The True Enemies in Government

If you think governments should serve the people they govern, there are three major enemies within governments to be dealt with: Power freaks, bureaucracy, and corruption.

The worst of these is power freaks. 

Most social creatures at least as advanced as chickens have hierarchies - “pecking orders” - in which one individual has the highest status, and others have lesser ones. Human beings are not only no exception, they have refined and elaborated “pecking order” exponentially more than any other creature. 

     

Within human communities there is brisk competition for status, and for power, meaning the ability to control others, and some people have an obsession with getting and wielding power and position. Their apparent motives vary: some seem driven by religious or ideological conviction. Others by fear of enemies, rational or otherwise. Often, simple self-interest and venality are explanations. For some, the reasons need to be sought in the realm of psychiatric inquiry. Any or all of these may operate in the same person. Unlike many other social creatures, humans are capable of inflicting injury or murder on each other to achieve their ends. 

Power freaks seem to arise spontaneously within human society. It is unclear how much culture affects this phenomenon, but the existence of powerseekers is evident everywhere in the world and throughout history. For such persons, the more power adheres to a position, the more desirable that position becomes, and the more avidly, and all too often ruthlessly, they will pursue it. In any society, there is unlikely to be any more powerful a position than the head of its government. And the next most powerful positions are likely to be those near the top of the governmental hierarchy. It is not only the most capable of powerseekers, but also the  most obsessed and ruthless, who are likely to prevail in the contest for these positions, and who are likely to seek to extend or enlarge their power at almost any cost. It is exactly this sort of person who is the most dangerous person to hold such power from the point of view of others and of society as a whole. One need only note the most notable committers of mass murders of the 20th Century - Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, and Pol Pot are prime examples - to appreciate the havoc such a person can wreak. 

This phenomenon has been at the root of much of the mayhem that has filled human history from the earliest known times to the present day, and threatens to continue where not firmly checked. So far, the best defenses against the evils powerseekers can wreak have been general, strongly held consensus within a society for constitutionally limited powers of government; and for recurring, free, and fair elections by secret ballot. Another is what is lately called transparency and accountability: the more the governed know and respond to about what powerholders are doing, the less  easy for them to inflict harm to the governed. A strong case can be made for adding what in the US is referred to as term limits - a limit on how many years one person can hold an office. In general, the weaker and less permanent a government position is, the less dangerous it and any power freak who should happen to secure it is.

The second is bureaucracy.  

Like power freaks, it is an inevitable consequence of large, hierarchical organizations. Governments necessarily consist of a leadership at the top at the apex of an organizational pyramid, the people governed at its base, and in between layers of functionaries who transmit orders and information back and forth and exercise powers delegated to them by the leadership. Such a structure makes it possible to acquire and concentrate resources and apply them in a controlled and purposeful way. It is an essential part of any military organization: The commander needs reliable intelligence from the battlefield, and reliable transmission of and obedience to his orders. It is a life-or-death matter. For other sorts of hierarchical organizations, it may be less existential, but bureaucracy is still unavoidable. It is even desirable in many ways: It make possible organized human activities that would not be possible otherwise. 

Unfortunately, bureaucracy also has unavoidable, and sometimes fatal, weaknesses and drawbacks.

Most importantly, bureaucratic hierarchies are potent force multipliers for those at the top. Neither is necessarily evil, but neither is necessarily good, either. The combination of powerholders and such hierarchies, however, can be extremely dangerous if those holding power are malicious, misguided or misinformed, or even merely clumsy.

For starters, it inherently separates makers of policies and of some or all decisions, who are by design at or near the top of the bureaucratic pyramid, from the people most affected by those policies and decisions, at the bottom. The more layers between them, the less the decisionmakers at the top can know about the situations, needs and wants of the people at the bottom. If the purpose of the bureaucratic pyramid is merely to extend the reach, control, and power of those at its apex, that is not the most important consideration. In a military hierarchy, for example, the primary need is to coordinate and carry out the force’s strategy and actions in the theater of war. Knowing the condition and morale of the troops is certainly important, of course, yet those matters are secondary to the purposes of transmitting orders from above and controlling actions. But if the purpose is the welfare of those at the bottom, such matters are by definition primary.

This hierarchy is made up of individual human beings, who are subject to all the imperfections that human beings have. Often they will have agendas of their own that may not mesh well with the interests of those supposedly being served. They may be corrupt. They may oppose the policies and actions they are supposed to implement and support. They may practice favoritism among individuals or groups affected by them. They may be incompetent, mentally ill, or simply irresponsible. They may simply misunderstand the communications that pass through them from above or below. They may make honest mistakes. And beyond all that, the longer such a hierarchy is in place, the more its members will come to behave like a separate interest group from both those at the top and those at the bottom of the pyramid, one increasingly or even primarily concerned with the needs, wants, and internal politics of the people in the hierarchy.

In the U.S., corporations have been working hard at “flattening” their internal bureaucracies - reducing the number of layers between the decisionmaker and those he or she affects - for at least a generation, abetted by the power of computer networking. The principle is simple: Drive decisions and the responsibility for them down the pyramid as close as possible, given the resources and reach of responsibility required, to the level that is affected most by the decisions - and hold the decisionmaker accountable at potentially the cost of his job if he behaves badly. It requires careful monitoring, great transparency, ability to measure and judge results, and clear defining of who the decisionmaker is and what his or her responsibility is. It is not perfect by any means, but it has worked fairly well. Transparency, accountability, feedback from those affected by decisions, and a personal stake in a favorable outcome on the part of the decisionmaker are essential.

