You make a good distinction, but I never thought that the various bureaucracies within the government, and, of course, there are many, had as part of their culture, their third order controls, and impulse or even imperative to serve the citizens. That result is possibly (but certainly not always) a byproduct of their trying to make something happen that satisfies their own sense of how things should be. 3rd order controls are rarely about something that's benevolent and altruistic, but rather about how to make things work in such a way that you avoid catastrophe and retain control.
As I try to comment on your lengthy essay about bureaucracy my main concern is how to avoid a lengthy point by point response. Your mosaic of reference points is as complex as the bureaucracy and in reading I tried to find the core, the heart of the matter, and I think it is in the penultimate paragraph: “Government in that scenario has failed in its mission of protecting its citizens.” I realized at this point in your essay that you had made an assumption about the Bureaucracy’s “Third Order” of “norms, culture and language.” Having worked in the federal bureaucracy for 29 years in 3 agencies, I was one among millions of civil servants, “swimming” in the river, the environment, of public service. But the issue is not the dismantling of the bureaucracy as much as the discrediting of the WHOLE system, the destruction of the norm. Thus we have Musk telling us he has found thousands of examples of waste, fraud and abuse. Our common sense tells us that this must be true, but by failing to give specific examples we have no way to measure the scope and magnitude of the problem. Thus, without identifying the specific locations within the bureaucracy where the problems exist, Musk is dismantling the entire bureau. The word, in my mind, always evokes the image of an enormous wooden cabinet filled with drawers of all sizes and compartments where workers and work can be “pigeon-holed.” Musk is attacking the bureau like one plays the game of Jenga. What could go wrong? And that’s just the point. Unlike the game, where losing is the collapse of the tower, that is just what Musk and Trump hope to achieve.
If you see the mission of government as serving the people, you might expect government efficiency to focus on ways to deliver the service with more speed, efficiency, and equity. (Don’t get me started on equity.) In the world of commerce, efficiency is usually achieved through the mechanism of self service. Recall the automat restaurant that eliminated the wait staff with the pies and sandwiches behind little windows, that evolved into vending machines, self-service gas stations, all the way to on-line purchases. We have seen the same efficiencies in government, albeit frustrating when we cant reach a human being to resolve a problem too complex for the system. But Musk and his Next-Gen computer nerds are not working on more efficient service delivery. They are removing the pies and sandwiches from behind the automat windows. They are eliminating the service entirely, not the service delivery. And they are doing it all under the guise of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. This is because Trump has finally executed what Ronald Reagan could only dream of when he said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
This has been the goal of the GOP for decades, to starve the bureaucracy with tax cuts so that the budget is left with almost no discretionary spending, no fat, and we finally have to start cutting away at the social entitlements like medicare, medicaid, and social security. The mantra that has been used to justify tax cuts is that “you know better what to do with your money than the government does.” This is why billionaires had front row seats at Trump’s inauguration. The obscene consolidation of wealth that has taken place in the U.S. since 1980 is the result of the GOP’s successful war against taxation. Of course the other results are the deterioration of our infrastructure, the failure to build high-speed rail, and the slow transition away from fossil fuels. Billionaires don’t build bridges and railroads with their own money. The US is falling behind the rest of the OECD countries because of its regressive inequitable tax system and the assault on bureaucracy.
100 years ago this would have been called laissez-faire. Today, it’s just unfair. The dismantling of the bureaucracy is the goal because it will remove all regulatory constraints on business and industry, not to mention criminal activity. The goal is to get government oversight out of the way by tearing it apart and what better way than to put incompetent managers in charge of departments and to remove the civil servants who know how to run the machinery of government. DOGE - Department of Government Elimination.
Icarus is a good reminder of the dangers. I've always loved the Robert Frost poem, but it bothered me there wasn't a third option to fire and ice. I think you are suggesting a third way to respond to the Trump/Musk assault, not simply burn it up or freeze it out. Here's an attempt I made to respond to Frost's poem. Not sure if it resonates with your thinking about bureaucracy. It's an attempt to define a third way between a duality, which still recognizes the two dimensions, but wonders what might hold them both in a creative positive life filled balance.
Here is food for thought. Elon Musk’s shenanigans reminds me of Chairman Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and his parole “Bombard the Headquarters!” It was a destructive distraction aiming to deflect responsibility for the “Great Leap Forward” which led to the death of tens of million Chinese. The Cultural Revolution threw the country into chaos by destroying the “bureaucracy” which got in the way for Mao’s reckless rule. After the Cultural Revolution, there was talk of rule by law instead of Mao’s rule by men. The return to order under Deng Xiaoping (but in no way a move towards democracy) made China’s economic explosive growth possible, but the return to autocracy under Xi Jinping is undermining China’s future prospects both politically, socially and economically. The Trump/Musk oligarchy is likely to lead the U.S. and the world to global catastrophe.
Great point about Chairman Mao, also that Xi's response is equally bad in the other direction: too little regard for law versus too much regard for law. I think we need to search for a third way that is more creative, with the human being in the middle. I've always enjoyed the old religious drawings of the angel holding the balance, with the pious soul weighing more than the devil's desperate attempt to pull down its side. In the drawing where the angel is, I would put us conflicted human beings - we have both sides, angel and devil: the negative qualities of Mao and Xi / Trump and Musk are also within us, but we can counterbalance them with our own efforts toward the good. When we try to eliminate them we fall prey to their illness of trying to eliminate us; instead, let's stay in relationship with them / this part of us while we forcefully assert an opposite direction.
