It’s a familiar scene, a staple for sitcoms, and an annual event on “The Simpsons”: a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Busy people stymied in their effort for a renewed driver’s license by dimwitted, agonizingly slow bureaucrats. A woman watches as an elderly gentleman, responding to the call of his number, slowly shuffles up to the desk. My god, she thinks, they’re not going to renew that old fossil’s license, are they? Lord help him if he gets in the way of my gargantuan SUV when I’m late for brunch at TGI Friday’s, and the special on cheap mimosas ends at noon. I’ll run the old bastard off the road and do society a favor. Oh wait. Looks like he failed the eye test. Good, now send him on his way and call my number. I’ve got more important things to do. Hurry up you damn bureaucrat! The word “bureaucrat” has taken on a bad meaning in our vocabulary, immediately associated with a needlessly ponderous government functionary. A new acquaintance in a bar may tell you that she “works for the government”, but will never say, “I’m a bureaucrat.”
Ronald Reagan was our 40th President and was known as “The Great Communicator”. He is remembered for telling us that the most dangerous words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” He also said: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” as well as: “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.” Obviously, he wasn’t a big fan of government, nor bureaucracy. Reagan is remembered fondly by Republicans, primarily for lowering the top rates for income tax, not once, but twice. The first time he lowered the top tax rate, it was considered too high, and the economy improved. The second time he did it, economists warned him that he shouldn’t do it. After he went ahead with it anyway, the stock market crash combined with the Savings and Loan Scandal (caused by an easing of government oversight as well as an excess of newly freed-up investment money in search of a good bet) wiped out the savings of many hard-working Americans.
The truth is that no one is a fan of “big government”, myself included. As we sit waiting at the DMV, we think: if only the government didn’t interfere so much in our lives. Consider the woman in the example above leaving the DMV with her new license (fuming over the poor likeness in the photograph, no doubt). She climbs into her SUV, and likely forgets that the fees she just paid help to fund the nicely paved roads that speed her to her destination. She doesn’t associate that the traffic lights and police officers that keep her trip safe do so by means of a functional government bureaucracy. Sadly, like many of us, she has a short memory. The truth is that there are many aspects of peaceful existence on this planet that requires more than the effort of a single person, or even a group of like-mined individuals. An even bigger truth is that the best way to run a government is through bureaucratic controls.
It would be a mistake to allow free market economics control such functions. Suppose a wealthy man’s limousine ran a red light and crashed into our harried SUV driver? Would it be OK if he could offer a large payment to the arresting officer to forget the whole thing, even though his driver was at fault? No, that wouldn’t be fair. We need the government to equalize the situation in order to protect what is right. We hear a lot of talk these days about the need to privatize Social Security and Medicare. What worries me most is that we would surrender any type of control in these situations to a free market that is populated by human beings. Human beings are by human nature predisposed to their own self-interest. That means we are greedy by nature, and don’t always do what is right for everyone unless something compels us to do right. Deregulation may be more efficient, but in the long run it may not be the most effective course of action.
Today’s paper had several news stories that caught my eye, and all had a common theme. The first story concerned a report published by the Government Accountability Office. In case you forgot (or perhaps are just so busy that you don’t care), the GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. The report in question concerned the emerging technology of getting gas and oil from the process of hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking. Environmentalists are concerned that fracking will have adverse consequences on our groundwater, which is a major source of our drinking water. The report stated that the part of the drilling process called fracking has not been identified as a cause of groundwater contamination. No doubt proponents of fracking will seize on this portion of the report as proof of the safety of the process.
However, the report went on to say that risks to the water supply have been found to exist from migration of underground gases and chemicals. In one case a faulty seal on a gas well allowed gas to build up and migrate into the local aquifer, contaminating wells used for drinking water. Contaminated wastewater from the drilling process can also leak into aquifers from faulty well casings and other studies have shown air quality problems around gas wells. The industry points out that the practice is safe when it is done properly. Government officials echo this claim, and point to recently strengthened regulations to assure us that fracking will be done safely. Another report indicated that it was a challenge for state regulators to hire and retain the staff needed to police the newly strengthened regulations. In other words, they can’t find enough well trained bureaucrats, and when they do, private industry will likely pay them more money to come work for them.
A second news story focused on a recent deadly outbreak of meningitis that has been linked to contaminated pain injections from compounding pharmacies. Pharmaceutical compounding (done in compounding pharmacies) is the creation of a particular pharmaceutical product to fit the unique needs of a patient. Since the recent outbreak, Congress is seeking more authority over the industry, citing a lack of specific laws and uncertainty over how much power the FDA has to regulate compounding pharmacies. Experts see the current state of inactivity and Congressional gridlock as preventing any significant action in this regard anytime soon. Perhaps not enough people have died yet for Congress to actually act, or maybe they think deregulation will work best in this case, since bureaucrats might just muck things up worse.
So what is a bureaucrat? German sociologist Max Weber defined a bureaucratic official as the following: “He is personally free and appointed to his position on the basis of conduct. He exercises the authority delegated to him in accordance with impersonal rules, and his loyalty is enlisted on behalf of the faithful execution of his official duties. His appointment and job placement are dependent upon his technical qualifications. His administrative work is a full-time occupation. His work is rewarded by a regular salary and prospects of advancement in a lifetime career. He must exercise his judgment and his skills, but his duty is to place these at the service of a higher authority. Ultimately he is responsible only for the impartial execution of assigned tasks and must sacrifice his personal judgment if it runs counter to his official duties. Bureaucratic control is the use of rules, regulations, and formal authority to guide performance. It includes such things as budgets, statistical reports, and performance appraisals to regulate behavior and results.”
Are you still awake? I know, even the definition tends to bore you to death. But do you think that we need to regulate certain aspects of our lives for our own personal safety and well being? If so, then we need bureaucrats. Unfortunately, we also need to reward them amply. The next time you see a story about some former government retiree making a decent pension with great benefits, remember that he or she was once a thankless bureaucrat, working to ensure your safety or even protecting your life.
The last story that caught my eye this morning doesn’t directly deal with bureaucracy, but is concerned with regulation. The Republican candidate for President of the United States has called for a loosening of federal regulations relating to banks. This is the sort of deregulation that led to the Financial Meltdown of 2008, when many of our major banks were on the verge of becoming insolvent, and had to be rescued. These banks included JP Morgan Chase Bank, the nation’s largest bank, which received $94.7 billion in federal bailout money, which has since been repaid. The article reported a record profit for JP Morgan of $5.3 billion, in excess of what had been forecast for the third quarter of 2012. The results were helped by a surge in mortgage lending, with the CEO commenting that the housing market “has turned a corner” and is improving.
This little blurb points out some very fundamental points relative to the upcoming election. The first is the claim of the opposition party that our economy is unsound. Their policies of deregulation almost caused the collapse of our entire financial sector. Now they’ve said that they’d like to have another go at it. It seems to me that if our housing markets are improving and our banks are earning record profits, maybe the economy isn’t so bad after all. The second point is that we had to have big government in order to bail out this bank. If it hadn’t done so, the results would have been difficult to comprehend. Massive unemployment, unprecedented lost savings, and a worldwide depression of enormous proportions would have been likely. Just because the economy suffered, and times have been tough on us all, don’t make the mistake in thinking that it couldn’t have been worse. If we allow for less regulation, it’s likely that it will get worse again.
So next time you’re at the DMV, remember to smile and thank the person behind the counter for their service. You’ll show a better and more informed view of their function as bureaucrats in keeping our lives in order, and your driver’s license photo might look better, too.
“Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge.”
— Max Weber
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