The Political Illusion pt. 4: The Administrative State Cannot be Controlled or Reformed
Most live with the idea that we vote for our leaders and that these men and women exercise political control over the bureaucracy, the administrative state. This is an illusion.
The standard reaction to the growth of the administrative state in the democratic west is that what is needed is for the citizenry to exercise effective control over the state. The idea is that an educated, motivated, engaged citizenry can impose its will on the state. This, we will discover, is an illusion.
In order to exercise control of the state means a citizenry, at least a sizable chunk of the people, must be able to make themselves fully available to the task, that is, they must make it their full time occupation. Controlling the state is not something that can be done part time or occasionally. The Greeks and the Romans understood this. Exercising “democratic” control of the state requires a life of leisure.
Even if you had a contingent of men of leisure with the ability and desire to impose their will on the administrative state, it would be unreasonable to expect that they could truly affect the state. This is an unrealistic and illusory desire. The processes, procedures, stru…
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