Can We Improve On Bureaucracy? The need for a real third way.

THIS WAS THE DESIGN FOR MY BOOKCOVER WITH THE SAME TITLE IN 2001. STILL AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. HOW LONG BEFORE IT IS OUT OF DATE?

I REPEAT, A COMPREHENSIVE WARNING, IN 2001, OF PRECISELY WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH FAILED REGULATION AND DEBTS IN 2009.

(Revised 25-06-10)

TO INTERVENE OR NOT TO INTERVENE - THAT IS THE QUESTION.

    Economic anarchy, deregulated free markets, leave it all to human nature, is a silly idea. I am 100% in favour of intervention. Every government in the world is very badly designed by offending all the basic principles of management and is consequently a gigantic waste of money. I am 100% opposed to intervention by any government in its present form. This is totally non-political. After we have designed a government which works we can discuss what we want it to do!

    The epitome of intervention is a command economy. 100% monopoly combined with 100% bureaucracy. All human achievements and all human disasters resulted from competition. Our problem is to encourage the constructive competition and discourage the destructive competition. We will never do that using a monopolistic bureaucracy which is only interested in empire building. It transpired that wasting 100% of our money on a command economy wasn't a very good idea so globally we now only waste between 35% and 55% of our global wealth with the exception of some residual ex-command economies. Who thinks they have a bureaucracy which is efficient, effective, good value for money? Who cares?

    I would not allow anyone to study economics or become a politician, anywhere, who had failed to read three books. 1/ "Reinventing Government" by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. 2/ "Your Disobedient Servant" by Leslie Chapman. 3/ "Whitehall : Tragedy & Farce" by Clive Ponting.  I don't agree with the conclusions of the first book. Osborne and Gaebler are commercial consultants. Our "Streamline Bureaucracy Department" could become our biggest department! They are asking the right questions. A radical new, different design will not be easy but who is working on this only real fundamental? We have never been successful at getting the bureaucracy to help with streamlining itself! Economists will have to understand that it's a management problem.  President Clinton was very interested in this book. He gave it to Vice-President Gore as a project. Sometime later I wrote to ask how he was getting on. No reply and no more was heard about this project which is a fundamental prior requirement on which his current concern about preserving a habitable planet is entirely dependent.

    Bureaucracy is in two separate categories. Legislation and execution. Leslie Chapman was at the execution end with the Property Services Agency, responsible for all government buildings from the local tax office to defence establishments. Director for South-west England. He said he thought his job was to get good value for taxpayers money! Now there's a novel concept which he must have kept a closely guarded secret otherwise he would never have been promoted. The real object is to expand the size, power and budget of the department. First by claiming that the present budget is inadequate for the allocated tasks. Second by collecting extra tasks even if that overlaps other departments. Before 9/11 the US had more than ten departments involved with homeland security. They were not co-operating, they were competing. President Bush, whose Republican Party is supposedly opposed to big government, created an extra, new, additional department. In other areas Margaret Thatcher did the same thing. She was elected on the slogan of : "Releasing business from the shackles of bureaucracy." Leslie Chapman underspent his budget by 30%. This made him the most unpopular person in our Civil Service. He turned this into hatred by writing to everyone suggesting that the rest of his department should do the same thing and then made it even worse by writing to the head of the Civil Service suggesting that the whole government should do the same thing! They retired him early so he wrote a book describing how he did it. This aroused a storm of apathy. I know the feeling well.

    Clive Ponting was at the legislative end. At one stage a personal public sector adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He said we could save 100% on some of that. Outsiders are not necessarily motivated to oppose bureaucracy entirely. You need me as an adviser to guide you through the pensions red tape. With one group of lawyers drafting the legislation you need another group of lawyers plus accountants to help you defeat it! The Defence Department is good for armaments manufacturers. All of it is good for providers of facilities for gigantic talking shops. In some places the majority would like to work for the bureaucracy. To be paid with what by whom?

    In my first unpublished book "A Minority of One" a typical page listed 67 different varieties of welfare benefit. Every form needed design, printing, processing and authorising. All were also available in Gujerati. I suggested substituting this with a tax credit system which would have made our largest government department virtually redundant. Another typical comment was that the ten commandments are about 300 words, the American Constitution about 3,000 words and EU regulations for the export of duck eggs about 23,000 words. The publishers thought the title was a description of the necessary print run. They were undoubtedly right. Who cares?  If I were a publisher I would be interested in books written by, or written about, celebrities. As an aside the BBC recently mentioned that the biggest spending month for the British Government is March when all the departments try to use up their budgets before the end of the financial year. What does this actually mean? Where are all the people screaming in the streets with protest?  Who cares? This is why I couldn't afford to write until after retirement.

    Consequently for my second book "Can We Improve On Bureaucracy?" I went the so-called "author assisted" route. Early on there is a schoolboy debate in 1944 at which I said the depression proved that we must intervene. My opponent said we do not intervene and make things better. We interfere and make thing worse. The rest of the book is fifty years of conclusive evidence that both these 16 year old schoolboys were absolutely right. No marketing whatsoever. Not easy. The logo for this website, designed nine years ago, has not been changed. A planet entirely wrapped in red tape, supported on the shoulders of the American consumer, who is tottering on a mountain of debts. Is any of this difficult to understand? Since then it has had less than 6,000 "hits" some of which were me, checking! If it had been about Tiger Woods' girlfriends it would have had more than that in a week. It's called "The Age of Communication"! Incidentally, no personal complaints whatsoever. Lucky beyond belief to be born in the right place at the right time and did not waste all the opportunities. There are a few billion people out there who ought to be complaining but protesting about the laws of arithmetic destroys wealth.

    Patrick Moran.  (patmoran28@gmail.com)