4 ms·

> But most federal agencies are simply too large and bureaucratic for individuals to push their own political agendas. I think I agree with you, both in princi

> But most federal agencies are simply too large and bureaucratic for individuals to push their own political agendas. I think I agree with you, both in principle and from similar anecdotes I have from friends & colleagues in the area. The leadership piece to which you allude worries me, but also the idea that to have a successful non-partisan government office you need to invest a lot of tax dollars to make it SO big & bureaucratic that any individual can't have significant impact makes me a tad nervous from a perspective of favoring smaller government. Therefore, if the trade-off is between massive, expensive government office that can have some non-zero probability of corruption OR relying on the responsibility of States & Representatives from those States to hire consultants / experts / research the issues, I'd opt for the latter.

Retric 7y ago
You quickly hit massive bureaucracy at the national scale without actually being that expensive. Let’s say 4,000 people, which seems like massive overkill, costing 250k each (salary + benefits + office space etc). That’s 1 billion a year out of ~7630B total government spending. It’s still a cost benefit analysis, but a technology equivalent to the GAO or arguably the FDA could provide significant value.
- ianai 7y ago
  I find all the talk about bureaucratic waste disingenuous when there are never reductions in the parts of governmental spending that benefit business directly. Ie private prisons and industrial complexes.
ianai 7y ago
I don’t understand the faith in state governments. I’ve seen just how awful they can be to trust them over the federal government, in the trend. The federal is a much larger sample of people. In order to function every part of it must pass some basic acceptability requirements from the entire voting public. Meanwhile, state governments can be outright hostile toward one locality at the benefit of another through their own laws and voting practices and budgets. State and local governments are much smaller than the fed - meaning corruption and influence are bought at much lower prices than the federal. I’ve personally lived through economic downfalls brought on by local governments outlawing and fighting new industry for political power and easy votes. I also saw my university’s tuition revenue taken from it and given to a smaller university in the state capital. All because the surrounding population hated the city hosting the university.
- dnautics 7y ago
  >The federal is a much larger sample of people. In order to function every part of it must pass some basic acceptability requirements from the entire voting public. What is the mechanism for this acceptance passing? If the VA mistreats its veterans, or has a black mold problem in a facility housing elderly patients and then covers it up how does the public vote on that. A considered response should outline both 1) how that selection might work in principle, and 2) and how it might work in light of the fact that voters care about competing interests, e.g. whether or not candidate X has a position commensurate with voters line on abortion, global warming, if the candidate has a familiar last name, if they would like to have a beer with the candidate, etc.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Outrage on cnn or twitter, for one.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  It's not that state governments have better people in them, it's that there are more of them and they have more competitive pressure. If a local government is too corrupt then people and businesses will start moving away. Which is much easier for them to do than to move to another country. And since the local government doesn't want that, they have an additional incentive on top of voting to keep the local people happy. You also end up with more policy diversity, so that if you really hate living under the rules in one place, you at least have the option of going somewhere else. Consider whether you would rather have gay marriage legal in California and illegal in Mississippi than to have it uniformly either legal or illegal in all places, but the uniform policy is chosen by a coin flip and if it doesn't go your way then you can't override it with local policy. The result is that some places will be more corrupt or have rules you can't stand. But some places will be less corrupt and have rules you love that you wouldn't have been able to make into national policy. And if you live somewhere with a policy you can't stand, it's much more feasible for you as an individual to actually affect the local policy. And if that's still hopeless then you have the option to move somewhere else with a different policy, which isn't possible when you impose a federal uniformity that makes 45% of people unhappy. > State and local governments are much smaller than the fed - meaning corruption and influence are bought at much lower prices than the federal. That's not really true, because the influence you get is in proportion to the size of the government. If you capture 1% of the federal budget, that's ~50 times larger than 1% of a state budget, so it's worth spending ~50 times more to capture it. Worse, then the regulatory capture gets greater economies of scale and becomes proportionally more available to large players than smaller ones, allowing huge corporations to more easily steamroll over small businesses and individuals. And then the rules entrenching huge incumbents are uniform so you can't avoid them by moving your small/medium business to the next town over.

Retric 7y ago

You quickly hit massive bureaucracy at the national scale without actually being that expensive. Let’s say 4,000 people, which seems like massive overkill, costing 250k each (salary + benefits + office space etc). That’s 1 billion a year out of ~7630B total government spending. It’s still a cost benefit analysis, but a technology equivalent to the GAO or arguably the FDA could provide significant value.

ianai 7y ago
I find all the talk about bureaucratic waste disingenuous when there are never reductions in the parts of governmental spending that benefit business directly. Ie private prisons and industrial complexes.

ianai 7y ago

I don’t understand the faith in state governments. I’ve seen just how awful they can be to trust them over the federal government, in the trend. The federal is a much larger sample of people. In order to function every part of it must pass some basic acceptability requirements from the entire voting public. Meanwhile, state governments can be outright hostile toward one locality at the benefit of another through their own laws and voting practices and budgets. State and local governments are much smaller than the fed - meaning corruption and influence are bought at much lower prices than the federal. I’ve personally lived through economic downfalls brought on by local governments outlawing and fighting new industry for political power and easy votes. I also saw my university’s tuition revenue taken from it and given to a smaller university in the state capital. All because the surrounding population hated the city hosting the university.

dnautics 7y ago
>The federal is a much larger sample of people. In order to function every part of it must pass some basic acceptability requirements from the entire voting public. What is the mechanism for this acceptance passing? If the VA mistreats its veterans, or has a black mold problem in a facility housing elderly patients and then covers it up how does the public vote on that. A considered response should outline both 1) how that selection might work in principle, and 2) and how it might work in light of the fact that voters care about competing interests, e.g. whether or not candidate X has a position commensurate with voters line on abortion, global warming, if the candidate has a familiar last name, if they would like to have a beer with the candidate, etc.
- ianai 7y ago
  Outrage on cnn or twitter, for one.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
It's not that state governments have better people in them, it's that there are more of them and they have more competitive pressure. If a local government is too corrupt then people and businesses will start moving away. Which is much easier for them to do than to move to another country. And since the local government doesn't want that, they have an additional incentive on top of voting to keep the local people happy. You also end up with more policy diversity, so that if you really hate living under the rules in one place, you at least have the option of going somewhere else. Consider whether you would rather have gay marriage legal in California and illegal in Mississippi than to have it uniformly either legal or illegal in all places, but the uniform policy is chosen by a coin flip and if it doesn't go your way then you can't override it with local policy. The result is that some places will be more corrupt or have rules you can't stand. But some places will be less corrupt and have rules you love that you wouldn't have been able to make into national policy. And if you live somewhere with a policy you can't stand, it's much more feasible for you as an individual to actually affect the local policy. And if that's still hopeless then you have the option to move somewhere else with a different policy, which isn't possible when you impose a federal uniformity that makes 45% of people unhappy. > State and local governments are much smaller than the fed - meaning corruption and influence are bought at much lower prices than the federal. That's not really true, because the influence you get is in proportion to the size of the government. If you capture 1% of the federal budget, that's ~50 times larger than 1% of a state budget, so it's worth spending ~50 times more to capture it. Worse, then the regulatory capture gets greater economies of scale and becomes proportionally more available to large players than smaller ones, allowing huge corporations to more easily steamroll over small businesses and individuals. And then the rules entrenching huge incumbents are uniform so you can't avoid them by moving your small/medium business to the next town over.