful against the People. But if elections next month finds the ANC dipping below their 30-year majority rule, they will need a coalition. That would either be a collection of small parties, union with the liberals, or a deal with the more radically socialist parties.
Well we have plenty of fake Communists here as well, so I get it. At least in the media we see here in the States, it seems that South Africa is really going down the tubes. Is that accurate?
One of the reasons I started to cotton to Vivek was his emphasis on eliminating the whole bureaucracy and rebuilding on Day 1 (I love all the promises politicians make for Day 1). Something that drastic would never have happened of course but I do think he'd at least take a hard look at a lot of this. Not just from a cost perspective, but from a "making people's lives worse, the opposite of what government should do" perspective as well. Trump also bellows that he'll fire everyone but that will end terribly.
A bit of a tangent, when I was a kid and our much loved dog died, my father scooped him up and hid him. Then when we woke up and asked where Benji was, he said that the Waltons TV crew had come by and wanted him to be the Waltons dog. So we used to bring our friends over to watch our celebrity dog.
Benji reads as sweeter than Vivek.
100%
I was a big Vivek fan at first. I still like him, but he went off the rails a bit.....
Amazing story.
Saw a cartoon where a man is crawling across a desert and sees a table with 4 people ahead. He exclaims “ Thank God! A panel of experts!”
Some good news is that there is a trend toward fewer people going to college. We need college for real education, but it’s no longer true that it’s the door to a good life.
The bureaucracy will shrink if we take away their money, but good luck. And make woke jokes whenever possible.
David Poe, retired cyclotron physicist, not impressed with experts.
God speed to a trend towards fewer people going to college. The 'all must have prizes' post 1990s rapid expansion of education was perhaps the single worst political development of recent decades.
Don't you think that has pulled back a bit? I am hearing that more and more kids are eschewing that and looking at trade schools. It's not a $400K investment and can lead to quite a good income and much job satisfaction.
Old cyclotron physicists never die. They just split.
One of the advantages of being old is that one can avoid most of this crap by not watching TV, ignoring the news sites and laughing at the "experts." I sometimes wonder, how did I get this far in life without all the "experts?" When I needed to learn something, I looked for an expert, otherwise, I had and have no need for one. I can figure out how to scramble an egg. BTW, I prefer your column to most of the others that I read, and I'm in the process of deleating them, thank you.
Thank you!....a valued endorsement.
Elevation whilst other substacks are destroyed - the height of compliment :)
A few months ago I learned that James Buchanan was the economist who started the study of public choice economics. I understand he pointed out the discrepancy in levels of impact and involvement by special interest groups that are very interested in achieving some specific rule language or piece of legislation, usually for their monetary or psychic profit. Thus, they spend time and money selling their views to the regulatory agencies (perhaps with a dash of corruption on the side). In contrast the average citizen does not notice the small cost or discomfort caused by such legislation or rulings, so there is really no countervailing constituency jawboning the experts to avoid or rescind such language, etc. Plus, by the time the ideas have reached the "search for public comments" stage, most of the damage has probably already been done. Without a major and expensive public awareness campaign, no real changes will result and the vested interests' interests will prevail.
Another aspect that has probably been in play for quite a while (but which I only recently came to more fully appreciate) is the large number of liberal foundations and NGO's that get government money via grants (along with their previously available endowments), which they in turn distribute to even more Leftist NGO's and other groups to pursue Woke and DEI and related aims. Apparently some of these groups were grifters all along, while others have been transformed into cesspools of antipathy to conservative reason and logic and ideas about liberty, the constitution, the economy, even science, etc.
The concept of Schedule F designations for some of the midlevel bureaucrats initiated by Trump (before Covid put that all on hold) seems promising in reducing the problems with firing incompetent and/or misaligned or belligerent staffers. I did recently hear a participant at a Heritage Foundation session claim that sort of initiative might be misguided and return us to the spoils system, but I am inclined to go with greater control by the "unitary executive" for a few years to see how that results.
Anyone one with a serious plan to de-bureaucratise our 'democracy' would be likely to get my vote. But the law of unintended consequences always lurks.... even in the cleverest political plan.
From your comment below: "trend towards fewer people going to college."
But given the existence of "influencers", you might think that the internet and/or Substack, etc., would allow some of them to become prosperous and famous as teachers of Roman History, or Economics 301, or even just personal finance and investing. The idea is folks could continue getting the benefits of a more liberal arts oriented education at their pace, without the stigma of having gone into the trades to make their spending money. Even paying $80 per attendee per semester beats college costs, you might be able to receive some form of certificate of completion, and avoid watching most of the dreck that passes for TV nowadays (including avoiding commercials). You Tube does offer some of this, but it is perhaps not as formalized and ego satisfying as an alternative to college might need to be.
Then again, there are only so many hours in the day, week, year, etc.
