Maggie's Farm

Here I am, this is my hobby horse.
If there is a single stumbling block on the road to the future, it is the bureaucracy as we know it. ET HALL
Even though I have only a superficial awareness off Edward T Hall, the pioneer who wrote “Beyond Culture”, he did pull back the curtain in OZ for me. Edward T. Hall, wrote the bureaucracy has : “no soul, no memory, and no conscience…. They are self-serving, amoral and live forever. What could be more irrational? Changing them is almost impossible, because they function according to their own rules and bow to no man, not even the President of the United States, or a Prime Minister. Custom, human frailties (foibles), and the will to power keep our bureaucracies going. … Paradoxically, most bureaucracies are staffed largely with conscientious, committed people who are trying to do the right thing, but they are powerless (or feel powerless) to change things. None of which would be so serious if it weren’t that these are the very institutions on which we depend to solve all our major problems. Some answer must be found to bureaucracy.”

Dr. Hall was writing in the 70s (I think) but even so, he now appears so naive regarding the character of the political/media complex.….I don’t think his generous description is true of today’s coiffed and credentialed Mandarins.  I think they are sly, sneaky, underhanded, malicious skimmers,  all about style over substance, not to mention their rice bowls.
Who has said it better than Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London. He nailed it when he wrote, “ To a greater or lesser extent, the story of this Euro-election has been the rise of the minor parties – some of them bizarre, some of them downright potty, but all of them united by a visceral dislike of the EU bureaucracy: its arrogance, its remoteness, its expense, its endless condescension and its manic and messianic belief in its right to legislate for all 500 million people in the EU."

Megan McArdle has written on this theme recently:
 It's Normal for Regulators to Get Captured . “regulatory capture is not some horrid aberration; it is closer to the natural state of a regulatory body.”
 View on www.bloombergview...

This is true. That is why the entire modern administrative state has to be re-thought, re-configured and replaced. It does not work, it never worked, it cannot work.
The regulatory state is the defining feature of the Industrial Era, America 2.0 state. It needs to be shut down, wrapped up and replaced. (IOW It's an antiquated relic.)
This does not mean return to the law of the jungle. It means making laws that actually align incentives with desired ends, as imperfect as that always is.