The fellow calling himself Owen at Boots & Sabers (full disclosure: We attended the same University at the same time, though this fellow is a year ahead--a not at all distinguished Class to graduate in) has an interesting (almost filler) note on bureacracies, with the unfortunate closing line:
One must always remember, however, that bureaucracies exist to implement policy. They are not in the business of creating policy. One can’t allow the inmates to run the asylum.
Ah, but therein lies the problem, eh? In a perfect world, bureacracies wouldn't be creating policy, and the inmates would not run the asylum. But they are, and they do. Don't get me wrong--a bureacracy is the surest sign of a full-on government, and is a component of a civilization. I don't (despite his less-than-impeccable Class at Texas A&M) doubt that Owen knows this. But I'll expound. Regulations, by and large, do not come from elected legislators, they come from bureaucrats. Whyfor? Well, around the time of the New Deal, it was agreed that legislators were far too busy creating a Finer World to deal with the mundane making of laws. So they delegated (as only the Executive actually only has the privilege of doing) the work of actually making the rules down to the people that would be enforcing the laws. We'll call laws Policy, because that's what they are, but that "I'm Just A Bill" guy on Schoolhouse Rock didn't say that he was going to become Policy, he was going to become a Law.
Note the use of my word "rules" there. They have the full force of law because legislators said that executive agencies would be doing the grunt work of figuring out how policy would be enforced. Since the executive branch can't make laws, they decided these executive-made laws would be called "rules", mostly so they wouldn't be called "laws." So that freed up the legislative branch to create a whole lot of new policy since it didn't take nearly so long (or put their nuts in a vise should something go screwy) to make new policy because they didn't have to handle installation of the Carrot or the Stick.
As for the inmates running the asylum, the inmates have always run the asylum. It's when they (among other things) let the bureaucrats unionize that they handed the inmates the keys and the remote to that one TV in the community room. I suppose it was one thing when you could find the weak (or more likely these days, fouled) link and dispose of him. Now there are entire unions (I'm looking at you, teachers) dedicated to ensure that people who are unable to actually do their jobs keep pulling down paychecks.
It should be axiomatic that when you hand a bureaucrat a policy and tell him "scribble what you want in the bits we left blank," that bureaucrat will scribble in stuff to make his agency more powerful, to make himself more powerful, to divert more money to his agency, and come up with the least effective yet most onerous way of enacting that policy.
Call it the Rupe Principle.
