Blundering Into Escalation in Ukraine?

Plus: A listener asks if it’s possible for bureaucracy ever to be good.

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

Blundering Into Escalation in Ukraine?

In this week's Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie question the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine and describe the impact of rising interest rates on public policy.

1:10: The aid package to Ukraine.

22:25: Weekly Listener Question: I work as a rural mail carrier for USPS. I am confronted on a daily basis with stupidity and bureaucracy. My question is, How do you fight bureaucracy, not only from the Post Office but government in general? Is bureaucracy ever good? Is it always harmful?

35:10: Continued uncertainty around inflation and interest rates.

44:28: Media recommendations for the week.

This week's links: 

"What's Next for Russia's War in Ukraine?" by J.D. Tuccille

"Everyone Agrees Government Is a Hot Mess. So Why Does It Keep Getting Bigger Anyway?" by Nick Gillespie

"Why Low Interest Rates Are Bad News for Public Pension Plans," by Alix Ollivier

"Iraq and the Marshall Plan," by Tyler Cowen

"Race and Gender Checks Coming to a Boardroom Near You," by Matt Welch

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsor: We have a health care problem in this country. The government is expanding its reach, ultimately seeking Medicare for All. Many of you are on healthcare.gov plans, and if you are, ditch it and try something new. CrowdHealth. CrowdHealth is not insurance. It's an alternative way to pay your health care bills. No surprise bills. No doctor networks. Health care can return to being between you and your doctor without government or health insurance interference. Check them out at joincrowdhealth.com, and enter promo code REASON to get $99/month for three months.

Audio production by Ian Keyser
Assistant production by Hunt Beaty
Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

What are we consuming this week?

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• Janet Echelman’s “1.8 Renwick”

Nick Gillespie

• The Fifth Column (A Podcast)

Peter Suderman

• Sea of Tranquility: A novel

Matt Welch

• Charlotte's Web (the movie)

---

Comments

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

We been blundering toward all out war in Ukraine since 2014!

[JesseAz]

Everyone is fighting for the only habitable land left after trumps world wars.

[Don't look at me!]

I thought everyone was dead?

[Moonrocks]

Yes, but we all came back. Haven't you seen any zombie apocalypse movies?

[Dillinger]

better to be superfast WWZ zombie, or foot-dragging TWD zombie?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

"Braaaaains"

[Betty R. Thompson]

I actually have received $30,700 in no extra than 30 days via running part-time via a laptop. Just once I had misplaced my final job, I changed into so perturbed however happily I received this easy on-line provide now doing this I am equipped to get thousand of greenbacks from the consolation of my home. (res50) All of you may actually do that profession and advantage extra cash on-line traveling following site.
.
>>>>>>>>>> https://brilliantfuture01.blogspot.com/

[Gaear Grimsrud]

But then we all died of Covid. So...

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Reason has been puking up neocon propaganda on this (cut/paste) unprovoked war since day one. I don't know what their problem is.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

That is just a non negotiable for you, isn't it?

?: How should the US have behaved during the lead up to WWII? The US was largely isolationist and stayed out of any conflict [but supported the UK with lend lease] until Pearl Habor was bombed, and were then forced into world war for which we were totally unprepared. Hitler and Tojo saw us as a manageable pushover, probably because of an apparent lack of will to oppose them up to that point.

I am not saying we should have any direct involvement, but I cannot see wisdom in taking a hands off approach to such aggression as has occurred with Russia toward Ukraine, or as threatened by China toward Taiwan. Otherwise you are sending a clear message of pacifism that will result in aggression toward those places, and then you indeed have a greater conflict that will draw in the rest of the world into direct war.

It would be nice to live and let live, I'm all for it. But when dealing with aggression either on an individual or societal level, trying to ignore it and act is if it is not our problem will only make it worse.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

NATO and the US should have assisted a negotiated settlement early on. Their would have been a lot fewer dead on both sides. We didn't fight a world war over Crimea, why Ukraine? But even if you believe this war was unprovoked their will be serious consequences to NATO's proxy war with Russia including world wide food shortages. And weaponising the dollar it will hasten the day when the petrodollar and reserve currency status come to an end. When that happens it's game over for the US economy. Is it worth it?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Food shortages, petrodollars, reserve currency; relatable, but very distinct issues. Add refugees, disruption to Poland's services, gas crisis in Germany, ad nausea. Wars suck all around. And yes this invasion is an "unprovoked" as any I know of, unless you take Russian xenophobia into account as a valid reason to invade and wreak destruction on a country that has been independent for 33 years [and was wrongfully annexed into the Soviet Empire, for which it suffered horribly, for the preceding 70]. No Ukraine is not some Ashokan paradise and certainly has it's problems, but none of that mitigates Putin's actions. This tyrannical aggression is on him, not on "what we coulda shoulda done" to appease him.

