With Bureaucracy, Form Follows Function

“What a tangled web we create

“When we first practice to regulate!”

     There are few things in life more burdensome than red tape and bureaucracy. However, fixing this problem is easier said than done. It is a minimalist folly to think that the default is good and that regulation is a bad that can be removed by firing the regulators who interrupt good things from being good. No matter how many regulators your fire, the regulations remain and punishment for not getting regulator approval could easily come in arbitrary and capricious ways.

     Nor can you just fix things by demanding ten regulatory repeals for every new regulation.   Sometimes a regulation, such as in the form of agency/department guidance can clarify things and actually reduce the overall regulator burden. Similarly, hiring more people, particularly those who understand what they are doing, can reduce the regulator burden of those being regulated.

     Regulations are a tangled web, quite often, but must be taken apart stepwise and carefully.   That this is difficult is neither an excuse to do nothing nor an excuse to cut the proverbial Gordian Knot only to find out that that knot was there for a reason. A judicious application of Chesterton’s Gate (or Fence) would be the wisest path to regulatory reform and the optimal path to achieving the necessity of reducing bureaucratic shackles.

     The core root is the very regulator structure and the legally required scope it must encompass.   Without reforming that, something which no one is seriously talking about, any budget cuts, personnel firing, or meme-based “agencies” will be superficial in effect.

     Take, for example, DOGE (pronounced “dog E” and not “dowj”). People who didn’t understand what various government agencies, bureaus, &c. did or why they did it cut and fired first and didn’t even ask questions later… but rather just went “oopsie” when it became clear that there were people they kinda needed to rehire.

     The burden on the Federal level comes from the extent and scope of the laws as well as the the structure and nature of the regulator regime. Fixing that would need to be on a case by case basis when it comes to the particulars, and according to what eact agency, bureau, &c. is doing and why.   This requires people who are expert in that field to assess and optimize (or at least improve). On a Federal level, it turns out that the bloat isn’t from the people employed to regulate, but on the regulations themselves. Too few to make those regulations work means a greater regulatory burden. We saw this happen during the Covid lockdowns, and we are seeing it now.

     The real personnel bloat is with the states. That is were bureaucracy is really increasing. The Federal government is partially to blame, since much of this is due to money being transferred over to the states. If there is reform to be done on the Federal level, the tightening off of the fiscal hose is a necessary prerequisite. Yet nobody is talking about that either.

     No one is talking about real regulatory reform needed to reduce bureaucratic burden.   Instead, we see random hack n’ slash which is making things worse for the regulatory impact people feel, even if not directly. Pseudo-randomly cutting agency’s budgets without a care what this would mean for what they do, such as with NASA. Cuts to statistical agencies and others who serve as assets to not only the Federal government but to the country as a whole do not fix massive increases in deficit spending or the introduction of new government schemes.

     tl;dr Fix the nature of the regulatory regime and make corrections, be they narrow or wide, individually to individual departments, agencies, bureaus, &c. while reigning in the scope of government statutorily and then, and only then, can real reform be effected with the new sleeker form following the thinned and refined function of our Federal government.