The Exponent Problem, by Robert Gore
Why do governments fail? Government is someone imposing rules on someone else, and backing them up with repression, fraud, and violence when necessary. The governed always outnumber those governing, which means the latter face the exponent problem. In the US, there are around 22 million employed by the government, and let’s add in another million who actively influence the government. The US population is around 323 million, so there is 23 million rulers to 300 million ruled, or about 13 ruled per ruler. How fitting, like the 13 original colonies!
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
justification.
A more plausible hypothesis is that administrative complexity follows a
logarithmic law with declining complexity per unit of size.
Consider the example of the industrial revolution. Compared with previous
economic activity there was big investment up front, very big use of labor and
materials, and very large production.
The result was a vast reduction of per unit costs.
There is no exponent problem.
Ayn Rand did not think or write in terms of superficial numerical laws arbitrarily pronounced along with arbitrary numbers, all of which is no better than numerology and which does not address the nature of the decline of this country. Our rights are based on the requirement that the individual use his reason to choose and act for his values in freedom in order to live, which may be squelched whether one or ten bureaucrats are doing it. There is no such thing as an "exponent problem" explaining this. You are free to think and live for yourself or not; it's not about bureaucratic complexity. The level of totalitarianism, when it gets to that, is only a matter of degree. "It's complicated" is not the essence.
Living in freedom and thinking for yourself is the moral-practical way; it is conservatives who argue that we should have economic freedom because economic decisions are too complicated for government -- as if that would be ok if government could find a way to make effective economic decisions, doing our thinking for us. And with their acceptance of altruism in ethics, they have no concept of the morality of individual choices and thinking for oneself, only morality as one relates to others.
Government does mean "ruling" us: protecting our rights, to the extent that we still have that in the mixture with statism, is not a form of "rule" over people. Neither is the time-varying statist impact uniform across the population. How the statism affects each of us as individuals depends on what we are doing in our lives as individuals and the nature and extent of the policies affecting that, not arbitrary averages counting "rulers" and "ruled" pretending to measure the complexity.
Political freedom depends on government formed to protect our right to think and act for ourselves as a moral principle, not anarchy or a-philosophical libertarian anti-government slogans blaming our problems on arbitrary numbers and a pseudo-scientific alleged "exponent problem" arbitrarily claimed to measure an undefined mathematical complexity -- while ignoring the requirement to think and act for yourself and the intellectual causes of the course of a nation.
Governments, as I am sure you know, are only good at one thing...initiatory force so the only valid purpose for government is protection only.
Unfortunately, government has taken that to a whole new level and your "Exponent" has exponentially expanded beyond imagined mathematical limits...
But, gee, what an antiquated horse and buggy days concept that has become! Just ask King Barry, Crying Chucky or $hillary The Evil Hag.
Or any ole' corrupt for a craven career RINO in The Swamp for that matter.
The leaders at the top are employing them to make slaves of all the rest, the leaders have no illusion that it won't work for the individual their goal is to make it work to enslave and enrich themselves at the expense of others. What makes this conspiracy work is that only a few at the very top will be involved in the conspiracy while employing the millions who when ordered will kill their fellow countrymen to ensure that 'the law' is obeyed and that we all have 'free health care, schools, hospitals & etc., believing that society is better off because of the work of the minions enforcing the law and even creating more regulations to ensure its application.
It would be interesting to put an Obama, Clinton, Trump, McConnell, Ryan, et all on the couch under the influence of a big dose of truth serum to find out what is driving each of them individually. Atlas Shrugged describes the general mentality.
It's a 2 fold acceptance. We accept that what we have is worth keeping, and that others may want to challenge that. We must define it and defend it.
The LEFT, for their part have attacked it's foundation. They have changed the definitions of everything from Immigrant, to marriage to gender, to rights, to "Justice" to Violence and to Speech.
Then, they have attacked the ability to DEFEND what it means to be American as:
- Racist
- Xenophobic
- Wrong-headed
- Intolerant
and also weakend our ability to defend our country. New standards for Rangers so Women can make the team. Now taking Transgender people in the military, or those who want the surgery in the future, with government benefits. (I don't have a problem with Women as long as we don't lower the standard we had set forever, and the issue with Transgender people is that I don't believe they are there for the right reasons, and I believe it does NOT make our military stronger, which is the real litmus test)
It's all theatre now...
BTW, I used to believe that there were 535 people with the ultimate power, and that you could just wipe them out in some kind of massacre. But the realization is that the DEEP State exists as an infrastructure for our government. Who we elect would not longer have an effect until the swamp is drained!
Today this hardly makes sense. Educated people speak English and usually at least one other language. We can read the same papers, easily and cheaply. We frequently travel right over geographic barriers, sometimes collaborating with colleagues as the plane goes near the north pole on the flight from Chicago to Beijing. Value is in firmware and CAD files that can be sent for free instantly anywhere. Passport control and customs are a vestige from another time that we hold onto. So is the notion of US, China, Russia, and other countries all completing to control the world. It's really 7 billion individuals creating more value than could be dreamed possible by previous generations, and the gov'ts of the world hanging on to the protection racket. That cuts both ways. People send a third of their money to the gov't, which comes out to enough money to fund a global empire, and they still have enough for an amazingly affluent life.