[NOYB2]

We’re should not have appeased him, we should have stayed out of European conflicts, disputes, and diplomacy altogether.

[JFree]

Putin is the one who threatened everyone else with nukes. That certainly raises the stakes to seriously dangerous - but Putin is the one who did that

[NOYB2]

What does WWII have to do with this?

The war in Ukraine was avoidable. NATO should never have been expanded. The US should not have toppled the pro Russian regime in Ukraine.

The suffering in Ukraine is the direct result of America trying to “westernize” more and more nations, by any means available.

[JFree]

America is not westernizing European countries against their will. Ukraine ain't Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam or Somalia. Russia itself has faced westward since roughly Peter the Great.
If Putin/Dugin is now asserting that Russia is Eurasian not Western and that Europe is decadent and that Ukraine is not really a valid nation, that ain't America's fault.

[JasonAZ]

Joe Biden is a return to normalcy. - Reason Editors, 2020

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Who said normal has to be functional?

[Quicktown Brix]

Yep. Since Clinton, and especially since W., this seems pretty normal. Oh wait, now that I think about it, since Carter.

[JesseAz]

I dont even get why they think this is blundering. This is something the atlantic council has been basically pushing for a decade. It was inevitable following the plans of them and other globalists.

[R Mac]

People need to realize that when Reason is writing about the issues with the current administration, it doesn’t effect them personally anymore than when they wrote about the issues with the Trump administration, regardless of how much more it affects most of us. The cocktail circuit functions unabated. The SOHO debates aren’t affected. Charles Koch’s checks still cash. Hell, ENB found Reason’s Facebook page (or Twitter, don’t remember) being censored as “silly”. Because why does she care, her words are still published all over the internet?

In fact it affects them less, because Trump hurt their feelings by attacking their propagandist friends in the press. And that’s more important to them than the Department of Homeland Security creating a Ministry of Truth.

[Joe Friday]

Yeah, because obviously neither Zelensky, the EU and it's members, NATO, and their leader Biden have given any serious thought to what they are doing and how they are ding it. Blunder my ass, though if I listened to these guys maybe they're talking about Putin.

Now that MFer really blundered.

[Don't look at me!]

But not SleepyJoe! He’s on top of everything, sharp as a tack.

[Joe Friday]

Something you see in the response of the west - which Biden is orchestrating - that you think could be done better? What?

[JesseAz]

Not blind sending them billions of dollars without oversight?

[Joe Friday]

Doofus, we are not sending money to Ukraine, we are sending armaments. I think we're counting them too.

[SIV]

We're servicing their debt and making 100% of the public sector payroll.

[Don't look at me!]

… which Biden is orchestrating…

Almost as masterfully as the Taiwan situation.

[Joe Friday]

Wait! You're with the CCP on this one?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Maybe Joe should have done a bit more orchestrating in Afghanistan.

[Joe Friday]

Why? 20 years wasn't enough? He said let's get out 12 years ago.

[Square = Circle]

which Biden is orchestrating

lol

[R Mac]

Biden isn’t orchestrating what time he goes potty.

[Joe Friday]

You mean like you do?

Please explain.

[Overt]

I suppose our 20 year failure in Afghanistan- at the hands of both GOP and Democrat leaders- wasn't well considered. Or was Biden only blundering when he voted to authorize military force in Iraq?

[Joe Friday]

Yes he was, and admitted it soon after, unlike almost everyone in the GOP.

[Moonrocks]

because obviously neither Zelensky, the EU and it's members, NATO, and their leader Biden have given any serious thought to what they are doing and how they are ding it.