And the corrupt.

Finally, there is corruption - abuse of office for personal gain, whether tangible or intangible, or to serve ends antithetical to the interests of the organization and the people it is intended to serve. It appears to be a virtually universal disease in government at every level. The remedies that seem to do the most good: Transparency; avenues for those at the bottom of the pyramid to communicate to those at the top; careful auditing, monitoring and policing; encouragement of whistle-blowers; ability and interest on the part of the citizenry to affect government; and perhaps most of all a universal ethical revulsion against corruption and the corrupt. What is tolerated or at least unopposed will surely proliferate.

In Many Ways, People Are Freer Than Ever

Discussion of individual freedom usually revolves around what laws and governments do or do not forbid or compel. But there are other dimensions of freedom that lie largely outside laws and government, and which have a great practical effect on what people can or cannot do, and therefore their perception of what degree of freedom they have or lack. Let us call it practical freedom.

For example, money. The late Malcolm Forbes once opined that one of the best aspects of having money is the freedom it gives its owner. He meant it gives its owner options he or she otherwise would not have. Someone without money cannot buy a car, and so his mobility is severely limited compared to someone who can. With some income and a little bit of savings, he can lease a car, giving him a lot more freedom of action. With more money, he gains more options. He becomes able to buy a Chevy or a Honda Civic outright, and not have to worry about its condition when he has to turn it in after the lease expires. If he has as much money as Forbes had in his day, he can write a check for a Maserati without turning a hair. Or not. He is free to choose because he has the money to pay for his choices. Greatly more options are available to him in many other aspects of his life as well. Vacationing in Tahiti, if he chooses, instead of being restricted to taking a bus to the nearest beach, or hanging out in the local park. Living in a gated community instead of a crime-ridden slum. Getting medical treatment not covered by insurance. More options means more practical freedom of action. People sometimes call it empowerment, and that is a valid description too, but in fact it is increased freedom of choice. As general wealth increases, so does people’s practical freedom.

Technological advances have afforded more people more practical freedom than almost any other factor, perhaps excepting the spread of democratic principles of government. That vacation in Tahiti is feasible only because jet airliners have put Tahiti only a couple of days away from almost any developed country with an international airport. A century ago it was not a vacation; it was an expedition taking months. Today, even a person of modest means can carry a personal cell phone in his pocket with which he can call anyone in the world for whom he has a phone number, and send them a photo he’s just taken with it that does not entail a delay of several days to be processed in a photo lab.  A mere generation ago, neither was possible, so he was not free to do that.

Another important dimension is the effect of prevailing social mores, as opposed to laws and governmental diktats. The gradual loosening of many such mores in the US and elsewhere has removed many constraints, and visibly enlarged the degree of freedom with which people can conduct their daily lives without prohibitive social opprobrium. Once, an unmarried couple living together was subjected to shaming and general disgrace in the US; some landlords would not rent to them. They were “living in sin.” Today, no-one turns a hair. Whether that is a good or bad thing may be debated, but it is an accepted fact, and people have the freedom to accept it for themselves or, if they consider it wrong, to reject it for themselves. Even such a mundane thing as freeing up standards of dress and appearance is liberating. Where once many American women felt they needed to replace wardrobes  according to the dictates of Paris fashion houses and follow the current fashion in hairdos on pain of embarrassment about being unfashionable, today they can wear what they feel comfortable in or looks good on them, and wear their hair any way they darn please. There used to be lesser, but still restrictive, standards for men’s appearance, also now greatly diminished or gone. This is liberating. It may seem minor, but it is something that affects people’s freedom of choice literally every day of their lives on matters that have an immediate personal effect on them. 

Far less minor may be loosening of mores in places like China, where it is hard tor westerners to imagine the liberating effect of the early communist regime’s banning of the formerly widespread custom of binding women’s feet, which physically hobbled them for life. Such changes make people more free. 

Yet another, closely related dimension, with worldwide repercussions, is the general increase in material abundance, whether people are living in the money economy or not. When people are living at subsistence level or struggling to escape from it, they are likely to be more concerned with securing basic biological necessities like food, potable water, and shelter from the elements than with enjoying their rights to speech or voting. People at risk from threats and violence will sacrifice much, even freedom, to assure safety. These brutal facts may do much to explain the persistence in many parts of the world of tyrannical regimes. Such a regime’s excesses may be overlooked when you and your children are finally able to count on having enough to eat, and to eat in peace, because of it. This may be particularly true in societies that have little or no experience of political freedom, and are therefore inured to authoritarianism.

It remains to be seen what will happen in such societies when large numbers of people finally rise through Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs beyond physiological necessity and security and find their further progress hindered by such a regime. Will the result be similar to the experience of South Korea, whose people eventually threw off a harsh military dictatorship and established a full-fledged democracy? Will they regress instead, by embracing ideology or old values that favor authoritarianism, as seems to be happening in Russia and Turkey, and perhaps in China at this time? Only time will tell.