It's important to remember that the bureaucracies and defects present in business are comparable to those in government - some specifics differ both because you get different kinds of people showing up and the institutions have different goals. It's humans everywhere though, in the academic, government, other nonprofit, and private sectors.
A technocratic approach is still warranted - ideally one savvy to the limits and defects of human organisations, but these things can also be studied academically (and are - most of the things covered in "Theory of the Firm" generalise to other sectors).
That's an essential point that a degree of dysfunction is all but inherent in pretty much all large organizations whether that be private or public sector, and simply privatizing or outsourcing to NGOs can sometimes make problems even worse. It's not fair to scrutinize governmental dysfunction in a vacuum without looking at other structures and bureaucracies with many of the same issues.
And I agree that there's been a lot of great academic work done on this topic, some of which we read in that great course I took in college -- the big issue in my view is that those profound insights are often firewalled into their own little silo without people from other areas paying them much account, most especially among idealistic advocates and journalists who shape the public discourse. A technocratic approach that's self-conscious of its blind spots and limitations can be very useful, but in my experience working with journalists and academics I've tended to find more hubris than nuance, as if administering society is kind of a big game of Sim City.
This is a good essay. It reminded me of my approach to problems arising in our D&D game 40+ years ago. People would suggest all sorts of rules to get players to not do certain things. I though rules just led to clever ways to work around them. I built karma into my world. If you used a loophole to gain a benefit at the expense of some NPC, then a time would come that an NPC would do the same thing to you. So people did not try to color outside of the lines, even though doing so was not against the rules.
This is the approach I would take to public policy. Change a few simple things and see what evolves out of that. If you select the proper changes who should get a society from which changes to need to address social problems would be less extensive and required smaller easier to manage bureaucracies to manage.
For example is rather than setting economic policy so that we have a large class of workers who cannot afford healthcare, housing or collect education and so use government programs to get these things, why not employ a set of policies that makes this class smaller, reducing the need for large programs and the bureaucracies they require to operate?
Flatland is a wonderful book. It deserves to be rewritten in a more straightforward style without two-page-long sentences.
Modern establishments are the Monarch Of Pointland, convinced that their one-dimensional universe is perfect and incapable of improvement because they have no perception of anything outside Our Own Glorious Majesty.
It really is a fantastic book as a teaching aid or just to read for pleasure -- revisiting the book to write this post I found the winding sentences charming! A couple of others have tried doing sequels to Flatland over the years, I think I read one called Sphereland, that are written in a more direct and contemporary style.
Good essay. I heard a story once about Japanese consultants going into the German Car Manufacturing Industry to apply the Toyota approach. They were highly annoyed to discover that German managers resoled their shoes. Previously, it had been an almost perfect metric for sorting the capable managers from the bad ones, by looking for the grit and grease on a manager's sole.
Today, I think it is the perfect metaphor for the dysfunction of the West.
As a side note, have you ever heard Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy?
Lol- too true! I also think this insight helps us map out why people get it wrong when it comes to explicit and specific conspiracies within government, when one considers multiple agencies and institutions working in what appears to be a concerted effort. I think it's more that institutional interests converge and align, which can be very dangerous for anyone who pops up in their crosshairs. Of course, it still does mean that a conspiracy might still emerge, but it will tend to be smaller, more compartmentalised. less pre-planned, and temporary- informally convened to tackle a specific threat to several institutions. A good example might be the way in which institutional interests aligned against the pathologist who brought CTE to light, or possibly the case of Aaron Swartz.
Of course, there is also the cultural thing- the George Carlin quote:
"You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs, they have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them and they're getting it."
But that's the cultural groupthink phenomenon. It's more about having the right social ingroup ideas to pass the moral purity test. The institutions forming systems of aligned interest is far more dangerous. In some instances it probably produces converging interests strong enough to overrule the standard inter-agency rivalry caused by competition for resources and mandates.
As someone with spatial imagination problems, I had trouble enough with Euclidian geometry. This was a wise essay. All of us have the advantage, never used enough, of considering our own irrational impulses in understanding the complexities of behavior. The Seven Deadly Sins is a great place to start.
I got an A+ in the course, but don't ask me to envision how furniture will sit in a room! And I agree with you on the Seven Deadly Sins -- recognizing and owning our personal darkness is important for empathizing with the rest of our flawed species and for trying to figure out systems and norms that minimize our worst and bring out our best.