Was this supposed to be sarcasm? Because that's actually what it looks like, from chronically failing to meet NATO defense goals to actively increasing Western Europe's dependence on Russian oil to dropping sanctions on Russia and cancelling arms sales to Ukraine to mixed messaging, including declaring that it was okay for Russia to just stick the tip in, to insisting that a war would not break out, this whole fiasco will at least provide some comic relief to history students a hundred years from now, if nothing else.

[Overt]

Not to mention his colossal cock up in Afghanistan, likely suggesting to Putin that the US lacked the resolve to do anything about his annexation of Ukraine.

[Joe Friday]

Yeah, because sticking with that fiasco for 21 years proved our lack of resolve.

Uh wait!

[Quo Usque Tandem]

“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”

― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

Joe Friday is, I suspect, more than one person. The account exists to post Democratic talking points, and often comes across as nonsense.

IOW, Fuck Joe Biden with Joe Friday's 4 bit dick.

[Joe Friday]

I'm just smarter than you and the rest of the MAGA posters here Quo, so I get why you think I must be more than 1 person.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

See what I mean? Get's all riled up, real easy. Especially when you call them out on what they are. Like Legion, the multiple demon that got cast into the herd of swine that threw themselves off a cliff [rather than listen to all their drivel about curse you and MAGA that].

[Joe Friday]

Yeah, Quo, of course you stay cool in comparison. No cursing or filthy fantasies involving whoever is kicking your ass at a given moment.

By the way, what's with the "herd of swine" throwing themselves off a cliff and who the fuck are you talking to?

[mad.casual]

Is bureaucracy ever good? Is it always harmful?

Everybody skirts the issue, Nick comes the closest to the correct answer:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

There's another law of bureaucracy -- why they always expand. If you have enough employees to keep one HR person working 40 hours a week, everything is in balance. The occasional side project (Christmas party, annual picnic) take a little time, either overtime or delaying other work for a week or month, no big deal. Hire one more worker, that HR person is now working a little overtime each week. That's OKish, for a while, but when it gets to 10 hours a week, that's too much, so you have to hire someone new. Part timers may be hard to find, and not likely to stick around for long, so you hire a full timer, and all those postponed side projects can take up the rest of the 30 hours left over.

Now one or two of the other employees retire or quit. Do you cut back on HR? No, you find make work for them -- better annual picnic, or maybe two of them. Employee of the month awards, that kind of thing.

Bureaucratic supervisors measure their success by their budget and how many employees they supervise. The last thing they want is to let anybody go. No bureaucrat ever got a promotion for shrinking his staff and budget.

Bureaucracies always expand, never shrink. The only reason this is not a problem in the private sector is because the market will force some to shrink, even if only by bankruptcy. Government does not have that "problem", and its bureaucracies will never shrink.

[mad.casual]

You just practically instantiated the abstraction of the Iron Law. Employees hired to sweep up after the job is done aren't contributing to the bureaucracy. They're sweeping up. Managers who refuse to fire the people who's sole job is to sweep up when there's nothing to sweep up are needlessly maintaining the bureaucracy. In a normal, competitive market, this is self regulating. Paying people to not sweep up makes your goods or service less competitive and the Government suffers no competition.

[Square = Circle]

so you hire a full timer, and all those postponed side projects can take up the rest of the 30 hours left over

And then you wind up where a company I used to work for was - i.e. desperately trying to grow enough to justify the size of your HR department.

[Overt]

The way to keep the Iron Law in check is competitive pressure. A company that is losing market share is a company that simply must weed out low-value people, or it will cease to exist.

I've never worked in a government organization, but I sure as hell have worked in Bureaucracies. Everyone has a reason they must be employed and must have the empire they do. Every manager will give you the reasons why they can only give up one head count and one head count only without sacrificing their service levels. And every one of those managers is able to make do with 3 or 4 fewer people.

In tech, there is a similar phenomenon called "Conway's Law". It is the notion that architectures tend to mirror the organization that built them. So if your org is writing a compiler, and you have 5 teams working on it, you will get a 5 Pass Compiler. At a former gig, we re-architected our Search Advertising stack, and I'll be damned if there weren't exactly as many server-types as there were teams dedicated to the project. It was uncanny how a search query needed to be analyzed in N different ways- each on different servers. Meanwhile, why a friend was telling me how their search ads stack was implemented, they had Y different ways to analyze searches (where Y was the lesser number of teams working on the effort).

