It’s the System, Not the People

A friend said he thought the drastic reductions in federal employment by Trump and Musk were a good idea. He’d heard the federal bureaucracy was bloated with paper pushers doing overlapping jobs, producing little benefit for the country. They just made life more burdensome, complicated, and difficult. If the workforce is reduced, it will automatically improve efficiency because the duplication will have been eliminated, and employees will have to do real work at less cost, so he expected. There are real problems with duplication, poor coordination between agencies, and a failure to make customer service the highest measure of effectiveness, but reducing the workforce does not improve efficiency or effectiveness.

Reducing the workforce only leaves the system in place, and it is the system that dictates whether or not things will be efficient and effective. A system that is undermanned will simply collapse under its own weight, and if that is what Musk wants, then he is on the right track. On the other hand, if the American public would like a more efficient and effective government doing what the public wants it to do with fewer people, then it is the system that must be changed.

Just what is the system? It begins with Congress. Every federal program has been enacted into law by Congress, and members of Congress tend to write laws with specific instructions about how programs are to be managed. It isn’t quite micromanagement, but it comes close. Laws instruct agencies to produce regulations that implement the programs. Why do laws get written in such complicated ways? It’s because members of Congress want to show constituents that their parochial needs are being taken care of. It’s all well-intended but doesn’t work well in practice. One way Congress attempts to show its due diligence is by writing solutions to previously known constituent complaints and other problems into the law. When solutions are piled one upon another, the result is unnecessary complexity. Maybe that’s just the price of being a democracy. A democracy is, by its very nature, somewhat messy and inefficient. For the record, every autocratic regime so far has proven itself to be messier, more inefficient, and rife with fraud. Think about it.

Trump has proudly announced that he will permit one new regulation for every 10 that are eliminated. It sounds like tough management, but it really is ducking the issue. How can you eliminate a regulation that is required by law? An alternative would be to require regulations to be no more complicated or difficult to follow than is absolutely necessary to meet the requirements of the law. Too many regulations are written to cover the rear ends of administrators should something go wrong. Others are written not to enhance the success, effectiveness, and efficiency of the intended program but to enforce particular methods with little concern for their output. It is a way to ensure that the law is not violated rather than ensuring that the intended purpose of the law satisfies the constituents it is intended to serve.

Congress is likely to continue enacting laws in the most complicated way possible. I could be wrong, but I don’t see how they are likely to change. The process of getting elected and keeping constituents happy is too powerful. Constituents are not always the people who live in the district or state but are just as often, perhaps more frequently, the people who underwrite campaigns and finance lobbying for personal benefit, which wastes resources and does little for the public good.

It really is up to the administration to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The executive cannot change laws, but it can change the ways regulations are written and administered. The slash-and-burn methods of the Musk/Trump administration are not the way to do it. They only destroy, producing nothing adhering to the benefit of the people and their common good.