This is perhaps the most depressing thing I've read in ages. The only approach then is to cut the number of workers at each agency in half. Baring that, make it a firing offense for any regulation that receives 100 citizen complaints. Either way will bring the permanent government to a halt; the first option will do so at half the cost.The first thing to realize about government service is that even in the most momentous election, a tiny fraction of government workers actually change jobs. A few hundred politicians and their staff and perhaps the heads of most of the agencies would lose their job after a significant electoral shift. At most, a few hundred people lose their job out of a total staff out of 1.8 million. In no other bureaucracy would anyone consider the removal of 0.01% of the bureaucracy a major change.
The second thing to realize is that during the vast majority of times, no one cares about what a particular government agency is doing. Right now, people are focused on healthcare and finance, but the interest will die down soon enough.
The third thing to realize is that the heads of agencies are – more often than not – good at politics, not running a bureaucracy.
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The take-away here should be that in the vast majority of cases, elections do not change who runs agencies. If they do, they do so only nominally, as the permanent employees tell the temporary employee what to think.
Bah. Vote 'em all out, folks, and then do it again. Keep doing it until we get them so scared of us that they'll start reigning in the Beast.
Government bureaucracy is a big problem for several reasons. First, career civil servants in these agencies generally answer only to other career civil servants.
ReplyDeleteMy experience, limited, with federal agencies is that many of the employees spend their careers covering their asses and protecting their pensions. Doing their jobs is secondary, at best.
The other big, perhaps even bigger problem, is that the legislature has delegated the responsibility for making regulations, to agencies that fall under the executive branch. There go your checks and balances. The Code of Federal Regulations is law, but it's law made by bureaucrats who answer to the President. Once a law is passed, most of the work of actually writing the regulations which implement the law falls on the people who work in the various agencies. Sure, by law there are public hearings on these, but have you ever actually seen a notice? Neither have I. The hearings are dominated by lobbyists on both sides of any issue as well politicians who want to influence the regulations but not be even a bit accountable.
You're correct in that the entire system needs to be overhauled from the ground up if anything meaningful is going to change.
Perhaps the best example was GW Bush and the CIA. He spent most of his term trying to get the permanent employees of that agency to do their job and they spent most of his term undermining him.
Borepatch,
ReplyDeleteI think that if you look harder...this means the system is broken...irreparably. hence the anarchist/formalist debates. You can't fix our system with elections
"Keep doing it until we get them so scared of us that they'll start reigning in the Beast"
ReplyDeleteI think his point was that, even if we do as you suggest, they will be powerless to actually change anything.
The important thing to know is that they're not elected:
ReplyDeleteHe (and you) are only realizing this now? I've known it for more than ten years, but hardly anybody else seemed to understand, much less care. It's the Peter Principle crossed with Parkinson's Law and the inevitable rules of natural selection, and the result is never good.
The only thing you can do with a stale bureaucracy is decimate it. Fire anybody with more than ten years seniority, then start de-funding whatever's left.
Borepatch,
ReplyDeleteYou're not being any where near ambitious enough.
Wolfwalker has the right idea.
Cut budgets by 50% each year for 3 years, with an extra 20% cut for any time any dept is found trying to protect bureaucracy at the expense of whatever "service" they are supposed to be providing, or any still having the time to play politics.
At the end of 3 years, it's time to go looking at re-organizing and looking for places to save money.
Experiences with UK postal service showed they hadn't a clue what people they had or where, and there were around 25 levels of employment to the power of 25 sets of renumeration in each - totally impossible to computerize, so there was a massive office working out pension contributions and entitlements by hand.
That is the level of bullshit you'll find everywhere.
oh, yeah. On continental Europe, even fascism and foreign military occupations left the same dynasties of bureaucrats in place. That's why the French etc take so little notice of their laws.
I read an article on how the Kiwis pared their goverment right down to the wood and left the rest to capitalist enterprise. They saved a mint.
ReplyDeleteJim
Finally, finally, finally; somebody is talking about the crux of the "problem". Entrenched bureaucrats!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe head of the snake can get cut off, alla the prez, but the body continues to writhe about.
Laws that were passed years ago are now impeding the clean up in the Gulf...by bureaucrats!!!
What was the name of that movie in which the powers that be replaced the pres with a body double? The fake pres sat down with the heads of the departments and balanced the budget in an afternoon. He cajoled and directly asked the heads to give up some monies in order to fund the underfunded branches. In about 2 hours !Shazam! all better.
Now that was Hollywood; but still....
Steve
Not just entrenched bureaucrats but a CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) that is growing exponentially. At some point, everything is illegal. I think Tam uses the phrase "government by sedimentation".
ReplyDeleteIf you fired all of the bureaucrats, you'd still have the laws. Firing everyone up for reelection won't fix it. Firing every agency head won't fix it. Only Draconian cuts stand a chance.
We need to start sunsetting laws. Every law that Fed.Gov enacts should have an expiration date. You already know it stinks worse than rotten cheese, why not clean out the refrigerator?
If you read Denninger, he puts forth some solid arguments that unless we cut the budget by 60%, collapse is inevitable. here
Here's my tag line:
ReplyDeleteHad enough?
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