So, basically, Congress passes a law saying "such-and-such is now forbidden" or "such-and-such has to be done a certain way" or "such-and-such is required in certain situations", etc., etc. Instead of writing the details themselves, since most members of Congress are not domain experts, they either hand it over to an existing agency comprised of those domain experts or create one and hand it to them, and tell them "you figure out how to do this." And sometimes those experts make mistakes, and you have a problem with that.
Again, what exactly do you propose as an alternative?
scratching at .8, just hopin'
Anyways, the point of bureaucracies is to streamline this sort of thing, believer it or not. You deal with them on an agency-by-agency basis. If you're a fisherman, you deal with your state's bureaucracies and their legislation on where you're allowed to fish, and so on. Private citizens can't police all the bureaucracies, but they can keep an eye on the agencies relevant to their interests and raise a stink if something's funny.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
And it is a good thing, otherwise we ended up with "spoils system".
The top part of bureaucracy still appointed by politician, it is the important part. And firing when they make massive screw-up is a limit to power of bureaucracy.
most people didn't pay attention to law congress makes, make them to pay attention to minor rule is impossible. the important thing is judiciary will throw away bureaucratic rules if they conflicted with congressional law. it limit bureaucratic power and abuse, having minor abuse and loophole is unavoidable.
Doma, i think you too worried by this. Again US bureaucracy is much weaker than germany, british and japan. And those three states is still reasonably governed and democratic.
Government, like many other human endeavor, will never be perfect. Attempting too remove bureaucratic abuse too much will also have drawback. as long as they reasonably efficient in doing their work, it should be supported. It is reasonable that Coast Guard / Interior bureaucrat know more about fishery regulation, and if they did make mistake, the fisherman can complain to their congressmen.
Anwalt der Verdammten
I prefer bureaucrats to politicians.
The 5 geek social fallacies. Know them well.
Canada's watchdog agencies are excellent, we just have an illegal government in power that rigged elections. So essentially, if you really look at it, the bureaucrats are the ones doing their job day to day and really making life better for Canadians, while the political figures are merely just in it for the spoils.
Generally speaking though, bureaucracy does everything. When you go to get your driver's licence, do you want slow dumb bureaucrats approving everything through three layers of the justice system and approved by legislation by the political figureheads, or do you just want the guy to give you a damn driver's licence? That's the issue with no empowering bureaucracy, you are ironically creating more bureaucracy.
Let people do their jobs, pay them properly and they'll likely just do it well. Nobody is there to purposely create delays or paperwork, the bureaucrats are people too and they're the ones having to slog through all that triplet form crap. If it were up to them, you come in, you get your driver's licence, pay some money with a credit card and bam they get paid, you get your service and done.
You might say, what if bureaucracy becomes myopic or whatever, but that's why there are still politicians. They just drive the general mood of the public into the government machine. Unfortunately, if people just demand less for the same tax dollars, that's really the fault of the public.
Three-Puppet Saluter
How did we get from "bureaucracies shouldn't pass laws" to "bureaucracies shouldn't do anything, ever"?
Consider that person you know who's been trapped in bureaucratic limbo - two or three different bureaus have completely incompatible regulations and she's caught in the middle. The left hand doesn't know what the second right toe is doing, and in fact isn't sure whether or not it takes precedence over the second right toe. She probably regards it as enemy action - "they put me through the bureaucratic shuffle" - but it's simply a colossal compound fuck-up in a situation that will not cost anyone responsible their job. And that is the consequence, when no one can keep track.
edited 1st Apr '12 6:02:00 AM by DomaDoma
Hail Martin Septim!
And That's Terrible, but be realistic. There are two ways I can think of to prevent conflicting regulations like this, and neither of them are particularly realistic either. The first is to have all rules come down from the legislative body or other central organization, which doesn't work because most of the time the fine details need to be hammered out by people who understand well the subject in question, not legislators. The other option is to make sure each bureau has its own domain which doesn't overlap with any other bureau; however no matter how you assign domains you're probably going to end up with something covered by multiple domains.
The best solution I can think of is to have some sort of hotline to sort these kinds of conflicts out, with an official record so if someone complains they can point to the records and say "I was told this was what I should do, take it up with them."
Citizen
Administrative agencies in the United States are almost like mini-governments unto themselves. Congress charters them, gives them an area of jurisdiction, and enacts a law saying that they have the power to make and enforce rules. So the agency will make rules (legislative function), investigate violations of those rules (executive function), and hold hearings and decide punishments for violating the rules (judicial function). If an agency exceeds its power, then the aggrieved party can take the issue to the courts, or if they don't want the agency doing something, they can petition Congress to change the law.
A government in a modern society needs to delegate authority to the bureaucracy. Heck, there have been bureaucracies for centuries. Genghis Khan couldn't administrate his empire on his own, which is why he allowed his vassals and underlords to make decisions in his name.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.
