Term Limits & Cults
Sen. Ted Stevens goes on trial for corruption today, and Charlie Rangel is finally under the gun (see WAGING WAR ON CHARLIE). What else is new? This is not, I think, a matter of crooks seeking to be elected so they can scam their way to personal wealth. More likely it's that the US Congress, operating as it does on Other People's Money, is an irreducibly corrupting institution. Its temptations would eventually make a sinner of the most devout saint -- which none of these guys are to begin with, anyway. Term limits would safeguard these folks from moral peril, and the rest of us from them.
Then we could begin to tackle the problem of limiting the power of career staffers, who hold their jobs because of their special expertise and who never stand for election. They are the true Permanent Establishment, the final, untouchable bulwark against change in Washington, no matter who wins at the ballot box. Administrations come and go, but the bureaucrats do not. This is a much more difficult problem than term limits, and one that extends through every department and agency of government. Term limits will make it worse, because power will naturally flow from new and inexperienced members of Congress into the hands of staffers who know the ropes.
This problem of limiting the power of expert staff is one that to my knowledge has never been solved in any large organization, public or private. My guess is that any solution will require us to recognize that in a great many instances, expertise turns out to be a much over-rated commodity. Any such idea will always be fiercely resisted by those, such as academics, who are heavily invested in the Cult of Expertise because their livelihoods depend on it. I am not arguing that there are not better and worse ways of doing things, but only that Experts are about as successful as a coin flip when it comes to judging which is which. When it comes to large systems, like societies (or climates), things get too complicated and hard to measure for expert knowledge to offer much more than the pretense of understanding. If there is such a thing as wisdom at that level, it isn't revealed by the paltry calculations of Experts, but instead emerges only as a sort of first derivative of a great blind, churning mass of trial and error.
That wisdom should consist in that stands as an outrageous affront to Experts and their pretensions; it's a model they must reject in favor of what they believe to be a more rational ideal. It's why, for example, they dislike markets and always seek to replace them with economic planning. Markets are impossible to comprehend in their full chaotic complexity, while economic plans are elegantly rational constructions. Problem is, though, that markets work and the plans never do. Socialist experiments from the French Revolution forward have ended in debacle, almost always horrifically bloody ones, and every one of those experiments originated from a naive faith in the power of Experts to envision, plan, and implement the Good Society. Having spent most of my life in universities, I think William Buckley had it exactly right: "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."
Byron
Then we could begin to tackle the problem of limiting the power of career staffers, who hold their jobs because of their special expertise and who never stand for election. They are the true Permanent Establishment, the final, untouchable bulwark against change in Washington, no matter who wins at the ballot box. Administrations come and go, but the bureaucrats do not. This is a much more difficult problem than term limits, and one that extends through every department and agency of government. Term limits will make it worse, because power will naturally flow from new and inexperienced members of Congress into the hands of staffers who know the ropes.
This problem of limiting the power of expert staff is one that to my knowledge has never been solved in any large organization, public or private. My guess is that any solution will require us to recognize that in a great many instances, expertise turns out to be a much over-rated commodity. Any such idea will always be fiercely resisted by those, such as academics, who are heavily invested in the Cult of Expertise because their livelihoods depend on it. I am not arguing that there are not better and worse ways of doing things, but only that Experts are about as successful as a coin flip when it comes to judging which is which. When it comes to large systems, like societies (or climates), things get too complicated and hard to measure for expert knowledge to offer much more than the pretense of understanding. If there is such a thing as wisdom at that level, it isn't revealed by the paltry calculations of Experts, but instead emerges only as a sort of first derivative of a great blind, churning mass of trial and error.
That wisdom should consist in that stands as an outrageous affront to Experts and their pretensions; it's a model they must reject in favor of what they believe to be a more rational ideal. It's why, for example, they dislike markets and always seek to replace them with economic planning. Markets are impossible to comprehend in their full chaotic complexity, while economic plans are elegantly rational constructions. Problem is, though, that markets work and the plans never do. Socialist experiments from the French Revolution forward have ended in debacle, almost always horrifically bloody ones, and every one of those experiments originated from a naive faith in the power of Experts to envision, plan, and implement the Good Society. Having spent most of my life in universities, I think William Buckley had it exactly right: "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."
Byron
posted by Byron | Monday, September 22, 2008
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