You make a good distinction, but I never thought that the various bureaucracies within the government, and, of course, there are many, had as part of their culture, their third order controls, and impulse or even imperative to serve the citizens. That result is possibly (but certainly not always) a byproduct of their trying to make something happen that satisfies their own sense of how things should be. 3rd order controls are rarely about something that's benevolent and altruistic, but rather about how to make things work in such a way that you avoid catastrophe and retain control.
As I try to comment on your lengthy essay about bureaucracy my main concern is how to avoid a lengthy point by point response. Your mosaic of reference points is as complex as the bureaucracy and in reading I tried to find the core, the heart of the matter, and I think it is in the penultimate paragraph: “Government in that scenario has failed in its mission of protecting its citizens.” I realized at this point in your essay that you had made an assumption about the Bureaucracy’s “Third Order” of “norms, culture and language.” Having worked in the federal bureaucracy for 29 years in 3 agencies, I was one among millions of civil servants, “swimming” in the river, the environment, of public service. But the issue is not the dismantling of the bureaucracy as much as the discrediting of the WHOLE system, the destruction of the norm. Thus we have Musk telling us he has found thousands of examples of waste, fraud and abuse. Our common sense tells us that this must be true, but by failing to give specific examples we have no way to measure the scope and magnitude of the problem. Thus, without identifying the specific locations within the bureaucracy where the problems exist, Musk is dismantling the entire bureau. The word, in my mind, always evokes the image of an enormous wooden cabinet filled with drawers of all sizes and compartments where workers and work can be “pigeon-holed.” Musk is attacking the bureau like one plays the game of Jenga. What could go wrong? And that’s just the point. Unlike the game, where losing is the collapse of the tower, that is just what Musk and Trump hope to achieve.
If you see the mission of government as serving the people, you might expect government efficiency to focus on ways to deliver the service with more speed, efficiency, and equity. (Don’t get me started on equity.) In the world of commerce, efficiency is usually achieved through the mechanism of self service. Recall the automat restaurant that eliminated the wait staff with the pies and sandwiches behind little windows, that evolved into vending machines, self-service gas stations, all the way to on-line purchases. We have seen the same efficiencies in government, albeit frustrating when we cant reach a human being to resolve a problem too complex for the system. But Musk and his Next-Gen computer nerds are not working on more efficient service delivery. They are removing the pies and sandwiches from behind the automat windows. They are eliminating the service entirely, not the service delivery. And they are doing it all under the guise of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. This is because Trump has finally executed what Ronald Reagan could only dream of when he said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
This has been the goal of the GOP for decades, to starve the bureaucracy with tax cuts so that the budget is left with almost no discretionary spending, no fat, and we finally have to start cutting away at the social entitlements like medicare, medicaid, and social security. The mantra that has been used to justify tax cuts is that “you know better what to do with your money than the government does.” This is why billionaires had front row seats at Trump’s inauguration. The obscene consolidation of wealth that has taken place in the U.S. since 1980 is the result of the GOP’s successful war against taxation. Of course the other results are the deterioration of our infrastructure, the failure to build high-speed rail, and the slow transition away from fossil fuels. Billionaires don’t build bridges and railroads with their own money. The US is falling behind the rest of the OECD countries because of its regressive inequitable tax system and the assault on bureaucracy.
100 years ago this would have been called laissez-faire. Today, it’s just unfair. The dismantling of the bureaucracy is the goal because it will remove all regulatory constraints on business and industry, not to mention criminal activity. The goal is to get government oversight out of the way by tearing it apart and what better way than to put incompetent managers in charge of departments and to remove the civil servants who know how to run the machinery of government. DOGE - Department of Government Elimination.
Icarus is a good reminder of the dangers. I've always loved the Robert Frost poem, but it bothered me there wasn't a third option to fire and ice. I think you are suggesting a third way to respond to the Trump/Musk assault, not simply burn it up or freeze it out. Here's an attempt I made to respond to Frost's poem. Not sure if it resonates with your thinking about bureaucracy. It's an attempt to define a third way between a duality, which still recognizes the two dimensions, but wonders what might hold them both in a creative positive life filled balance.
Fire and Ice
A response to Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
Yet I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Yet others say the world goes on
In endless transformations;
Around the fire
Warm hearts thaw ice,
In hatred’s soil
Love grows
And carries on.
Robert M. Burnside
December 2022
your poem enchants and instructs, Robert. Love grows and carries on. this seems to me to be the start of an answer of how to respond. Thank you
Here is food for thought. Elon Musk’s shenanigans reminds me of Chairman Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and his parole “Bombard the Headquarters!” It was a destructive distraction aiming to deflect responsibility for the “Great Leap Forward” which led to the death of tens of million Chinese. The Cultural Revolution threw the country into chaos by destroying the “bureaucracy” which got in the way for Mao’s reckless rule. After the Cultural Revolution, there was talk of rule by law instead of Mao’s rule by men. The return to order under Deng Xiaoping (but in no way a move towards democracy) made China’s economic explosive growth possible, but the return to autocracy under Xi Jinping is undermining China’s future prospects both politically, socially and economically. The Trump/Musk oligarchy is likely to lead the U.S. and the world to global catastrophe.
Yes, someone believes distraction will work.
Great point about Chairman Mao, also that Xi's response is equally bad in the other direction: too little regard for law versus too much regard for law. I think we need to search for a third way that is more creative, with the human being in the middle. I've always enjoyed the old religious drawings of the angel holding the balance, with the pious soul weighing more than the devil's desperate attempt to pull down its side. In the drawing where the angel is, I would put us conflicted human beings - we have both sides, angel and devil: the negative qualities of Mao and Xi / Trump and Musk are also within us, but we can counterbalance them with our own efforts toward the good. When we try to eliminate them we fall prey to their illness of trying to eliminate us; instead, let's stay in relationship with them / this part of us while we forcefully assert an opposite direction.