I hadn't thought of that one or would have put it in my https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/teach-your-children-well post. Social media influencers as part of a new 'education system'. An interesting perspective. Not sure whether to wish it well...or dread it.
Both. I mean, how many things are there in human society that can't be used both for evil or for good?
An excellent because very thought provoking (self thought) article. It's a damn shame that we probably can't fix most of it you describe. Certainly, there are too many bureaucrats who won't give up their reins on power to let us undo them and the universities have morphed their DNA into wokeness so that nothing will really alter that future. BTW I had to look up definition of MSM. Probably everyone else knew or perhaps just read without thinking... Main Stream Media. Thanks for a great article.
Thank you. MSM is one of the few I do know....but I too am forever having to look up acronyms these days
IKWYM
:)
Realistic solution - Think for youself.
> Nobody really has any idea how to
> run an advanced urban society without it.
I would say that Hayek did -- *don't* think you can "run it". There is this strange conceit in too many quarters, not just among the bureaucrats and wannabe bureaucrats, that the more complicated a society is, the more it needs top-down management. Whereas Hayek's assertion is that top-down management can barely manage a feudal society and the few things that such societies attempted to manage, while a modern industrialized society is completely beyond any such managers' abilities to comprehend and direct.
Take, for example, the regrettable US federal Department of Education. Has any measure (or reality!) of US education improved under its auspices? It is to laugh. But consider: I live in Washington State; our population is about 70% the size of Sweden's, and larger than any of the other Nordic countries. Every single one of those countries runs their own education system. **Why in the world aren't Washingtonians capable of doing the same???**
The answer, of course, is WE ARE; and the fed DOE is pure deadweight loss even if it doesn't do anything actively harmful (which, alas, it does.)
Yes I wish.... if only Hayek's ideas had been followed. But history has gone in the opposite direction. What I was getting at is that, in order to radically shrink our vast public and private bureaucracies, there would need to be a philosophical revolution...a rejection of the idea of the state as responsible for bringing about so-called 'social justice' plus a rejection of its role as Nanny. Also a rejection of capitalism's long-standing corporatist business model. So what I meant was that nobody has any idea how to bring about such a philosophical revolution.
Meanwhile why not check out these references re the great (zombifying) "communicator"
http://psychohistory.com/books/reagans-america
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/RonaldReagan_page.html
Then there is this site which bases its inspiration on the toxic "spirit", or more correctly ghost of Reagan. http://www.project2025.org it contains a very detailed 900 page manifesto for transforming every aspect of US culture. It is of course put together by a bevy of presumed "experts".
Some people argue that too much diversity lowers one intelligence. Such is an example of both "religious" and cultural provincialism and is not in any sense true because we now live in a quantum world where every possible point of view on every possible subject is now freely available on the internet. Which means/demands that one has no choice but to thoroughly investigate all of ones inherited ideas/opinions about quite literally everything. Something which those on the right side of the culture wars seem to be constitutionally incapable of doing.
Meanwhile the much hyped anti-elitist everyman of consumer society is a propagandized individual, participating in illusions and, effectively, self-destructing.
At present, a "culture" of total war, a "culture" of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in self and other destructive consumerism.
Experts today have morphed into modern moralists.
Incongruously, in our new Kingdom of Self, perhaps because we instinctively know that we're stupid, we NEED experts, and that need goes against our grain.
This was an excellent read my friend.
I think that everything you described is a result of the entire institutional ecosystem having been infected by the Marxist virus that has gradually spread more and more throughout the entire system.
It's been a slow creep that has now reached critical mass and, as a result, is now wreaking havoc on the truth and trying to confuse the public by the inept lying Marxists proudly and loudly awarding themselves the titles of so-called "expert." They have always valued "titles" more than actual "merit."
Marxism is a mind disease that takes over its host and causes the host to behave and act in the real world with insane policies where horrible ideas are labeled as good ideas and complete lies are labeled as the truth. It's the real world version of The Walking Dead where the dead want to eat the living with their never-ending focus on envy and the destruction of self.
This ecosystem that the American public has traditionally recognized as being a variety of trustworthy institutions is now tainted and the only cure for this is for the living to throw all of their energy into an alternate ecosystem that thrives on achievement and individual freedom with the support of others who also want to move away from The Walking Dead.
Thanks again for another great write up. Godspeed brother.
Thank you
You got it. I'm honored to be connected with a warrior such as yourself.
It is obvious to everyone....
Representative democracy has failed the people, the Citizens, the sapient human beings from whom the authority for Government springs.
And because there is nothing more important to us and our sacred posterity than our national sovereignty, We, The Citizens, must now stand up and inform our representatives that they, having broken their Oaths and failed in their Duty to the office in which they were entrusted, are in Breach of the contract and must now Vacate the building.
This is easier said than done and we must also put into place a Fourth Branch of Government that will empower the Citizens to participate in “promoting the general welfare, and providing for the common defense.”
