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Dear Friends,

It seems to me, one thing we underestimate is the moment of policy. Moment of inertia is the tendency of an object to maintain its direction against angular acceleration, (external forces). Moment of policy then is the tendency of a policy to maintain itself against angular interests. Those angular interests could be factional self-interest, a change in the situation, or logic. Moment of policy is a derivative of cognitive dissonance. People who have been advocating a policy hate to change even if the situation has changed. If that policy is now bad that would make them bad people, so it can’t ever be bad. Moreover, changing one’s mind would require a little death of an idea, and the resulting mourning for it. This is unacceptable to some, so they would rather be wrong than mourn the loss of an idea.

A policy of government is not an ephemeral thing. It’s more like the Titanic. It’s a huge steamship plowing its way across an ocean. Whole bureaucracies are set up to enact a policy. As we all know, bureaucracies don’t shrink, they only grow. In the case of a policy that hits an iceberg, it just grows the bureaucracy and budget fast enough to counter the taking on of water. This is beneficial if the result of a policy is beneficial. It will plow through all opposition with unstoppable power. Such a behemoth has all the power of the nation behind it. The entire tax base, rationalization, and political capital back it. National interest rationalizes the worst atrocities. Political capital is assumed. Meanwhile, new sources of revenue (taxes) are always to be found. All this gives a policy moment.

If a policy is not beneficial it will retain all the power as before, but harm instead of benefit. The reason this is a problem is that a policy that functioned earlier can become harmful if the situation changes, and situations always change. A policy is supposed to address some negative emergent behavior of the complex system it’s embedded in. That would work, except a government policy is a single-point optimization in a dancing landscape. So no matter what, that single point will move from a peak to a trough. Moreover, the larger the bureaucracy that exists to sustain that policy, the less able it will be to adapt to a dancing landscape. Just as a small business is more agile than a corporation, a small boat can outmaneuver a ship, and a small bird is more acrobatic than a large one.

A policy then must be more ephemeral and less like the Titanic. Governments must have policies, but those policies need not be Titanics searching for icebergs. Bureaucracy is why they become Titanics. The reason they can plow through opposition to deliver results is the very reason they become unstoppable once they get off course. Bureaucracy then must be kept smaller than is possible given the goals of the policy. This is because those who enact a policy always have bigger eyes than those who legislated it. Growing the bureaucracy grows their power in a self-reinforcing loop. Change becomes a self-damaging act to those in charge. Their egos become tied up in what they are doing for mankind. Complexity makes a government policy always eventually harmful. So keep them limited and agile.

It’s better to mourn the loss of an idea than to hit an iceberg, then grow a bureaucracy around it like scar tissue. Very often a policy may seem like a great idea until it creates more problems than it solved. Yet, as we have shown, policies have a moment of inertia so they continue plowing ahead regardless of the damage they do. Keeping policies limited in scope and able to be changed if conditions change is a solution that’s easier offered than implemented. Thousands of highly paid bureaucrats careers hang in that balance. You can be sure they will not go along. Moreover, there are always ready-made arguments to increase the scope of a policy and those that diminish its scope are easily slandered as heartless. In the end it comes down to logic versus emotion. What do you think?

Sincerely,
John Pepin