It's important to remember that the bureaucracies and defects present in business are comparable to those in government - some specifics differ both because you get different kinds of people showing up and the institutions have different goals. It's humans everywhere though, in the academic, government, other nonprofit, and private sectors.
A technocratic approach is still warranted - ideally one savvy to the limits and defects of human organisations, but these things can also be studied academically (and are - most of the things covered in "Theory of the Firm" generalise to other sectors).
That's an essential point that a degree of dysfunction is all but inherent in pretty much all large organizations whether that be private or public sector, and simply privatizing or outsourcing to NGOs can sometimes make problems even worse. It's not fair to scrutinize governmental dysfunction in a vacuum without looking at other structures and bureaucracies with many of the same issues.
And I agree that there's been a lot of great academic work done on this topic, some of which we read in that great course I took in college -- the big issue in my view is that those profound insights are often firewalled into their own little silo without people from other areas paying them much account, most especially among idealistic advocates and journalists who shape the public discourse. A technocratic approach that's self-conscious of its blind spots and limitations can be very useful, but in my experience working with journalists and academics I've tended to find more hubris than nuance, as if administering society is kind of a big game of Sim City.
This is a good essay. It reminded me of my approach to problems arising in our D&D game 40+ years ago. People would suggest all sorts of rules to get players to not do certain things. I though rules just led to clever ways to work around them. I built karma into my world. If you used a loophole to gain a benefit at the expense of some NPC, then a time would come that an NPC would do the same thing to you. So people did not try to color outside of the lines, even though doing so was not against the rules.
This is the approach I would take to public policy. Change a few simple things and see what evolves out of that. If you select the proper changes who should get a society from which changes to need to address social problems would be less extensive and required smaller easier to manage bureaucracies to manage.
For example is rather than setting economic policy so that we have a large class of workers who cannot afford healthcare, housing or collect education and so use government programs to get these things, why not employ a set of policies that makes this class smaller, reducing the need for large programs and the bureaucracies they require to operate?
Flatland is a wonderful book. It deserves to be rewritten in a more straightforward style without two-page-long sentences.
Modern establishments are the Monarch Of Pointland, convinced that their one-dimensional universe is perfect and incapable of improvement because they have no perception of anything outside Our Own Glorious Majesty.
It really is a fantastic book as a teaching aid or just to read for pleasure -- revisiting the book to write this post I found the winding sentences charming! A couple of others have tried doing sequels to Flatland over the years, I think I read one called Sphereland, that are written in a more direct and contemporary style.
Good essay. I heard a story once about Japanese consultants going into the German Car Manufacturing Industry to apply the Toyota approach. They were highly annoyed to discover that German managers resoled their shoes. Previously, it had been an almost perfect metric for sorting the capable managers from the bad ones, by looking for the grit and grease on a manager's sole.
Today, I think it is the perfect metaphor for the dysfunction of the West.
As a side note, have you ever heard Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy?
I have! There is no understanding the policy landscape without reference to the Iron Law(s)!
Lol- too true! I also think this insight helps us map out why people get it wrong when it comes to explicit and specific conspiracies within government, when one considers multiple agencies and institutions working in what appears to be a concerted effort. I think it's more that institutional interests converge and align, which can be very dangerous for anyone who pops up in their crosshairs. Of course, it still does mean that a conspiracy might still emerge, but it will tend to be smaller, more compartmentalised. less pre-planned, and temporary- informally convened to tackle a specific threat to several institutions. A good example might be the way in which institutional interests aligned against the pathologist who brought CTE to light, or possibly the case of Aaron Swartz.
Of course, there is also the cultural thing- the George Carlin quote:
"You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs, they have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them and they're getting it."
But that's the cultural groupthink phenomenon. It's more about having the right social ingroup ideas to pass the moral purity test. The institutions forming systems of aligned interest is far more dangerous. In some instances it probably produces converging interests strong enough to overrule the standard inter-agency rivalry caused by competition for resources and mandates.
As someone with spatial imagination problems, I had trouble enough with Euclidian geometry. This was a wise essay. All of us have the advantage, never used enough, of considering our own irrational impulses in understanding the complexities of behavior. The Seven Deadly Sins is a great place to start.
I got an A+ in the course, but don't ask me to envision how furniture will sit in a room! And I agree with you on the Seven Deadly Sins -- recognizing and owning our personal darkness is important for empathizing with the rest of our flawed species and for trying to figure out systems and norms that minimize our worst and bring out our best.