USA Today reports that "Several Bush officials work in areas related to former jobs" as if such behavior is unexpected. The article begins:

More than one in four members of President George W. Bush's Cabinet have landed jobs with consulting or lobbying firms in which they can help clients navigate the departments they once oversaw, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

Lest anyone get really confused and assume that such behavior is new to the Bushevics, the article also notes:

A 2003 study of 100 top Clinton administration officials by the Center for Public Integrity found that two years after leaving office, more than half represented or worked for entities they had regulated. Nearly one in five had worked as lobbyists — who can directly lobby members of Congress and the administration.

With apologies for being flippant, this information could have also been filed under the heading, "Unsurprising Facts About Bureaucrats, Example #228." This author wrote on similar behavior in healthcare (the FDA) and warfare (the military-industrial complex) in a piece entitled, "Does the Existence of the State Cause Conflicts of Interest?" some time ago. The premise of that piece can be summarized thusly:

The incentives that drive human action – the praxeology about which Mises so eloquently spoke – operate with Swiss watch efficiency in all endeavors whereby a man can be rewarded by his own efforts, which is generally, well, everywhere. Without the feedback mechanism of the free market creating a positive response feedback system – the more happy customers, the more money – one is left with a negative response feedback system of the state-controlled market – no matter what is done, the money remains the same. Ergo, the natural tendency is for doing less, or for interacting more strongly with the regulatory body than with those who should be receiving the benefits, the customers.

It is because of this observation about praxeology and the incentives that drive human action that such behavior as that noted in the USA Today piece can be accurately categorized as unsurprising, even though one could still be disappointed by it. Frankly, those who have enjoyed the succulent teat of government service have a hard time pushing back from the flow. No one should be surprised by this. No One. No less a luminary than Murry Rothbard, in what is likely the seminal examination of this phenomenon, "Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States" noted, among other things, "If the watchword of the market economy is profit, the watchword of bureaucracy is growth." Rothbard continues:

The standard explanation of why government grows is that, as time goes on, there is more work for government to do, and that therefore the public's "demand for government" rises. Far more accurate is the view that there is a case of an inverted Say's Law, where supply – or rather the suppliers of government "services," the bureaucracy – themselves constitute the "demand" for their own services, and that they engineer the consent of their superiors, or of the legislature, to provide the wherewithal in the form of increased taxation. Contrast the hilariously satirical, but all too perceptive account of "Parkinson's Law" of bureaucracy. Thus, Professor Parkinson asserted that, in a government bureaucracy, "there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned."[9] The continuing rise in the total of government employees "would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish, or even disappear."[10] Parkinson identifies two "axiomatic" underlying forces responsible for this growth: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals"; and (2) "Officials make work for each other.

That last sentence contains a fundamental truth that underscores the behavior studied and reported in the USA Today article:  Officials make work for each other. Returning to the USA Today article we find this tidbit:

Federal law imposes limits on the contacts that former top executive branch officials can have with their former colleagues, including a two-year ban on lobbying on any issue that they worked on during their final year in government. But there are no restrictions on them serving as consultants and advising clients on the inner workings of their former departments and agencies, including how to secure government contracts.

Of course they do! It is the unavoidable consequence of the ever-expanding size and scope of the government that such behavior becomes endemic. Unavoidable. Expected. Endemic. Legislating against it won't help. Lamenting it won't help. Having less government is the only solution. Allow me to end this rant with another quote from my self on the same subject:

In any case where one might identify inefficient behavior in such a case as the scenario above, up to and including unethical behavior, the agents of the State are simply performing as one should expect. This also applies to those operating in ostensibly private enterprises that interact with the State in any manner outside the pull of the market. While one could certainly find a way to be disgusted at the actions of the people of whom I speak, the bottom line is this: They did exactly what we’d predict, and what self-interest would lead them to do. Even if their initial behaviors are ethical but misguided, eventually, as the feedback incentive mechanisms reward unethical behavior at the same (or higher) rate as ethical behavior, ethical behavior (and/or the people who endeavor to act ethically) will be crowded out. As a result, the system will eventually and unavoidably be overrun with shiftless, trifling, arrogant, thieving, their-own-rear-end-protecting bureaucrats.

Like a broken record, or bathtub ring, the "answer" keeps repeating: the State is the issue, and until it is substantially cut-back (darned unlikely) or completely disposed of (my personal favorite) the behavior noted by USA Today, this author, and Rothbard will, unfortunately, continue unabated.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (3)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Bliss Tew said:

	... Reaching an existance, the author's personal favorite, where there is no state, would mean a situation where there is no government, commonly known as anarchy. Anarcy's void, a place where each person is a government unto themselves, soon brings the bullies forward to fill the void of government and to seek to rule over others in a spirit of unrighteous dominion. Anarchy leads to tyranny.
	report abuse vote down vote up

May 22, 2009
Votes: +1

Pat Henry said:

true Manifest Destiny (part 1) Superior article! Thanks for timely links to further study. I agree "Bliss Tew" that an-archy (non-rule) is not the answer, despite those who bow at the Free Market shrine. Free Trade will not end all war, sorry to inform you. A Civil Government, as ordained by the Creator, will always be necessary (just ask Quaker Wm. Penn, who tried to do without). There are two horns on which one may be impaled today. The constant drumbeat from almost every angle driving us to see a/the STATE as the answer. Free Trade / Anarchy libertatianism is the stream that seems to run counter, but is a reaction that jumps on the other killer.

report abuse vote down vote up

May 27, 2009
Votes: +1

Pat Henry said:

true Manifest Destiny (part 2) The answer, as we should suspect, lies in the ancient Prophets: "every many under his vine and his fig tree," yes; but also "with no one to make him afraid." In other words, both a truly free market (no State regulation, no State plunder), but also with those men formed into a republic of laws (not a Republic of Plato, note). As they band together in common defense against both roaming anarchists (the pure democracy that will always end in civil _lawlessness_) and also against any attempt for like lawlessness in civil government to construct a towering Beast, they help keep true Law by jealously guarding jurisdictions (thus jury trials, as well). The answer is "the law of nature and nature's God" (Blackstone). The blueprint was laid out in the Jeffersonian Declaration, and given form, albeit imperfectly, in the U.S. Constitution (modeled on Isaiah 33:22). Patrick Henry smelled the rat that Lincoln's War (central government), Colonel House (Fed), Alger Hiss (Yalta, UN), and FDR (public-private partnership blurring of jurisdictions) helped bring to fruition because of the lack of sufficient safeguards for the con-federate states and county jurisdiction People. Mises gives us the rationale for economic libertarianism, true. Yet it must be coupled with a Blackstonian republic of civil law (under limited, local democratic principles: representation by elected village elders in godly council) in order to maintain such a prosperity. And without a vision of the City on the heavenly Messiah's holy hill, the people perish (thus, borders; around those who share this spiritual vision, including its Romans 14 respect for private conscience). When we couple these two principles, we will be empowered such that none can stop it; for _this_ is what is historically inevitable.

report abuse vote down vote up

May 27, 2009
Votes: +1