Grantcoulson's Blog

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    There are three kinds of government employees, 1) Those who are necessary and useful although some, such as meat inspectors only operate because regulations allow only government functionaries to do the job, 2) Those who impede real activity such as city planners, and, 3) Those who have no discernible effect on anything, such as those who drone on in administration of the other two.

    A perspective on government bureaucracies.

Tuesday, 13 April 2010
The Cancer of Bureaucracy
Bruce G Charlton

“Everyone in modernizing ‘Western’ societies (roughly the USA, UK, Western and Central Europe) will, no doubt, have noticed that there has been a long-term, progressive growth and spread of bureaucracy. Except during major war; this has not been a matter of pendulum swings, with sometimes less and sometimes more bureaucracy, but instead of relentless overall expansion – albeit sometimes faster and at other times slower.

The bureaucratic takeover applies to science, medicine, education, law, police, the media – indeed to almost all social functions. Such unrelenting growth implies either that 1. Bureaucracy is vital to societal functioning and the more bureaucracy we have the better for us; or that 2. Bureaucracy is parasitic and its growth is uncontrollable. Since the first alternative has become obviously absurd, I am assuming the second alternative is correct: that bureaucracy is like a cancer of modernizing societies – i.e. its expansion is malignant and its effect is first parasitic, then eventually fatal.

While it is generally recognized that modern societies are being bled-dry by the expense, delays, demoralization and reality-blindness imposed by multiple expanding and interacting bureaucracies, it is not properly recognized that bureaucratic decision-making is not merely flawed by its expense and sluggishness but also by its tendency to generate wrong answers. Modern bureaucracy, indeed, leads to irrational and unpredictable decisions; to indefensible decisions which are barely comprehensible, and cannot be justified, even by the people directly involved in them.

In what follows, I will make a distinction between, on the one hand, Weberian, functional, ‘rational’ bureaucracy which (in its ideal type, as derived from the work of Max Weber; 1864-1920) incorporated individual decision-making and was evaluated externally in terms of results and efficiency; and, on the other hand, modern ‘parasitic’ bureaucracy which (in its ideal type) deploys majority-vote committees for its major decision-making, is orientated purely towards its own growth, and which by means of its capacity to frame ‘reality’ – has become self-validating.”

……

    There is much more, just as depressing.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

   Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    This subsidy nonsense will end when money gets too expensive for the government to borrow. This stuff is so nonsensical that words fail me, so I refer to this indictment of the electric car. I don’t know why, but I don’t feel special living in a failed state even when I get to constantly say, “I told you so.”

The Voltswagen: The people’s car the people pay for

"Ontario taxpayers should be grateful that the Chevy Volt is not due to appear in the province until next year. Put together a $10,000-per-car provincial subsidy with ultra high-cost solar electricity foisted on the public via feed-in tariffs and you have a level of economic insanity it would be hard to match. Indeed, perhaps the Volt should be renamed “The McGuinty” for the Canadian market. It would take the pressure off the memory of poor Edsel Ford, who gave his name to a tail-finned lemon.

GM announced this week that the Volt, as expected, would cost US$41,000, more than a loaded Cadillac. It will still lose money. GM’s marketing chief, Joel Ewanick, when revealing the price, said the Volt was “starting the world on a different path.” Would that be The Road to Serfdom? But let’s not go over the top. The Volt will collapse under the weight of its own pointless non-viability. GM’s future lies with new conventional fuel-powered models such as the Buick Regal, which by all accounts is a terrific car. The Volt is pure politics."

GM this week started taking orders for the Volt, the purchase of which will attract a subsidy of US$7,500 from the U.S. government, plus another couple of thousand bucks in California. The phones are unlikely to be ringing off the hook. In fact, the number of Volts sold will likely be so small as to represent a mere drop in the bucket of fiscal fecklessness that is the Obama administration.

Electric vehicles have been around for more than 100 years. The remarkable thing about them is the lack of advances in battery technology. What jolted this zombie back to life was environmental legislation in California — which is in the vanguard of most bad environmental ideas — dictating that a portion of vehicle fleets should be “zero emission.” This inevitably became mixed up with notions of “energy independence,” plus the scientific and ideological morass of catastrophic man-made global warming."

The car companies pursued what was accused of being a schizophrenic approach. On the one hand they fought legislation in the courts. On the other they set about making zeroemission vehicles. The problem was that the technology of the internal combustion engine was light years ahead of ZEVs in every department except tailpipe emissions, most of the noxious elements of which had in fact been removed by technologies such as the catalytic converter. Carbon dioxide is plant food."

….

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

      Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

       Well I never. Government employees get paid more than the people who pay them. On the other hand, they do have better benefits and job security.

     Guess which recession had the greatest government stimulus. Hint–it’s the one with the steepest decline in employment.

Charts courtesy of Clusterstock “Chart of the day”.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

    Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

     These tell their own story. and a frightening one it is.

       Adam Smith is not the only 18th century Scotsman to have a sense of reality.

    Alexander Fraser Tytler, Scottish lawyer and writer, in 1770: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy."

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

    Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

      This needs no comment.

How Government Works

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said "someone may steal from it at night". So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

Then Congress said, "how does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.

Then Congress said, "how will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One to do the studies and one to write the reports.

Then Congress said, "how are these people going to get paid?" So they created the following positions, a time keeper, and a payroll officer, then hired two people.

Then Congress said, "who will be accountable for all of these people?" So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.

Then Congress said, "we have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost."

So they laid off the night watchman.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies