^^I don't disagree, but it's clearly implied that his adherence "free-market values" is something to be admired.

^Yes, his vague, sparsely-detailed "experiences" clearly qualify hom to make sweeping generalizations on the entirety of bureaucracy and higher education. The scope of his essay couldn't be more broad. I suppose my experience working at a bagel shop in high school qualifies me to pass judgement on the whole of Judaism, or the food service industry.

It's a bloggy opinion piece with no factual basis, not a "good article about the inherent inefficiencies of the bureaucracy". The fact that he includes one of Glen Becks more worthless bait-lines indicates he is far from objective, if not wholly discrediting.

11/11/2009 1:28:32 PM

I didn't say it was flawless, but I find nothing inherently wrong about his premise. I've worked in state government and I've worked in the military. I've seen what he's talking about, I apologize for not taking the time to empirically document my experiences.

[Edited on November 11, 2009 at 2:15 PM. Reason : Oh look, he trotted out the Glenn Beck boogieman.]

11/11/2009 2:05:36 PM

^I worked for a large utility company, I too saw some of what he was talking about.


Personally I think bureacracy is more a symptom of any hierarchical institution thats gotten too large, rather than something that can be attributed to government only.

11/11/2009 2:14:53 PM

I'll agree with that. The difference is that there is no practical mechanism for trimming the bureaucracy of an organization which receives it's revenue through legally mandated confiscation.

11/11/2009 2:31:04 PM

Quote :

"Personally I think bureacracy is more a symptom of any hierarchical institution thats gotten too large, rather than something that can be attributed to government only."

I agree that any institution with a lot of "middle management" tends to become inefficient in some ways. Because these institutions become so large, you tend to have less effective oversight, and overlapping of duties. Inefficiency results from that.

Government bureacracy is a different beast entirely, though. It suffers from the same inefficiency I just mentioned. However, in a private entity, there is an efficiency floor, so to speak. In other words, if efficiency goes below a certain point, the private entity will no longer make a profit. They might even lose money. In a free market, that private company would need to bring their expenditures in line with their revenues, or they'd need to go out of business. With government bureaucracies, there is no "out of business." Efficiency doesn't matter, and productivity doesn't matter. What matters is following guidelines and not stepping on toes. At the end of the day, the government is still going to be funding bureaucracies that are already in place, whether or not they do a good job.

11/11/2009 2:37:01 PM

Quote :

"Personally I think bureacracy is more a symptom of any hierarchical institution thats gotten too large, rather than something that can be attributed to government only."

Agreed, but it should not be seen as some "failure of the free market" as JCASHFAN & d357r0y3r alluded to.

Rothbard discusses the vertical integration of production in a firm, and uses Mises' calculation argument to show that the allocation of resources must be made bureaucratically since little or no market exists to make profit/loss calculations, which will limit the firm's size (in the free market).

Quote :

"Rothbard, Man, Economy, & State, Chap. 9, Sec. 3E http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap9c.asp#3E._Vertical_Integration PDF pp.609-616: http://www.mises.org/books/mespm.pdf In short, if there were no market for a product, and all of its exchanges were internal, there would be no way for a firm or for anyone else to determine a price for the good. A firm can estimate an implicit price when an external market exists; but when a market is absent, the good can have no price, whether implicit or explicit. Any figure could be only an arbitrary symbol. Not being able to calculate a price, the firm could not rationally allocate factors and resources from one stage to another. ... Now we see that, para­doxically, the reason why a socialist economy cannot calculate is not specifically because it is socialist! Socialism is that system in which the State forcibly seizes control of all the means of production in the economy. The reason for the impossibility of calculation under socialism is that one agent owns or directs the use of all the resources in the economy. It should be clear that it does not make any difference whether that one agent is the State or one private individual or private cartel. Whichever oc­curs, there is no possibility of calculation anywhere in the pro­duction structure, since production processes would be only internal and without markets. There could be no calculation, and therefore complete economic irrationality and chaos would pre­vail, whether the single owner is the State or private persons."

11/11/2009 3:25:13 PM

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/11/like-taking-candy-computers-from-a-baby-the-poor.ars

Apparently BlueHippo, apart from being a terrible way to buy a computer, was just a huge scam. It looks like it took the FTC stepping in to try and fix things, otherwise they would have just kept bilking their poor (literally) customers for $15 million and counting.

I guess you could argue that if someone is dumb enough to fall for something like this, they deserve to lose their money, but that seems to be a poor way to allow things to run, I think.

11/13/2009 11:06:15 AM

Who, among capitalism's defenders, endorses fraud being a legal or legitimate way to run a business? I'm fairly certain that most would argue that provisions against fraud are the bedrock of a market economy.

But what would I know? I'm sure critics of capitalism would know far more about the beliefs of market supporters than those people themselves.

11/13/2009 4:30:37 PM

“provisions against fraud” is a slippery slop that got us to where we are today.

11/13/2009 7:51:20 PM

^
Where we are today is mostly the fault of gov't schemes (remember Fannie & Freddie? Franklin Raines, Barney Franks and the gang?)

Crooks like BlueHippo should be prosecuted and punished. That's what the law is there for. But BlueHippo criminality does not mean that capitalism is a corrupt system.

Shirley you know that

11/13/2009 10:22:30 PM