By Patrick F. Cannon
If you’ve been reading these weekly musings long enough, you’ll know that I’m not a big fan of the proliferation of governments, agencies and corporations that employ people to tell you what to do, or why they can’t or won’t. One solution for multiple Federal anti-poverty programs that I’ve advocated: get rid of the multiple agencies that provide financial assistance and replace them with one that decides eligibility based solely on family size and income and sends a monthly check sufficient to cover all eventualities (food, housing, medical care, etc.). I’m told that some people will game the system. Guess what? They already do. In my system, there will just be fewer bureaucrats worrying about it.
What spurred me to write this was a January 18 David Brooks column in the New York Times. With apologies and thanks to David, let me repeat some of the stuff he found out. First, and this should be no surprise to most folks, a third of all health care costs go to administration, costing the average American $2,000 a year. What these administrators mostly do if figure out ways to deny coverage. I recently experienced this when my doc hit the wrong button on his computer. He thinks he’ll be able to fix it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Here’s a shocker. According to a study in the Harvard Business Review, there is now one administrator or manager for every 4.7 employees, doing stuff like anti-harassment training, writing corporate mission statements (I was once guilty of that), collecting data and managing “systems.” Here’s one that Brooks didn’t mention: At the height of World War II, there was one general or admiral for every 6,000 troops; now there is one for every 1,600. The poor enlisted soldier can barely walk a block without having to salute someone!
Why does it cost so much to go to college? Well, M.I.T., for example, has eight times as many nonfaculty employees as faculty. In the University of California system, non-faculty positions increased 60 percent between 2004 and 2014 (God knows what it is now). Faculty positions? Eight percent. Many of the new administrators spend their time worrying about the meaning of free speech, or whether the school is measuring up in equity, diversity and inclusion (D.E.I.).
Brooks gives us the example of Mark Edmunson, who teaches literature at the University of Virginia. Once the self-evaluation he had to submit ran to one page. “Now he has to fill out about 15 electronic pages…demonstrating how his work advances D.E.I., to make sure his every waking moment conforms to the reigning ideology.”
Finally, although it beggars belief, Edmunson quotes these rules his university devised to govern how students, faculty and administrators should practice sadomasochistic sex: “When parties consent to BDSM 3, or other forms of kink, nonconsent may be shown by the use of a safe word, whereas actions and words that may signal nonconsent in non-kink situations, such as force of violence, may be deemed signals of consent.”
Has all this made for a better, more humane world? You tell me. And by way, the Federal government is our largest employer, with about 3,000,000 on the payroll. Wall-Mart comes second with 2,300,000. And they give you value for money, and a smile when you walk in the door.
Copyright 2024, Patrick F. Cannon
cannonnadedotcom 
Oh, I give up. Twice I tried to post a comment to your blog and twice the damned thing erased what had taken thought and time to write. Get a different platform! It used to be simple to use, now it’s as complicated as BDSM 3 rules at major universities.
Steve
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Not sure what the problem is, but maybe you could just attach or put in body of an email. In the meantime, I’ll try to see what gives.
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I want to see if this comment is posted.
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I’ve always rather liked David Brooks, the NYT’s resident (token) conservative.
It’s true that he never seems able to decide whether he is conservative or liberal, or for that matter in his personal life Jewish or Christian (currently Christian), but his observations are keen, and if you ever visit Berkeley, California, be sure to bring along a copy of his Bobos in Paradise. One could say he’s a moderate in the extreme. Even when he’s wrong (he knew Obama would be president and a good one when he noticed Obama’s perfectly creased pant leg) he’s wrong in amusing, perceptive ways.
In any case, Brooks is right about our absurdly bureaucratic society. Some might say it was spawned by the educational system, which is the very model of a modern major cluster funk. But it goes far beyond that. Politically, a hierarchical, centralized administrative system becomes a way of countering disruptive political forces, be they patrician, religious or separatist. Socialism (in contrast to capitalism) is essentially bureaucracy, a top down administration composed of various ministries controlled by politically favored elites.
Our current (and never-ending) presidential election, in one sense, comes down to a contest pitting the administrative state run by Democratic elites against a populist movement, nominally Republican, led by an irreverent entrepreneur outsider. When Michelle Obama says she is “terrified for our democracy” she really means the bureaucratic administrative state that elevated her and others to where they are, not the millions of citizens who want to drain the swamp and her along with it.
It’s gotten hard to avoid bureaucracy in normal life. I used to see a family doctor, get an appointment the same day if needed, spend time discussing the particular ailment and general well being, and get a follow up to see how things were progressing. Alas, not anymore, Jack. My MD is an excellent doctor but unreachable in person. It can take a week or more to schedule an appointment (six months or more if you are a new patient), and if you don’t know how to contact his nurse, as I do, you must go though a sorting process on the phone that may result in no appointment at all. They’ll call you back! You are an item on an assembly line. Diagnoses are often done virtually without personal contact.
Sadly, the doctor-patient relationship is gone (dentists, whose practices haven’t yet been swallowed up by the machine, are an exception). In its place are negotiated transactions between top-down medical corporations and insurance companies in which you identify merely as a few letters of your name and a date of birth. Zealots in Washington threaten us with single payer health care and Medicare for All. Medical coverage isn’t the same as medical treatment, and as the late, great P.J. O’Rourke once quipped, if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.
Bureaucrats, unlike Wal-Mart or other for-profit employees, don’t need to bother with customer demands to be paid, only follow rules. The money comes from some budget allocation somewhere determined by algorithms . Bureaucrats of earlier, old school generations at least could be amusing people just doing their job like Ralph T. “Bob” I., Tony D., Ed Z., and Takashi “Jim” S. Maybe they carried on a bit outside the office or drank too much, normal human behavior. You don’t see too many of these types anymore, though a few might still wear bow ties or suspenders.
No, the modern bureaucrat is all business, unsmiling, highly credentialed and deadly serious in purpose. Where formerly sworn to political neutrality, they are now opinionated. They do, however, have one trait in common. They radiate a serene certainty about their virtue that tells you one thing: they are immovable.
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My doc is a good guy, but when I had an ear infection, I couldn’t get a reasonable appointment, so I went to the emergency room. I had to wait a couple of hours, but at least the infection was dealt with. This morning, I went to get my drivers license renewed and was amazed at the speed and courtesy I found. It’s not these folks who are the problem, but the mandarins who “interpret” legislation that the Congress leaves too open to interpretation.
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Customer service at the BMV in Illinois and Indiana has been prompt, courteous and efficient in my experience. But I wouldn’t expect the same at the Dept of Transportation in DC. They might take my gas engine car away!
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My BMW is now 13 years old, and just passed its 60,000 mile physical. Not inclined to replace it with an electric car that loses charge when it gets cold, which it does hereabouts.
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I may have bragging rights. Don’t tell Buttigieg, my 2004 WRX is pushing 130k and gets admiration at Chad’s quick oil change shop. Electric? That’s for my espresso machine.
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Expresso machine? Not sure why I don’t have one. After all, life’s short!
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Essential for morning cappuccino. Don’t get a cheap one. The real machines can cost more than $1000 but you can get a good entry level machine (vs an espresso “maker”), the Gaggia Classic, available at Whole Latte Love, for under $400 (now on sale!).
https://www.wholelattelove.com/products/gaggia-classic-evo-pro-semi-automatic-espresso-machine
I’ve got an earlier model and it’s cranked out espresso for about 15 years so far. Of course in Italy every household has a Bialetti Moka which you can get here for about $30. It makes a nice cup of coffee but technically not espresso.
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