We already have systems in place for when the bureaucracy doesn't do its job properly or oversteps its bounds in enacting laws. For North America in particular it boils down to:
- Complain loudly in the media, or through a lobbyist to the government, if you have connections/money
- Sue them, if you have connections/money
And that is how you block the power of the bureaucracy against the people. Of course the flaw there is that it slants the system toward the rich/well-connected but as that has nothing to do with the bureaucracy, I'll leave it out of this topic.
edited 20th Apr '12 9:41:00 PM by breadloaf
@ Lawyerdude. That's how 'executive agencies' (or QUANGOs, Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations) work here.
Well, the EU Commission is a bureaucracy. Its chosen by the (directly-elected) European Parliament and ratified by the European Council (which is made up of politicians from each State), and it seems to function well. I mean, it has fewer than 15 000 civil servants making laws for over 500 mn people. That's smaller than most of the states themselves. It takes roughly two years to set up a Department, with about four or five for the states.
Common Law is a thing. Just throwing that out there.
Our future is a madhouse
Linhasxoc> The best solution I can think of is to have some sort of hotline to sort these kinds of conflicts out, with an official record so if someone complains they can point to the records and say "I was told this was what I should do, take it up with them."
Let me translate this: here's the only efficient way to stop a bureaucracy from being a rail in everyone's wheels: have someone with what boils down to an authoritarian power to make quick decisions and enforce them, at least until a proper procedure is developed. Benevolent or not much, it's more a matter of luck.
But in this case an overcomplicated system of rules is superfluous, since you already have a case-by-case handling mechanism: someone with power and hopefully responsibility who makes decisions. So one can go a step further and put limit on Parkinson's Law, because the whole premise implies that the bureaucracy already doesn't have enough of power to stop this.
Or rather: demoting bureaucracy from an endlessly bloating and more and parasitary mess to a streamlined groups of scribes running routine tasks for a dictator or other direct and concentrated power. Who will need to enforce personal responsibility as the first priority, because it's the only way to enforce anything else: otherwise any bureaucracy simply drowns everything it doesn't like in paper and mumbling. The hedgehog is a proud bird, won't fly until you kick 'im, you know? Which is contrary to the whole point of the bureaucracy. A hypothesis: it's bureaucrats' worst nightmare imaginable, so they unanimously will do anything to prevent this, or (if it's too late) at least prevent from being perpetuated.
We know an example already, and an upper limit case at that - Uncle Joe hijacking Soviet Union. Personal responsibility: enforced up to "screw up and die" level. Infinite departments with non-indicative names doing no-one-knows-what but eating paper and funding: exterminated like cockroaches. The juice-squeezing machine feeding them: set running faster, now that it's oiled properly and all that. The conclusion of this experiment: hypothesis above was confirmed.
So yeah, it works. You're just left with all implications of whatever setup overrides the paper-shufflers and thus really matters. And it works more than once only if there's a reliable mechanism of succession, otherwise after the first stop it's going to drown in professional lackeys or worse.
...And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense - R.W.Wood
Like this, but brown.
Bureaucratic law is obviously necessary unless we want Congress enacting federal aviation standards (like what constitutes a safe airplane). Since we don't elect our Congressmen for their airplane knowledge, that's out, so we do need regulation.
I agree with Doma that the difficulty in firing someone is a problem. I understand why not - the spoils system sucked. Unfortunately, our new system sucks, because inefficient bureaucrats get entrenched by being as minimally efficient as they can without causing a major scandal that could get them fired.
Somehow, we need a middle ground. Maybe separating the power to hire from the power to fire would be a worthwhile way to do so. Dunno, but I definitely want a better balance between "Fuck, spoils system" and "Fuck, inefficient bureaucracy."
Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.
Some bureaucracy is folded into government-owned corporations in an effort to make them more efficient. As corporations themselves are not necessarily efficient, I doubt that actually changes anything.
In general, it's probably easier to just run audits on how effective their legislation is, with respect to helping people in their day to day lives, rather than trying to lawyer up their rules to see if anybody is overstepping their bounds. In essence, a bureaucrat "oversteps" if they enact legislation from regulation that damages quality of life.
What do we really care about the Ministry of Transportation/Department of Motor Vehicles? That they keep cars safe, at the proper agreed upon environmental regulations, our air quality is good, our roads are clear, accidents are reduced and we have minimal disruption to our driving lives. Beyond that, you're not going to care too much what they do behind the scenes. Either they do their job well and you don't notice, or they do it poorly and you do. The best way to keep up with that is to have just have an auditor general that rotates through the departments over the years to make sure everyone is doing their job properly.
Benevolent post-Singularity AI dictator.
But until that comes around, I think we're stuck with bureaucracy.