There is always something that could work better than it does. The solution seems to be to make a person accountable for handling every little problem

Say's Law for Bureaucrats - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe

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2024-04-29 17:00:16

There is always something that could work better than it does. The solution seems to be to make a person accountable for handling every little problem. They are tasked with checking that nothing goes wrong, in any area where something can go wrong. They become building inspectors who are supposed to make sure that people don't build things wrong, social workers that are supposed to make sure that people don't parent wrong, health inspectors who make sure restaurants don't poison people, environmental inspectors who are supposed to make sure the environment does not get degraded, animal inspectors who are supposed to make sure that animals are are not treated wrongly.

Her thesis is that there is an endless demand for bureaucrats. She argues that being a good bureaucrat requires high IQ, the supply of people with high IQ is limited, the demand for bureaucrats is rising, and therefore the quality of bureaucracy is declining. I think that her intuition is correct, although I have a somewhat different take on the market for bureaucrats.

The way I conceptualize it, a bureaucrat is not a decision-maker. A bureaucrat is there to try to stop other people from doing things that could go wrong.