We, The Citizens, are sapient human beings made by God and in the image of God and we realize that with God all good things are possible
With this new and improved understanding of government of the people, by the people and for the people we will also be able to accommodate direct citizen proposals for program and infrastructure maintenance and improvements.
Because Citizenship, true citizenship, is not about writing letters to elected officials or voting some good person into office.
Citizenship is about the Ratification or Annulment of each line of every law, rule, regulation and supreme court decision on the books or that is on the docket waiting to be turned into law, policy and taxes.
Nothing short of this is going to ameliorate the situation for the body politic.
Welcome! I would say that representative democacy was good while it lasted but - like everything in life and in history - it has now run it course (could not survive the degree of bureaucratisation that is now stifling it)....and some new form of societal organisation will evolve. Yours sounds good but - as you say - easier said than done.
May I post the whole comment?
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Ross Perot observed that: "a general lack of accountability among elected officials and those in the bureaucracy is the one specific reason that the people of America suffered…. and our only means of correction is to inspect their work and hold them accountable.”
Mr. Perot went on to note that this can easily be done with computer programs.
He called it: THE ELECTRONIC TOWNHALL.
“It is only logical that it will become our Fourth Branch of Government”, he said.
Objective reality:
the voting members of the US Congress and the State Legislatures do not have enough time to read, comprehend or debate any of the laws they vote on. They vote 100 times a day, every five minutes, while in session.
Approximate absolute facts:
a. Every day that the Congress and Legislatures are in session 100
new bills are introduced and distributed.
b. The representatives are given two weeks to review the laws before they are brought up for The Vote.
c. Two weeks into the session they begin voting on the Laws that were previously introduced, while newer laws are introduced.
d. Many laws are in excess of two thousand pages.
e. The arithmetic demonstrates that the elected representative does not have the time to even read the name of the Law much less the content of it.
f. Since the Representatives cannot evaluate 200 thousand pages of law speak per day, they vote the way their advisors tell them to vote.
g. Thus, they have all forfeited their delegated obligation to represent us.
h. Representative government is obsolete. It does not work for us.
And the only way to prevent these over worked and fallible people from making even more tragic mistakes, from which we, and the rest of the world, might never recover is to include ourselves, The Citizens, from whom the authority for government comes in the first place, in the final decision making process.
The Electronic Congress
How it works:
1. Before a new law, tax, or expenditure can be put on the books it must first be Ratified by the Citizens.
2. Existing laws can be Annulled by the same super majority required to Ratify them.
This program can be applied to every level of government and will ultimately solve every problem we have.
To prevent chaos, the basic law, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, would be exempt from review.
Mr. Perot speculated that the Founding Fathers would probably have done the same had the technology been available in their day.
Just imagine:
We, The People, could actually direct the priorities and review the progress of the major agencies like the: CDC and NIH as well as the libraries, school boards and local police departments.
If our government truly is of the people, by the people and for the people then this is the only way forward.
How to implement it:
We talk about it until it is done.
A concerned Citizen could have AI parse a recent law or Supreme Court ruling into its actionable elements, apply the Ratify or Annul Questionnaire, then distribute the links.
Can I make money with this?
Of course, you can. Use AI to parse the laws you find most egregious into their component pieces. And then have it build the ballot / questionnaire along with some demographic background to make the game especially interesting. Charge a $1 per voter per law to deliver the results of the poll to the government officials and watch the evolution in real time.
The Electronic Townhall becomes the means by which the Authority of the Citizens is used to Ratify or Annul the Propositions of Government.
Ask the local school board for their agenda items, have AI parse the actionable elements, create a questionnaire, distribute it to the concerned citizens and then evaluate the results.
When Human Beings made in the image of God can see the results of their noblest and most sober thoughts, at such a scale, then there will be the moment where Our Benevolence and Good Will shall
overcome Evil and then we can all live happily ever after.
Ross Perot publicly promised that if the People of America would elect him to The Presidency, he would give us The Electronic Townhall.
The Fourth Branch of Government will allow us to go from Chaos to Prosperity and a Life Worth Living … until the end of time.
We were created by God and in the image of God; we are human beings, not animals in a pen.
The Electronic Townhall
https://teletownhall.com/products/text-to-online-surveys/
https://publicinput.com/wp/online-town-hall/
https://www.govtech.com/archive/introducing-the-21st-century-city-hall.html
https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/2015/06/06/the-electronic-townhall/
https://abrogard.com/blog/2023/12/25/dont-write-to-congress/
In the end the answer is "better experts," if given a chance. For example, the Nobel Prize winner who had to infect himself to prove bacteria could cause peptic ulcers. But it takes a seismic shift to overcome the groupthink Madness of Crowds. Look at climate change. You might like to read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Most_Published_Research_Findings_Are_False