Dear Friends,
It seems to me, bureaucracy becomes its own self-interested faction. Since bureaucracy today has superseded the elected government, that faction is exactly what Madison warned us about in Federalist Paper No. 10. This is simply the next step in centralizing factions from ostensibly two, (in the US) Republican and Democrat, to arguably, the bureaucratic uniparty. It’s the overarching faction that is really in charge. It is a faction no one votes for, elitist, and unaccountable. A house made of wood is made of wood; a house made of stone is made of stone; and a house made of people is made of people. Therefore, a house made of people also inherits all the flaws and excellences of people. Self-interest is universal, because martyrs die off. So people and thus bureaucracy must be self-interested.
Politicians come and go but the bureaucracy grows and grows. Every law enacted by the legislature, every edict by the executive, and every ruling by the judiciary needs a team of bureaucrats to carry it out. Those bureaucrats want to keep their jobs so they never solve a problem. To do so might cost them a lucrative career. Moreover, laws are almost never trimmed back. The canon of law grows like kudzu and with it the bureaucracy to enact it. Each mind within the bureaucracy lending its power to the greater whole. Once it has grown large and complex enough bureaucracy becomes self-interested. The bureaucrats themselves only nerve cells, and we know how raw an exposed nerve can be. At that point, it no longer serves the national interest, it only serves its own interest.
Once bureaucracy has become self-interested, or to put it less Terminator T-1000, it serves its own interests instead of those it is tasked with serving. Each bureaucrat becomes a little Eichmann and the evil they visit becomes banal. This isn’t because they are individually evil, but their thinking is channeled by the cubicle. Bureaucrats live together, marry one another, and live in a bubble. They have become, as they must do, aristocrats with an aristocratic mindset. This is the case in North America, Europe, Asia, and the world over. Everywhere bureaucracy has grown large and complex enough self-interestedness emerges. A self-interested bureaucracy then embodies a single faction that is above all three constitutional branches. It pits us against each other to hold power… perverting Madison’s advice.
The greatest danger of such a paradigm is that bureaucracy will grow to consider itself more important than the people or nation itself. Such a bureaucracy will make provisions to survive even if it destroys the nation and people. This is a perfect inversion of the role of a bureaucracy. Once bureaucracy has grown large and complex enough there must be emergent phenomena. That means all bureaucracy is subject to becoming self-interested and literally inverting its role from servant to ruler. In the US, and I suspect elsewhere, in an act of supreme self-blindness, bureaucracies have taken steps to insure the survival of the bureaucracy should they blunder and destroy the world. Bunkers have been built, not to ensure our survival but that of the bureaucracy. Is there a better definition of self-interested?
Dismemberment is one way to kill a nearly immortal beast like bureaucracy, but dissolution is the most effective. One could separate each bureau geographically dismembering the bureaucracy. This might work after a few decades. Such beasts are hard to kill. Eliminating laws, regulations and their associated bureaucracies is surefire though. The more one disintegrates a monster the less powerful it is. This is not as easy as it sounds though. A bureaucracy that is so self-interested it builds bunkers to insure its survival is not going to go without a fight. Since bureaucracy has dirt on most politicians, they won’t join in. So perhaps a stealth strategy of dismemberment first, then total liquidation. Otherwise, bureaucracy stays a self-interested beast that harms the nation but ensures its own survival.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