All organizations tend towards bureaucracy and and bureaucracies tend towards self preserving, low value behemoths. The only way to stem this tide is to constantly pit it against other competitors who can do more with less.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

They wanted to write a 5 pass compiler so they created 5 teams!

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

All these words. Just watch Office Space.

"What would you say you do here?"

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Gonna have to promote this guy.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

It isn't a blunder if it was deliberate.

[Don't look at me!]

A lot of money has been flushed through Ukraine, gotta cover the tracks.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

I miss the Trump spawn.

[CE]

Sure, a bureaucracy can be good, when it makes the government less efficient at doing bad things.

[Joe Friday]

Maybe you clowns can explain to us why public universities are so much cheaper than even mediocre private colleges at 1/4 the price or better.

Univ of Florida - top 5 public, ranked #28 overall, instate tuition about $6500

Univ Miami - #55 overall, tuition about $55,000

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Subsidies. Are you really pretending to be that naive?

[Mother's Lament]

I think he really didn't know. If it's not on his Media Matters cheatsheet, he doesn't have a clue.

[R Mac]

Yeah, he’s one of the dumbest fifty centers. And that’s saying something.

[Overt]

Joe doesn't realize that tuition for Residents is not the total cost of educating someone.

Why am I not shocked.

[Overt]

Meanwhile, just for the record, according to USN, University of Michigan Ann Arbor (A public school) is ranked #23 and has an out of state tuition of around $53,000 which makes it about as expensive as Princeton (#1, $56k), Harvard (#3, $56k), MIT (#4, $56k), Stanford (#6, $56k) and others, all private institutions who seem to be performing higher. But hey, at least you get to spend 4 years in MICHIGAN!

Look, I can pick those cherries too.

[R Mac]

Hey, Ann Arbor is a beautiful little city, surrounded by…traffic and road construction.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

And Blue as Joe Friday's balls.

[Joe Friday]

Keep me out of your sex fantasies please.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

And most big public universities now rely on students from China (and other countries) who pay full non-resident price.

[Quicktown Brix]

This seems about right. Have any links or sources for someone looking to educate themselves on the subject?

[JesseAz]

Because of government loans allowing universities and private colleges both to grow at rates triple inflation? Problem is public universities also have a state budget to keep them in check.

[Joe Friday]

Do the math:

"Public four-year colleges in the United States spend an average of about $14,000 per year per student providing undergraduate education, while two-year colleges spend $9,000. Put together, the average across sectors is about $12,000 per full-time student. States have different mixes of high- and low-cost institutions, research universities and community colleges, but the average cost of education in states is remarkably consistent. In 37 out of 50 states, average costs range from $10,000–$14,000. These numbers, estimated based on the most recent federal data available (2011–12), are for actual instruction, student support, and administration; extras like food service, student health centers, and athletic programs are not included..."

https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/publications/issue_papers/College_Costs_and_Prices.pdf

[Quo Usque Tandem]

You've never put a kid through college, have you?

[Joe Friday]

2, how about you?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Yep, for real.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

If only everything were public. We could hide all the costs, not get what we want, and like it.

[Stuck in California]

That is the fundamental basis of separation of power. Checks and balances, you have to follow rules, you have to get a different governmental branch to agree to it, etc.

Whenever someone complains that it's too hard to enact legislation, or takes too long, so we should give that power to the executive, they're missing the point. If something is worth doing, you should be able to do it constitutionally, convince your peers of it's value, and convince your constituents it was the right thing so they don't vote you out of office.

When it comes to governments, nothing good happens fast. Bureaucracy, by nature, slows things down and forces a certain level of accountability. It sucks for individuals, but as a constraint on government it is far better than giving any one man free rein.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Bureaucracies can be good only when the alternative is chaos and bankruptcy. I have spent my life working for small companies. Several have gone out of business, several have been bought by big companies. When they got too big, I found a smaller company. I have lots of experience watching companies grow.

When there are ten employees, you meet them in the snack room every day, you talk with them, hear about their problems and successes. You trust them implicitly. You may not know how they do their job (what does marketing actually do?), but you believe them to be competent, and you help each other informally. You scratch each others' backs.