So I see the hypotheses at the end of the article. People create more, and that's more for the nation state to take and control. You hypothesize it might collapse or it might reform. You say it has to collapse first, but I see no reason one has to happen before the other. I obviously want to see it reform. My parents generation wanted to reform the world's institutions. My generation is cynical about the reforms and is more inclined to wiki- and Uber everything. The next generation is carrying that on, but without the cynicism and angst of my generation. I could conceive of the nation state starting to disappear in millennials' lifetime.
I think seeing everything as a conspiracy is just wrong. I suspect US law enforcement is effective, as human institutions go, and the politicians you mention, President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and President Trump, probably didn't do anything illegal--- or at least law enforcement doesn't have evidence to prosecute them for it. People in the gov'ts of the world are playing those complicated chess games you mention, but they know the citizens of the world are creating all the value and politicians can get only so much mileage out of manipulating people's tribal fears of one another.
The article is an upside down take, fun to read because it's very plausible, logical, and has no stupidity at all; yet it's backwards from what I think is actually happening. Thanks for posting it.
Yes. The question is the burden of proof for conspiracies. I'm saying the political figures you mention (Obama, Clinton, Trump) are not being prosecuted for crimes probably because they didn't commit them or the authorities can't get the needed evidence, not because of a large conspiracy.
Theories involving people conspiring against or with President Trump ring false to me because Trump isn't pursuing a consistently radical agenda. Qui bono? It's incredibly self-serving of President Trump to argue he would be doing amazing reforms if it weren't for everyone conspiring against him. The simplest explanation is he craves attention, isn't that into policy details, and he sucks at navigating a huge bureaucracy.
It would be like if someone said I had done good things for several electronics startups, so now Kimberly Clark (KMB) wants me as a top executive of their paper company. I don't know much about paper, and have only the vague understanding of organizations with tall functional silos rather than matrix-structured, move-fast-break-things tech orgs. So I cannot institute even basic changes at KMB. I get the VPs nodding along, but it doesn't filter down to action at the director, manager, and staff levels. They should send my butt back to the world of smaller tech companies, but instead I say many of the directors and VPs must secretly be working against me because they were had crooked deal with previous managing director for everyone to embezzle from the company. I'm so fricken-awesome and honest that I want to stamp out all that embezzlement cold. Everyone sees my amazing honesty and intolerance of graft is real, so all the crooks work together against me. What a transparently bogus self-serving just-so story to explain the obvious result of me having no experience leading a large silo-structured org in an unfamiliar industry!
So when I get to the part of the article where Clinton, Obama, and Trump are all committing crimes and using their connections in government to cover them up, it seems plausible but unsubstantiated. Anyone could be in a conspiracy, and certainly some people are, and some of them will be convicted of the crimes. Maybe President Trump knows there's some very damning evidence proving he made a quid pro quo deal with the Russian government to do what they want in exchange for working together with him to spy on his opponents and manipulate Americans, and after that he started doing everything to cover his tracks. Maybe. But I don't see any evidence for it, except him "looking guilty" by opposing the investigation. I think that's actually attention-seeking.
That's why I call your articles an upside-down take on things. It's exactly opposite of what I suspect is true, but I cannot prove the negative. There could be all kinds of complex machinations going on. Occam's razor means the view with fewer assumptions is probably true, but it doesn't rule out anything.
The evidence of unconstitutional actions by the Obama administration and blatant illegalities by Clinton is well established, but it isn't the essence behind their statist-collectivist destruction, only a consequence and one of the means of their destruction.
Trump does not appear to have done anything illegal despite his general lack of understanding, yet the Democrats are so wrapped up in their ideological quest for power that they convinced themselves that they were justified in exploiting government intelligence agencies as a secret police against a political opponent as they continue to try to destroy the Trump presidency by any means possible. None of them are debating fundamental ideas in their intellectual vacuum.
1. "intellectuals driving us toward collectivism"
I see collectivism / statism as the previous human default position, and we're slowly coming out of it. The fact that the gov't has ballooned in size in the past 100 years is concerning, but I hope it's an anomaly. There's reason to be optimistic because in some areas of life I see the average person as more understanding of an individual's right to live her own life and the things she creates. I see collectivism as the primitive way of dealing with things, like physical fighting to resolve disputes. It's natural for humans, not right, and decreasing.
2. "[Democrats think] they were justified in exploiting government intelligence agencies as a secret police"
Eventually excessive gov't powers without strong safeguards will be exploited in this way. It's not something peculiar to Democrats. I haven't followed if any particular Democrat or Republican has exploited any particular gov't power, but I know it happens and it's not a partisan thing.
