From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Dec 23 2002 - 19:11:59 MST
--- Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
"Have any bureaucracy/state power ever reduced its
size without violent or near-violent upheavals? I have
so far not managed to recall any examples of this. The
government apparatus seems to withstand quite
dramatic pounding; even if the leadership is purged
the system often remains and quickly rebounds. This
suggests a nasty problem: bureaucracies tend to grow
for a variety of reasons, but if reducing them demands
drastic coercive methods it will be hard to set up a
libertarian system with libertarian means."
This is a problem which I've thought about some, and
always wanted to hear discussed. Anders' comment
suggests the problem **starts** with a perceived
degree of intractability comparable to trying to
overturn a law of nature. "Bureaucracies/governments
are thus and so, have always been so, will always be
so. It cannot be otherwise." But governments,
constitutions, and laws are constructed by humans, and
logically subject to modification by those same--or
later--humans.
Just as those who wrote the US constitution created
the separation of powers to prevent tyranny, we, two
and a quarter centuries down the road, might apply the
same or a similar principle to slow, stop, and then
reverse the heretofor 'uncontrolled' growth of Govt.
If government bureaucracies as currently structured
tend to grow overlarge, cannot we look at that
structure, find the factors at fault, and propose a
restructuring aimed at improving the situation.
By way of a simple example--just a place to
start--suppose you took a certain large bureaucracy,
and split it in two. Suppose you gave management a
base salary half the usual amount and then declared
the two in competition with each other. Whichever
half accomplished the most with the least would then
receive the lions share--say a 90/10 split--of that
half of their compensation that had been set aside at
the outset. The top management of the losing side
could then be dismissed/demoted, and a new top
management team drawn from the remaining management
pool, and the process repeated. If competition in the
corporate world works, why not try to apply the same
winning principle in the government sphere?
Best, Jeff Davis
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