Kludgeocracy in America

It is actually not a question of size, because the government must naturally be large to oversee a highly complex nation. The problem is over-complexity and convolution, with subgroups of experts who do not cooperate, trust each other, or work well together.

Our elected officials base their decisions not on the public good but on the possibility of campaign contributions and lucrative employment on leaving office. Our corporate elite tell us government is part of the problem and the markets should regulate themselves—and then…

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One question is whether we should worry even more about public choice architects than private choice architects. Maybe so, but we worry about both. On the face of it, it is odd to say that the public architects are always more dangerous than the private ones. After all, managers in the public sector have to answer to voters, and managers in the pri

The decision-making structure in Washington is complex, diffuse, and at odds with itself. It has streamlined itself not for routine decisions but primarily for crises.

Thinking of mass democracy as government controlled by its employees helps explain the difficulty of changing government policy. Government in many respects appears to be run for the benefit of employees. For example, government schools in most democratic countries seem to malfunction chronically and without remedy. If customers truly were in the d

The key concept is that much of America’s control circuitry has evolved to live outside the formal state, thereby making it resistant to displacement by democratic election. They laud “democracy” but avoid it in practice, through dual class stock, tenure for their bureaucrats and professors, tax-exempt compounding for their foundations, and ideolog