A fairly well-known issue. To a limited degree I saw it develop over a working life spent in the environmental field. It did not turn into a racket, but over time environmental engineers and scientists were no longer the same kind of people. The field grew into another bureaucracy, attracting bureaucrat engineers and bureaucrat scientists. There is a difference.
3 comments:
Doonhamer
said...
Meetings, meetings, meetings, expenses, air-miles, loyalty-cards, lovely lovely expenses. And once politicians get involved with the "something must be done" attitude then the taxpayer provided "funding" becomes effectively infinite. Just find out the required result and provide it. Bingo.
I did my master's thesis on another feature of radical movements - the extent to which they internally embody the democratic and socialist ideals which they are seeking to impose on wider society. The more democratic they are, the more time they spend fannying about trying to make decisions which are perfectly fair. And the more egalitarian, the more they involve every idiot in the decision-making process, and hamper themselves. There is a marvellous example in Roberto Michels' book Political Parties in which a French socialist party decided that the most democratic way of deciding whether a book should be banned from sale in a particular country was to distribute free copies to all the electorate and get them to decide.
Result? The successful radical groups and parties are the ones which are run by fascist dictators. Which brings us back, I suppose, to our friend Vladimir Illyich, who we were commenting on a couple of days ago...
Doonhamer - I remember it well - meetings, meetings, meetings. The main point being to have another meeting.
Sam - yes, Lenin knew from the start that he was creating a dictatorship with a tiny coterie making all the decisions and a ruthless security service to enforce them. Otherwise it's the People's Liberation Front of Judea. It's why we need free enterprise as the only way to keep a lid on totalitarian loons.
3 comments:
Meetings, meetings, meetings, expenses, air-miles, loyalty-cards, lovely lovely expenses.
And once politicians get involved with the "something must be done" attitude then the taxpayer provided "funding" becomes effectively infinite.
Just find out the required result and provide it. Bingo.
I did my master's thesis on another feature of radical movements - the extent to which they internally embody the democratic and socialist ideals which they are seeking to impose on wider society. The more democratic they are, the more time they spend fannying about trying to make decisions which are perfectly fair. And the more egalitarian, the more they involve every idiot in the decision-making process, and hamper themselves. There is a marvellous example in Roberto Michels' book Political Parties in which a French socialist party decided that the most democratic way of deciding whether a book should be banned from sale in a particular country was to distribute free copies to all the electorate and get them to decide.
Result? The successful radical groups and parties are the ones which are run by fascist dictators. Which brings us back, I suppose, to our friend Vladimir Illyich, who we were commenting on a couple of days ago...
Doonhamer - I remember it well - meetings, meetings, meetings. The main point being to have another meeting.
Sam - yes, Lenin knew from the start that he was creating a dictatorship with a tiny coterie making all the decisions and a ruthless security service to enforce them. Otherwise it's the People's Liberation Front of Judea. It's why we need free enterprise as the only way to keep a lid on totalitarian loons.
Post a Comment