It took thousands of years for mankind to figure out how to organize on any scale at all beyond the local tribe as a means discovered for primitive survival. The discovery of the principles of reason, individualism and the rights of the individual was an intellectual achievement, discovering and implementing with great effort over a long period of time ideas that had not been grasped before. What is "natural" for man is the principles by which he lives up to his potential in accordance with his requirements to live, not what happens when he stops.
The ancient Greeks made the most early progress towards reason and egoism. It was lost for a thousand years in the west from the rise of acceptance of the ideas of other-worldliness, supernaturalism and mysticism of Christianity, until man once again progressed in the Renaissance and Enlightenment as better ideas were discovered and spread.
The trend towards collectivism for the past more than 100 years is not an inexplicable anomaly; it is a direct result of the collectivist, altruist, anti-reason of the counter-Enlightenment as those ideas spread and became accepted in how people think. In this country that means Pragmatism and Progressivism, fueled by the more overt philosophical ideas further imported from Europe and now increasingly entrenched here.
The ideas of welfare statism now accepted by most people (not just "her"), and the increasing resurgence of socialism, are not an improved understanding of the rights of the individual; they are the opposite. Illiberal "liberalism" is not progress. Progressively increasing collectivist government restrictions demanding that we live for others and do as we're told are "physical fighting to resolve disputes" and serve to rationalize it. It is not decreasing. What we accomplish is in spite of it as long as we are still motivated to and allowed to, and fewer people want to. The sense of life that used to be typical of America is being smothered by the spread of more explicit ideas countering it.
I'm saying the exact same thing, except I'm using "default", maybe a poor choice of words. It's my way of saying that because the discovery of rights of the individual was an intellectual achievement that had not be grasped before. It's my way of saying we can't ask why primitive humans rejected reason and capitalism is an invalid question. They hadn't been discovered yet. Or in my poor choice of words, lack of reason, capitalism, and freedom are the "default position" for humankind.
"The trend towards collectivism for the past more than 100 years "
I'm not convinced the trend is happening. I know government has increased, but in other areas that average person understands better that her life is hers than people in the past.
"statism now accepted by most people (not just "her"), and the increasing resurgence of socialism, are not an improved understanding of the rights of the individual; they are the opposite."
Isn't this obvious? I mean, if someone's saying statism improves individual rights, I don't understand what we're even talking about.
"sense of life that used to be typical of America is being smothered"
I just don't see any of that in the last paragraph. I think people want to live free. I think it can happen in my kids' lifetime. The problems you talk about are totally real, but it seems like you're saying increased statism is grounded in philosophy that's widely supported, and people are condemned to lose touch with reason and individualism. That could happen. That's why I call it the "default position". But things could go the other way, too. I see it my kids. They want to be free. They want to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge and throw off their benevolent caretakers. And good for them. Let them do that, make money, and show their friend's that science, reason, and freedom deliver the goods, get things done. So I agree with what you're saying as a warning-- don't go here. But I'm optimistic we will not because reason delivers the goods.
People who support the rights of the individual do not support and admire Obama, Clinton, Sanders, AlGore, Elizabeth Warren and the statist aspects of Trump on behalf of his "nationalism". Those who who advocate government control and dispensing of medical care, welfare "rights", wage controls, protectionism, more progressive taxes and redistribution, endless borrowing, government takeovers of and more controls over private land, and the all the rest of the progressively increasing statism are not supporting the rights of the individual. Government entitlements sought so that people can feel "free" of the requirements to live in reality and can use government power to pursue their own wishes restricting others are not rights and not individualism. They are FDR's collectivist-statist "Four Freedoms". All of that is on the rise and is increasingly regarded as uncontroversial.
Those who still have an American sense of life wanting to be politically free and wanting to pursue their own goals with their own minds had better learn how to defend it and stop contradicting themselves in what they support because the educational establishment and the media are spreading the opposite and the politicians that are consequently elected into office are the opposite. "Things" cannot "go the other way" when the population is acting in accordance with false premises. "Showing that science, reason, and freedom deliver the goods" has not stopped the persistent pursuit of collectivism and statism regarded as a moral ideal world wide.
Very well said.
They're contrary but not exact opposites. At one time the gov'ts helped people treat one another as property. Changing that is a huge leap forward for individual rights. That doesn't excuse increase of gov't size and intrusiveness. It's just to say there's more to it than gov't size.
[Sarcasm]Really? And all along I thought statism was the answer.[/Sarcasm]
This sounds completely bogus to me, BUT all I care about it rolling back government powers. I don't get a grant, a good word with DoD or NASA contractors, or ANYTHING based on who gets the blame of the scandal de jour. That's someone else's game to play. If shoehorning it into a partisan issue results in action, that's fine with me. I don't think it does though. I think it results a) in jobs for people who depend on political connections and b) people with no stake in the political world getting fired up for reasons completely beyond my understanding (maybe they don't get enough politics at work), but no ACTION, no REFORM.