Election Day Thoughts from Harold Laski, Commie Ratfink

Back in 1924, in a letter to esteemed American judicial annoyance Oliver Wendell "taxes are the price we pay to keep people like me employed" Holmes, Laski, model in part for Rand's Ellsworth Toohey and a distinguished British Labour party radical in the 1940s, bit on some "man bites dog" truth, worth remembering, because though we elect the politicians, the bureaucrats make decisions for us all:

I can, I think, recite fairly fully on the habits of bureaucracy. The things which distinguish it are these: 1. Its members all say the same thing. 2. They cannot understand that their expert knowledge is open to independent inquiry…..3. They have complete contempt for all outside their charmed circle….4. They do not realize how many people there are who want a share, however small, in deciding their own destiny…they hardly see why people should want to make their own rules.

Comments

[Santa]

that sentence could use some more clauses.

[Citizen Nothing]

"Features, not bugs!" proclaims David Brin.

[GoNavy]

The quote is interesting, but a bit ironic that those ideas were expressed by someone in the British Labour Party. (full disclosure, I have never heard of Laski before)

[Jerry]

The guy from the socialist calculation debate?

[Jerry]

No wait, that was Oskar Lange.

[T]

But don't we want them working better and more efficiently for us? After all, an efficient bureaucracy will make the trains run on time.

[prolefeed]

But don't we want them working better and more efficiently for us? After all, an efficient bureaucracy will make the trains run on time.

If those trains are running to places like Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka, efficiency and good on-time arrival stats are not virtues.

[ChrisO]

Below the level of political appointees, I've found that most bureaucracies consist of the same mix of clock watchers and turf builders as any large business, but without a bottom line to create any sense of urgency or accountability.

That said, Laski's axiom certainly squares with the career military types I've known over the years.

[Old Mexican]

I can, I think, recite fairly fully on the habits of bureaucracy. The things which distinguish it are these: 1. Its members all say the same thing. 2. They cannot understand that their expert knowledge is open to independent inquiry.....3. They have complete contempt for all outside their charmed circle....4. They do not realize how many people there are who want a share, however small, in deciding their own destiny...they hardly see why people should want to make their own rules.

Sounds like your kind of people, Chad/Tony!

[Mainer]

Even when Chony isn't here, you invoke him.

[Paul]

We don't live in a Democracy, we live in an oligarchy of unelected career bureaucrats.