Grinding To A Halt

There’s an old bit that goes something like this. A community has a problem and they turn to local experts for help solving it. The experts come up with a plan, no one but the experts can understand, to tackle the problem. The plan is implemented and the problem remains. Worse yet, new problems arise from defects in the plan to solve the old problem. New experts are brought in to solve the new problems. Coincidentally, they happen to be proteges of the first experts. Their complex plan cures the first problem, but adds new problems to the now growing list of problems.

Some variation of this gag has been kicking around for as long as I can remember. It’s usually a criticism of the role of experts, but it is is a good example of what’s happened with government in the last couple of decades. The steady rise in the size and scope of government is part of it. Each new generation of politicians needs to have some reason to cut a ribbon, convene a commission or appoint a czar. I think the Feds are up to 45 czars now, all of whom need a team of experts to fix what the other czars have done.

It’s safe to say that the vast majority of experts are now employed by the state to address the problems created by their mentors. The ObamaCare bill, for example, was an overly complex solution to the problems created by fifty years of previous government solutions. There’s no money in just getting rid of the old defective solutions so this cycle continues until the whole thing eventually collapses. Or, grinds to a halt. The complexity reaches a point where no one can predict the outputs from the inputs so everything stops.

Here’s a good example of how the gears eventually grind to a halt. Keep in mind that Boston has had near record snow, which has exposed the public transportation boondoggles to enough stress to cause breakage. The trains have not been running and bus service has bee halted in many places. Money that should have been going to maintenance and repairs had been diverted to batshit crazy schemes like the one in that link.

There are other problems, but they follow the same pattern. This report from five years ago covers the rinse-repeat process of never solving a problem, but always spending on new solutions. That’s an inherent problem with democracy. The system attracts sociopaths, who get elected by showing off display items purchased with tax payer money. Buying tools and spare parts for the buses is boring. Showing off a new “smart initiative” with the Google execs is a vote getter.

It gets worse as much of this stuff is financed with debt that the government never intends to repay. The financial legerdemain required to pay for these schemes creates downstream problems that eventually jam up the gears like we see with the Greeks. At the state and local level, the lack of a printing press means complex, laddered borrowing schemes that eventually lead to insolvency. New York allows cities and towns to borrow from their pension funds in order to pay their pension fund obligations.

The galling thing is that most of the state and municipal problems can be solved by the state and municipal governments doing their jobs as they used to do fifty years ago. Cities need to police the streets, put out fires, run the schools and keep the streets repaired. That’s it. States have other things like ports and highways, but there are no new challenges facing human societies that require novel solutions. But, the sociopaths in politics can’t bray about those mundane things so they launch new programs and abandon their duties.

It’s the Antoninus problem. Antoninus was the emperor who followed Hadrian. Everyone knows something about Hadrian, the guy who left the famous wall in Britain. No one knows anything about Antoninus because nothing interesting happened in his 23 year reign. There were no wars, great economic troubles or revolts. It was one of the most peaceful and prosperous times for the empire. But, no one one remembers him because nothing big happened. Our pols want to be remembered so they are always casting about for something big to do.

The trouble is, layer after layer of new programs, new rules and new departments eventually leads to paralysis. The people shivering in the cold waiting for a bus or train in Boston are getting a taste of what’s coming. In Massachusetts, RomneyCare, the great health care reform of a decade ago, has made everything worse. Another rounds of “reform” and they will have to leave the state to get health care as the whole system will seize up. That’s where it is all headed.

 

4 thoughts on “Grinding To A Halt

  1. Pingback: Rust Never Sleeps, We Can Kill Our Way to Victory, More | IowaDawg Blogging Stuff

  2. Pingback: The Folly Of Political Meddling

  3. It was not only that as Executive Government proliferated the authority and prestige of Congress declined; a time came when Congress realized that a fourth entity called Government was acting in a dimension of its own with a force, a freedom and a momentum beyond any control of the law-making power. Moreover, it was a thing so totally vast, so innumerable in its parts and so apparently shapeless that there was nowhere a mind able to comprehend it. That was when, in 1947, the Congress asked former President Hover to organize a commission to study it scientifically and make it intelligible.
    Three hundred men and women spent sixteen months exploring and charting the domain of Executive Government. Some of it was jungle, some of it was lawless, here and there were little bureaucratic monarchies that seemed to have grown up by themselves; and yet every part of it was very much alive and exercised powers of government, touching the lives of people.
    The full report of the Hoover Commission was never published; its bulk was too repellent.
    The sad fact about the work of the Hoover Commission was that the Commission had no mandate to criticize the extensions of Executive Government in principle or to suggest that any of its activities might be discontinued. The limit of its assignment was to say how they might be organized for greater efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy, although it may cost less, is of course more dangerous to liberty than a bungling bureaucracy.–
    Garet Garrett, 1951

  4. I know, I left the Bay State- my home 28 years ago and it was ratcheting downward then. I can’t imagine what 30 or so more years of liberal excess has done there. I followed the big dig for amusement but feel for the residents. Hint; things are very different in the south. I never thought I could make the transition but here with a – rebel yell. And oh the sweet tea, barbecue and biscuits helped make the move easier. Do miss the lobstah though.

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