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Jens Heycke's avatar

Jens Heycke Explains to Francis Fukuyama how to make government more efficient:

Suppose you could do anything to create the most efficient government possible. You might raise orphans from early childhood, giving them the best possible education and carefully refining their skills over many years. You would have them live together, fostering a sense of cohesion. Then you would use a meritocratic system of tests to place the brightest and most talented ones at the highest levels of government. Workers who did less well would take lower positions in the bureaucracy. Without parents or families, these govt. workers' only loyalty would be to the state. There would be restrictions on them having children to assure that loyalty. It would be just like Plato's Republic.

Well, the Ottoman Empire actually did exactly this for several hundred years (with the devşirme). And guess what? The Ottoman government was still corrupt and inefficient. The Han, Ming, and Qing dynasties in China did something similar with eunuchs, with similar results.

The lesson is: any very large organization with no direct answerability to the stakeholders (i.e. taxpayers), will be corrupt and inefficient. This is a simple law of nature. Most of the efforts (remember Al Gore?) to thwart that law and impose strictures on the govt. leviathan will make it even more inefficient.

If you want more government efficiency and less corruption, the only surefire answer is to have less government.

P.s. I also never believed history ended and I was right.

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Al Brown's avatar

Good ideas. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to teach anything to someone who thinks that he already knows everything. But props for trying anyway.

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