The thoughts in this article were triggered by one of the most RTWT pieces produced over the last week or so since it was shown that EVERY agency, military, civilian and NGO involved in Afghanistan was worse than clueless.
Hundreds of thousands of experts, top in their respective fields, all failed to see 20 years and trillions of dollars were no match for hard men with a cause. CIA, FBI, NSA, UN, ASIO, Medicans san Frontiers, Oxfam, and a thousand other trustafarian dilettantes all poured time & resources onto sand.
I’m not going to rehash the points made in that, and other well written articles about the failure. It’s catastrophic, all consuming and cannot be denied.
Instead I’m going to focus on trying to save the administrative state.
Something I hate personally but will credit with (in its original forms) assisting in reducing inequalities and regulating behaviour between the classes.
What Im afraid of: A turn to rule by emotion, breeding, wealth, or personal influence and connections. Tsarist Russia might be seen as the epitome of this, which led to the horrible spiral of repression, oppression then revolution.
In my opinion there is only one key way to save the administrative state.
The bureaucracy must learn to fear the general public.
The local planning officer should flinch when a permission is requested knowing if they apply the regulations capriciously or in a way that damages an individual they will lose their job and be liable for economic loss.
The Clean energy finance guru should shit his pants seeing electricity prices rise, knowing, without a doubt he’s about to be sacked and blacklisted from any similar position.
The various health authorities inflicting economic and mental ruin on hundreds of thousands of people need to be jailed and their departments disbanded, every person in them marked as pariah.
Politicians must be made to enact legislation through parliament only, not assign vast reams of law making and regulation to self interested silos of various regulatory agencies. And when one of those regulations causes harm to an individual they must be held personally accountable for the losses suffered.
We exist in an awful state at the moment which I would call anarcho-tyranny, where we are sowed incredibly thickly with laws and regulations, yet connections or money mean they are selectively applied.
Billy Bongsmoke can’t leave his LGA for fear of a fine equal to 3 months of his disability pension, yet Nicole Kidman flys in direct from Singapore because she’s ‘economically vital”.
The only way out is complete accountability.
We need lawyers prepared to lodge thousands of damages claims every time a new regulation is enacted.
We need a political party that removes any ability of the bureaucracy to generate law or regulation without compensation paid up ahead of its imposition to those affected.
And lastly we need sackings and consequences for every fuckup. No shuffling sideways, no mercy, if a bureaucrat has blighted another person’s life with a bad decision then justice demands they face a similar penalty as restitution.
This and only this approach will save the administrative state.
As it exists it is an almost completely closed self serving loop. Appeals and complaints pit atomised individuals against organisations wallowing in OPM and effectively unlimited resources. And “watchdogs” supposed to provide some accountability are designed to respond to the bureaucracy, not the individuals affected.
Introducing fear of the public is the only way to make the managerial class realise the danger they are in.
They honestly don’t realise in many cases they harm they inflict, and with a near complete absence of painful personal stimuli have no reason to do so.
With no skin in the game they are ignorant enough to reach for repression as their tool of choice.
Democratic repression is no better than repression by Theocracy , Monarchy or any of the charnel house “isms” of the 20th Century.
I am genuinely concerned we may return to the age of “Propaganda of the Deed”, where people ruined by government fiat decide that just smashing stuff up and becoming ungovernable is as legitimate as voting for the uniparties every 4 years.