The previous four rules of politics had to do with things I had observed about Republicans, Democrats, and their approach to politics. I know everyone has seen those rules in action, they just have never understood them, or how to put words to the things they have seen. I derived these rules from watching and attempting to understand what I am seeing. I write them down like this mainly just so they are somewhere other than my brain. The next few rules are not about politics, but rather about governance. How do elected officials approach their job? Why does it seem that once elected, everybody seems to do the same thing? That leads to the my fifth rule:
“There is always a good excuse for bigger government.”
This is how the process works. Someone identifies a problem, and their solution is always some government program to fix it. Or, they see a government agency out of control, and try to fix it, and are hit with the “you are allied with the bad guys we are trying to stop” excuse. Ronald Reagan once said the closest thing to eternal life on this earth is a government program. Once it is formed, it creates a constituency that profits from its existence, and that constituency will fight to the death to protect that bureaucracy from any reform that will bring the bureaucracy under control. That constituency will also contribute to elected officials to ensure that the program they benefit from stays around and helps the constituency and the bureaucracy. The process works something like this: the program is started and the bureaucratic structure is created, the regulated constituency, or the people who received money from that process, become invested in the bureaucratic status quo, and if some elected official tries to interfere with that status quo, the constituency will step up to control the elected official, either by contributions (for or against them) or through a public relations campaign designed to justify the status quo or embarrass those who are fighting that status quo. They will have some great excuse for the government’s intrusion into whatever field the reformers are trying to fix, and they will get great stories from the press (who also receive their information from the bureaucracy and the constituency) about how noble the bureaucrats are in the wonderful work they are doing to protect people in the United States. It’s a vicious circle, and one that is difficult to break.
Pick the regulated group, big business, professionals like lawyers, doctors, teachers and accountants, landowners and developers, and they have all become invested in the status quo. They keep their competitors out of the market, and they justify their interference in the free market as “protecting the public.” (Read Friedman’s book Capitalism and Freedom and go to the chapter on “Occupational Licensure,” explaining why government licensing of professionals is unnecessary as an example of this phenomenon). One of the first things any regulated group that likes the status quo does is go to the “the government program is protecting the public” excuse.
We are watching this play out right in front of us with the controversy over USAID. Everyone who got money from this seemingly corrupt organization is sending out daily updates as to why they deserve the money, and what great work the bureaucracy has been doing around the world to maintain peace and protect people. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that’s why they paid $8 million of taxpayer dollars to a US media source, to help the poor is Africa. I have strong words for that, but I will stick with its “horse manure.”
It is an example, however, of how hard it is to stop any government program. There will always be a good excuse for that government program, and someone who profits from it to do what they can to protect it. The bureaucrats protect their constituency, the constituency elects the politicians and then the politicians protect the bureaucrats. I applaud the Trump administration for standing up to this corrupt process. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be able to shrink government and bring some level of accountability to the public for these out of control bureaucracies and their conspirators in the private sector. He’ll only be there four years, they have been there for at least 50 years, though, so they are definitely swimming upstream. It is a big task, difficult to accomplish, but it has to start somewhere.