When a company gets to 20 or 20 people, you start needing written procedures and communications, because you know some people better than others. When it gets to 50, there are people you don't recognize, people you only see after they've been working there for a month or two, and bureaucracies are necessary to avoid chaos, forgotten promises, or flunkies asking for things their bosses wouldn't want.

100 is about the tops. By then, you've got egos and bureaucrats bragging about how big their department is, and employees wondering why they are starved of resources while others are living high on the hog.

But the company can't grow without bureaucracies. Either stagnant at 20 employees, or get bureaucratic and grow slower.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Another staff growth milestone comes when too many business school grads fill leadership positions and can't wait to implement "process".

[Overt]

I've been in teams of 500 - 1000, and they can still be productive. It takes discipline, a flat structure, and an agile mindset. The second you allow people to be managers with 1 or 2 (or 0) directs, you are off the reservation and headed towards certain doom.

[Fats of Fury]

There should be limits to any federal worker, 5 year terms and out, exceptions for some of the craftsmen at treasury. And no slipping in to another department. Take a congressional act to extend employment and only approved by a unanimous vote per case.

[Dillinger]

feature, not bug.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The Ruble will be rubble!

*clears throat*

Ruble is ~4 yr high. Masterful, Mr Biden, masterful realpolitik!

[Don't look at me!]

Apparently, he orchestrated it.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

THAT WAS TRUMP!

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

In other news, as reported by the WSJ:

Two people kayaking on the Minnesota River last September discovered a part of a human skull, one that has now been determined to be almost 8,000 years old, according to a Minnesota sheriff.

The sheriff’s office previously had posted a picture of the skull on Facebook and a summary of the events that took place. In that post, which has since been removed, the sheriff’s department said carbon-14 analysis—a method used to determine a specimen’s age—was conducted on the skull to determine when this person would have been alive. The post also included a picture of the skull.

The sheriff’s department took down the post after finding out it was offensive to some in the Native American community.

“We were alerted to the fact rather quickly that the post—specifically the picture—was particularly offensive to some and so, not having any intention to offend anybody, we immediately took that post down,” Mr. Hable said.

Dylan Goestch, cultural resources specialist and a field investigator for the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, said that the photo of the skull could be traumatic to people who weren’t expecting it.

So, are we supposed to follow the science or not?

[Don't look at me!]

Nobody knows what a skull looks like.

[sarcasmic]

Let's see. Skim the comments. Did anyone actually listen? No. Duh.

So I guess I'm gonna hafta.

[JesseAz]

Don't work too hard. May tire yourself out.

[Don't look at me!]

Get back to “cleaning your 5 guns”.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Good news, Seattle Art Museum will no require masking for "1 hour per month" to allow Seattle's hardline masks-forever population to visit without fear of catching covid monkey pox.

This way, they may stare at a blue sphere on a ledge, titled "Circle Blue" without fear of dying.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

now* require

[Don't look at me!]

Not a good hour to pick up chicks.

[Joe Friday]

Hey, weren't you with the team that cost over 300,000 Americans their lives for no good reason?

Yeah, same person.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

See how cranky he gets? Only reason I haven't muted him, so easy to provoke.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Team Cuomo?

[Overt]

OT: State Farm just backed off their support of GenderCool, a program that was pushing LBGTQ+++^4 books into elementary schools. Their statement specifically was, "Conversations about gender and identity should happen at home with parents."

I have tended to hate State Farm with the passion of 1000 suns, but this puts them down to 100 suns. Good for them.

To be fair, I would accept them saying "We have no interest in dying on this hill. We will not support controversial programs that alienate us from our customers." But flipping 180 degrees to say this is the sort of stuff that should be left up to parents? That's even better.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

I can't wait for Social Justice insurance. That will cover liabilities incurred during any number of woke moral offenses, as judged by your local DEI board.

[T.C.]

Yes, Dr Gillespie, I too wonder why Jim Croce would be playing in an airport terminal. Seems strangely inappropriate somehow, what with Jim Croce having died in an airplane accident.

[BlackCat13th]

For a beurocracy to function well it needs to be very well written and comprehensive. The beurocrats running it have to be exceptionally we'll versed on policy and and exception. After that, there has to be a prevailing culture of good faith and optomised functionality.

Every exception has to be found and implemented for every rule.

Idealism = beurocracy
Natural law = anarchy

Natural law > idealism.
Nothing can change that without causing one form of violence or another.