Hat tip to Tim Fowler:
Good discussion at
janegalt.net
The original blog post was short
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The post below also applies to behavioural economics, which the left seems to believe is a magical proof of the benevolence of government intervention, because after all, people are stupid, so they need the government to protect them from themselves. My take is a little subtler than that:
1) People are often stupid
2) Bureaucrats are the same stupid people, with bad incentives.
Posted by Jane Galt at February 19, 2007 7:22 PM
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Some selected comments -
You've hit the problem on the head. Jerry Pournelle, arguably the first blogger, has his Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any
bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of
people: those who work to further the actual goals of the
organization, and those who work for the organization
itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work
and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative
who work to protect any teacher including the most
incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the
second type of person will always gain control of the
organization, and will always write the rules under which
the organization functions."
Just because you get a CS job doesn't mean your IQ goes up 10 points.
Posted by: ech on February 19, 2007 8:11 PM
janegalt.net
Robert Conquest's two laws:
1. Any organization which is not explicitly conservative will become liberal.
2. The behavior of any organization can best be predicted by assuming it to be run by a cabal of its enemies.
Posted by: Bleepless on February 19, 2007 8:36 PM
janegalt.net
Predicted Liberal responses to your statement:
1) Intelligent liberal politicians will choose intelligent bureaucrats, thus avoiding that problem.
2) At least the liberal bureaucrats are well-meaning, unlike the conservative bureaucrats who hate black people.
3) Unlike the shamanistic Repuglicans, we'll listen to the scientific community and ensure that we only implement the most scientifically sound policies... scientifically!
4) There's no doubt that there will be friction from certain parts of the bureaucracy, but those parts can be removed if we just had democratic control of all three branches of government. Then, all will be well.
5) Every day, the Rethuglicans are wrecking this country, bit by bit. The real-world implementation of a liberal platform may not be perfect, but its infinitely better than Bushitler's, who, by the way, hates black people and gays.
Posted by: jb on February 19, 2007 9:03 PM
janegalt.net
Milton Friedman described 4 classes of spending
1. You spend money on yourself. You care about price, but also about value.
2. You spend money on a present for someone else. You care about price, but not so much about value.
3. You spend money on yourself, from an expense account. You really care a lot about value, but not so much about price.
4. You spend government money on someone else. You don't care about value, and don't care about price either.
Moral: If you get "market failure" with type 1 spending, you can only fail more spectacularly with type 2,3 or 4 spending.
Posted by: Don Meaker on February 19, 2007 9:21 PM
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As a former GS-14 ... dead on, and the comments are dead on, too.
1. For the true bureaucrat, there is The Position, which exists in a continuum beyond true or false or wise or stupid.
2. Advancing your agency's position is all-important. Not necessarily the position of the government overall. If you advance it by giving trouble to another agency, so be it. So it's not public service, nor even government service, it's agency service. That's for the average type. The more zealous types will do ANYTHING to advance their agency and its position, without even a bit of problem with their conscience.
I knew one of the last who (with regard to civil penalty proceedings) proposed to create a set of secret guidelines (forbidden by the Freedom of Info Act) that we would follow, but keep secret with the excuse that they were "draft" guidelines. That is, there would be standards where a person charged would have their penalty increased or reduced by a list of factors, but would not be allowed, in arguing against the penalty, to know what they were. And this proposal was from a career and senior government attorney.
3. As far as waste goes, the rule was that it is hard to get permission, but if you do the amount is no barrier. So you might as well ask for the most expensive item possible. You'll either get it or not. Conversely, the cheap items that were really useful were hard to get, so one guy fudged on taxi receipts to store up some cash to buy a $40 numbering stamp that was really vital, and then 100+ attorneys borrowed it from him when needed.
