All Posts Tagged With: "bureaucracy"
Disaster Response Restores Confidence in Government?
In a memorable episode of the cult-classic cartoon series “The Tick,” the title character is seen in the local café regaling fellow superheroes with his latest adventure, in which he single-handedly stopped an alien plot that would have sucked the earth into a black hole. Skeptical, one of the other heroes responds, “Can you prove [...]
4Jan2012 | Tyler Watts | 0 comments | ContinuedThere Is No Great Stagnation: Coffee Edition
The wonderful thing about markets is that firms are always trying to figure out how to deliver the things consumers want.
22Dec2011 | Steven Horwitz | 35 comments | ContinuedPutting Bureaucracy First: Rachel Maddow’s Progressivism
Bureaucratic dominance does not merely lower material living standards or reduce profit opportunities. It crushes lives and dreams.
18Nov2011 | Sheldon Richman | 31 comments | ContinuedPrincipal-Agent Problem Meets the Public Sector
The problem with trying to adapt business-style incentives to a government agency is . . . government.
19Sep2011 | Fred Smith and Jacqueline Otto | 4 comments | ContinuedA Tale of Two Situations
Once upon a time selling a chicken was fraught with few if any legal implications. Remodeling a shed was equally simple from a regulatory standpoint. Today, however, we live in more enlightened times. Protected from our wayward desires by an empowered bureaucracy, we can rest easier knowing that decisions like what we eat and where [...]
24Aug2011 | Paul Schwennesen | 4 comments | ContinuedTaylorism, Progressivism, and Rule by Experts
The Progressive movement at the turn of the twentieth century—the doctrine from which the main current of modern liberalism developed—is sometimes erroneously viewed as an “anti-business” philosophy. It was anti-market to be sure, but by no means necessarily anti-business. Progressivism was, more than anything, managerialist. The American economy after the Civil War became increasingly dominated [...]
24Aug2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 13 comments | ContinuedGovernment, So Five Years Ago!
It’s not reasonable to expect government programs to be efficient or innovative.
23Aug2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 11 comments | ContinuedPrivate Investment and Public “Investment”
Politicians are fond of telling the public that we must “invest” in this program or that—be it education; health care; make-work infrastructure projects like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”; $50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa; $3.4 million for a tunnel to allow turtles to cross under a highway in Florida; $1.8 million for swine [...]
22Jun2011 | Adam B. Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedSafe Food at Any Cost
We all want safe food. Question is, how do we get it? “There oughta be a law” seems to be the generally conceived approach, as evidenced by recent passage of the now-famous food safety bill. A tidy and altogether comforting solution: Simply slay the beast of dangerous food with the bludgeon of enlightened bureaucracy. But [...]
21Apr2011 | Paul Schwennesen | 1 comment | ContinuedFree the Children, Cut the Budget
Education is important – far too important to leave to politicians and bureaucrats.
4Mar2011 | Sheldon Richman | 29 comments | ContinuedRevolutions and Government Institutions
For all the euphoria over the people-driven revolution in Egypt, whatever regime emerges will in the end carry on business as usual.
9Feb2011 | William L. Anderson | 3 comments | ContinuedDoctors Are Government Employees
Doctors speak frequently among themselves about problems in medicine: decreased collections; inability to spend more time with patients; difficulty getting consults from specialists, especially for Medicare/Medicaid patients; enormous time wasted with patients who aren’t really sick (sometimes they’re old and lonely; sometimes they’re unemployed with nothing else to do—visits to the doctor for the poor [...]
22Oct2010 | Theodore Levy | 4 comments | ContinuedFinancial Regulation Snake Oil
Recent turmoil set off by the threat of Greek insolvency shows how fast markets change. Fear about the inability of European governments to pay their debts caused the 2010 turbulence. By contrast, the 2008–2009 havoc was rooted in the collapse of property values. The next crisis will be about something else, possibly another government’s debt. [...]
25Aug2010 | Chidem Kurdas | 1 comment | ContinuedNeither Evil Nor Incompetent
Classical liberals should focus on what makes government agencies structurally unable to accomplish the tasks assigned them.
13May2010 | Steven Horwitz | 30 comments | ContinuedForgotten Lines
In the January 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle, one of the clues was “Sassy reply to criticism.” The answer: “It’s a free country.” Why do I find this so striking? For two reasons. First, when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, not many people around me considered that a sassy reply. [...]
20Apr2010 | David R. Henderson | 4 comments | ContinuedGovernment: More Incompetent than Ever
Most intellectuals support big government, and millions of people depend on it. So why, with thousands of laws, millions of employees working to carry out those laws, and trillions of dollars spent, is it in trouble? The most popular big-government programs–like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid–are going broke. These entitlements account for more than half [...]
19Apr2010 | Jim Powell | 1 comment | ContinuedThe End of Medicine: Not With a Bang, But a Whimper
Social change can be revolutionary, sudden, and swift, but more commonly it moves at a glacial pace. Yet glaciers work great change, and great damage, given enough time. There has been much talk of people leaving the medical profession if government further bureaucratizes health care. But the odds are great that there won’t be any [...]
24Mar2010 | Theodore Levy | 6 comments | Continued-
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