from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
As with the British captains of the convict conveying ships, only an incentive for output will produce better output. These incentives will never occur in a government situation. You can teach a monkey to dance, but once you stop throwing peanuts, he’ll go back to stealing bananas.
Workers tend to do things which bring them money. Government agencies break this connection between action and income by removing economic feedback for success or failure. Success within a political structure is removed from any but political considerations. Without the discipline of economic feedback, government workers tend to make statements and do things which are related only to political reality and usually, quite nonsensical. Every human is, to a great extent, a captive of his times. This is especially true of the social scientist who absorbs many of the concepts around him. The scientist’s job is to formulate laws which transcend all times. The metacontingencies outlined by Friedman for spending, and by extension, for producing, are true for Confucian China, medieval Europe and contemporary North America. Reforming government institutions is useless unless there are magic repeals of the laws of the human behavior. The largest reform movements in the social sciences have been in education and uniformly unsuccessful.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