4. At one point we had a computer system that was incompatible with anything. It couldn't even format floppies (this was many years ago) ... just so you had to buy them from the vendor, at $10 each! All because the vendor was buddy of a certain official. All the photocopy machines were at the far end of the building... which was 2 blocks long ... because that made it easier for the people who ran the photocopy shop, to have 6-8 machines in one room and make everyone walk two blocks to make a copy.
5. BTW, every document was made in five copies for various files, not counting the one copy you made for yourself since you could never find it in any of those files. I am not kidding. And everything had to be vetted thru 1-5 layers of bureaucracy, during which it could be rejected (requiring another five copies) for any typo. I had an emergency legal recommendation sent back because there was one space between a period and the first letter of the next sentence, and the Govt Style Manual of the time called for two.
Posted by: David Hardy on February 19, 2007 11:05 PM
janegalt.net
Behavioral economics doesn't say that people are stupid. It says that they sometimes make choices other than the ones that efficient-market evangelists predict. The efficient marketeers then assume they're stupid, which seems to speak more to their arrogance than the lack of intelligence of the rest of us.
As for bureaucrats' incentives, Ms. Galt seems to assume that efficiency is the right--and sole--standard for judging for government agencies. And sometimes, it is. Consider subways or garbage pickup. But other times, it's not. I suspect most of us would take courts that are exhaustive and just over those that are quick. Just ask all those guys who've been freed from Death Row thanks to DNA.
Posted by: Tim Gray on February 20, 2007 9:54 AM
janegalt.net
Government bureaucracies aren't innately any worse, in terms of stupidity or corruption, than private bureaucracies. The difference is that private bureaucracies have to, on a near continuous basis, convince individuals to voluntarily supply more capital, or purchase the private bureaucracy's goods and services. A government bureaucracy, in contrast, needs only to satisfy a small sliver of people who provide marginal electoral advantage to a politician, causing the politician to use the power of the state to compel everyone to supply more capital. Enron ceases to exist, while the Bureau of Indian Affairs continues on, decade after decade.
It is not a good idea to use a government bureaucracy to provide something that people want to widely use anyways, like delivering pieces of paper. Better to have government bureaucracies provide things that nobody really wants to use (aircraft carriers, judges, etc.), but everyone needs, and for which there would be a substantial free rider problem absent taxpayer funding. The reason I'm very suspect of the notion of government funded health care is that people want to use medical care far, far, more than they want to park an Abrams tank in their garage, and that demand for usage will drive costs in such a fashion that an inevitable reaction will take place by which political bodies will seek limit suppply, with all the inevitable effects on innovation and quality.
I always find it ironic that people who rightly decry the often horrendous decision-making by the Department of Defense are often the same folks who most loudly assert that the state should be more heavily involved in providing health care, as if the political dynamic which results in billions being poured down rat holes on poorly designed weapons systems, for no other reason than a manufacturing facility being in a prominent Congressman's district, will somehow not drive decisions in the area of government controlled health care delivery.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 20, 2007 10:39 AM
janegalt.net
To Tim: -- "Ms. Galt seems to assume that efficiency is the right--and sole--standard for judging for government agencies. And sometimes, it is. Consider subways or garbage pickup."
Slightly pedantic, but very important, definition that needs to be clarified here. Given that most manufacturing, especially mass production systems, can increase their efficiency by increasing their speed, we often equate the two, but that's wrong.
Efficiency simply means increasing the productivity (and typically) while decreasing the waste. Speed isn't necessarily a factor.
Suppose I always drive the posted speed limit of 70mph on an interstate (hah), but my vehicle gets the maxiumum miles-per-gallon at 60mph. To increase my (fuel) efficiency, I would need to slow down.
And if we take the example you gave of the justice system, in a gross simplification, we could say that productivity is measured by acquittals of the innocent and convictions of the guilty. And if we found that by taking more time on cases those increased, then taking more time would actually increase the efficiency of the justice system.
It's all a matter of what your productivity measures are.
Posted by: Bill on February 20, 2007 3:55 PM
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More discussion in the comments section here
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