Careerism

Why do people become bureaucrats? Does anyone grow up wanting to be one?

AI won’t pause for the election, and AI regulation shouldn’t either

There are two key  arguments in favor of applying existing regulations to AI.

One, Congress is too partisan (and, by implication, too uninformed) to make laws in a timely manner.

Two, if regulators use their existing toolkit, they may inoculate themselves from Loper challenges.

It’s an interesting parallel to the Luddites who claim that AI poses an existential threat that merits its own administrative framework.

The punchline is that AI is too juicy a target. People enter bureaucracies to control outcomes (or be seen as influencing them). AI is a big thing to want to own. Of course, they’re going after it. And it has nothing to do with Congress.

‘To promote the responsible development and deployment of AI during this busy political period, would-be regulators should therefore aim to use their existing powers to govern AI. Rather than waiting for a partisanly hyper-charged Congress to create new regulations from scratch, agencies can deploy their current authorities and tools to govern AI applications under their regulatory purview.’

Gunshots, threats ... and bureaucracy? The latest menace to the U.S. election

Regulation about voting and vote-counting is already a significant issue in this Fall’s election. Expect massive litigation in the case of a tight result.

We may not know the winner until January 6, 2025.

‘One threat is growing in public attention: Chaos in the counties. Specifically, the certification process in Georgia has become national news.’

Why Mexico Is on the Road to Serfdom

Economic failure can still produce political success if it’s married to massive government transfers, enabling shifts in control over resources from the private sector to the public sector. This, in turn, begets more economic disappointment, spurring the vicious cycle of transfer and control as institutions weaken and regulation becomes directed to political purposes.

‘Eighty years ago, Friedrich Hayek watched in anguish as Western liberal democracies seemed to embrace the authoritarian tendencies that had given rise to Nazism in Germany. In The Road to Serfdom (1944), he dedicated his work “to socialists of all parties,” warning that both left-wing socialism and national socialism were branches of the same tree. Hayek feared England would repeat the history he had witnessed in Germany when he wrote the following:

‘”When one hears for a second time opinions expressed or measures advocated which one has first met twenty or twenty-five years ago, they assume a new meaning as symptoms of a definite trend. They suggest, if not the necessity, at least the probability, that developments will take a similar course.”’

Hoosier Hustlers: How $700M Was Stolen from Indiana’s Neediest

Bureaucracy is the application of power through the use of regulation and enforcement to obtain one or more ends.

There are stated ends and there are unstated ends.

The stated end for state healthcare programs is (or should be) something like this: use a limited set of resources to provide the highest feasible standard and quantity of healthcare to the citizens of the state. This means husbanding those resources and putting them to their most productive use.

The unstated end for healthcare in this case was for the key players at the table including large providers and senior healthcare officials to benefit personally. The revolving door between regulators and the private sector entities they oversee is … problematic.

‘Medicaid, the largest public welfare program in the United States, is meant to finance essential medical services to the country’s most vulnerable populations. It has devolved, however, into a breeding ground for fraud, waste, and political corruption. A recent whistleblower lawsuit alleges that Indiana’s Medicaid program was defrauded of more than $700 million by hospitals and managed-care companies, with the state’s officials succumbing to political pressure to turn a blind eye. Shockingly, after ignoring clear evidence of fraud and errors, the state’s Medicaid director accepted a job with one of the very entities named in the lawsuit.

‘Indiana’s Medicaid scandal is not just an isolated case of alleged fraud; it is symptomatic of a broken system nationwide. According to the lawsuit, improper payments flagged by IBM Watson — ranging from duplicate claims to bills for services rendered to deceased individuals — were left unaddressed by the state’s Medicaid office. These payments totaled up to $724 million between 2015 and 2020. The whistleblower claims that political pressure from hospitals and managed-care companies influenced officials to curtail efforts to recover these overpayments, contributing directly to a $1 billion Medicaid shortfall in Indiana. The state’s managed-care companies even paid for Medicaid for people who were dead.’

Europe’s Quest to Rearm Runs Into Red Tape, Lack of Cash—and Meditation

The need to rearm has not been this urgent in decades, especially in Europe where there is an active conflict a stone’s throw away from the Eastern edge of the EU.

Yet, bureaucracy prevails.

‘In a highly trumpeted move, Denmark—a nation of around six million that has donated all of its artillery to the Ukrainian war effort—late last year bought back a decommissioned ammunition plant to resurrect its production of artillery shells.

‘Nearly a year later, the factory in a remote village in northern Denmark remains empty. Political wrangling has delayed the process of finding a company to produce the ammunition, and the formal tendering process has yet to start. ‘

Trump likely to take an ax to the gov’s vast ‘woke’ bureaucracy if he’s back in office

The urgency to defeat Trump in the election in November is driven by a rising fear that he has figured out how to make things happen after four years of frustration. This explains the vilification of Project 2025, an independent think tank’s suggested plan for governing, written in part by former Trump administration officials.

See also the Mick Mulvaney piece we referred to a few days ago. It’s not turning an aircraft carrier, as he suggested. It’s making sure the orders from the bridge make it to the engine room and are executed.

‘If Donald Trump is elected president in November, he’s likely to take an ax to the federal government’s vast “woke” bureaucracy, the powerful regulatory agencies that are forcing progressive politics on all aspects of American life, including the workplace, The Post has learned.

‘Several outside advisers to candidate Trump say plans are already being drawn up on how to return agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, led by Lina Khan, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, headed by Gary Gensler, to their original mandates of consumer and investor protection, as opposed to pushing progressive change in the $28 trillion US economy.’

National security prime target of Trump’s plan to weaken civil service

This fear and loathing is being elevated to the status of a threat to national security. It’s not enough that we are told that Trump is a threat to democracy, as if our institutions are so frail that one man can take them out at the knees.

Also, why is it inappropriate to fire someone in the bureaucracy for ‘political reasons?’ Does the executive branch not live in a political stew? Isn’t the President a politician? Doesn’t the President have the right to direct the bureaucracy? Or is he just a figurehead?

‘Donald Trump’s plan to make thousands of federal employees more like at-will political appointees poses a particular risk to the prime duty of government — national security.

‘That was the message from a Senate hearing last week into the Republican presidential nominee’s intention to undercut the federal civil service by reinstating a new category of federal employment, known as Schedule F. It would remove job protections from certain employees that prevent them from being fired for political or other inappropriate reasons.’