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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30730 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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The deep state is more than that, it's when a bureaucracy becomes so large and so ossified and so specialized that replacing people becomes impractical. Producing a kind of feudalism, where directors of departments can't be forced to implement policies they don't want to.

J. Edgar Hoover is the ne plus ultra American example. See also Obama stating that his efforts to pull out of Afghanistan were consistently thwarted by "The Generals" engaging in foot dragging or sabotage. Much of The Ferguson Effect can also be traced to localized Deep States, with cops collectively engaging in work slowdown at a scale where discipline or replacement becomes impractical.

You can't just fire bureaucrats without skilled replacements on hand, unless you want to destroy the entire governing apparatus. It turns reform into chicken, who will swerve first?

Which is why rather than reform the IRS, we should simply privatize it.

I modeled the Furguson Effect more as a work to rule union slow-down.

I'm not sure I can apply that to the deep state.

The deep-statey aspect is that no sizable city can just replace its police force. Not an option, not possible, not happening. So no matter what mayor you elect, or what police commissioner you elect, or what laws the state passes, if the police decide against you there is simply no practical way to enforce the decision.

To what end? Even the towns that would be small enough to fire all their police, would then have less control over policing by the subsequent agency until thw town reconstitutes its own force. Once you've lost so many of the police there are none to enforce the law you've also likely lost the consent of the governed or made the expectations and duties of the police untenable. I see the police more like firemen, garbagemen or water and power workers, infrastructure.

The deep state is more public private partnership.

What do you mean by pubic private partnership?

The police are a simple and clear model, but it applies equally to every department. You can't just fire the entire EPA, the entire DoD, the entire Treasury department. At a sufficient level of determination, bureaucrats can play chicken with the public: anarchy or the status quo. Elected officials, no matter how powerful, are stuck with the people they have.

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