The recent election, with the change from Democrat to Republican control of the executive branch, is a significant event. Many of my friends seem to think that all our problems will be solved by replacing “their” people with “our” people.

But as Juvenal asked, in his sixth satire, “Who will guard the guardians?” The question is not whose bureaucrats will be in charge, but whether bureaucrats will be in charge at all. Those of us who come from the Public Choice tradition of economics and political science, and who understand bureaucracy, know that incentives matter more than having “our” people in office. William Niskanen, one of the main contributors to our understanding of bureaucracy, cited the original great thinker on the topic, Ludwig von Mises, and his book, Bureaucracy.

Market processes use the pricing mechanism to aggregate information, and are driven by consumer sovereignty. The system is highly decentralized, and the reliance on prices is fragile, because government action distorts the valuable signals. Further, there are problems of externalities, and concentrated corporate power. Markets aren’t perfect.

Many people think the alternative to markets is government, but that’s wrong. The alternative is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a system of centralized planning, regulation, and direction of resources based on the delegated authority of the legislature. As Mises pointed out, bureaucracies almost definitionally specialize in activities not easily managed by market processes, because prices are not free to carry out their organizing function.

Mises recognized the implication of this fact: bureaucracies cannot be reformed to make them “efficient,” because the need to follow the rules of delegated authority actually exclude efficiency as a goal. Bureaucrats are characterized by their knowledge of, and conformity with, the rules of conduct and process spelled out in the procedures in statutes and regulations. To protect bureaucrats from corruption and outside influence, it is made very difficult to evaluate their performance, or fire them, on any basis other than obedience to the rules.

That’s why it worries me when we hear that the new administration is going to appoint Elon Musk to make government (bureaucracies) more efficient. Mises, and Niskanen, have already shown why this is wrong: the only way to make bureaucracy more efficient is to get rid of bureaucracy with its signal distortions and allow market processes to perform the organizing function instead.

An example is useful: consider the Department of Commerce.

The Department website has this “about” description:

The Department of Commerce’s mission is to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity for all communities. Through its 13 bureaus, the Department works to drive U.S. economic competitiveness, strengthen domestic industry, and spur the growth of quality jobs in all communities across the country. The Department serves as the voice of business in the Federal Government, and at the same time, the Department touches and serves every American every day.

The Department fosters the innovation and invention that underpin the U.S. comparative advantage. Its scientists research emerging technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). Companies use NIST and NTIA laboratories to conduct research and development (R&D). NOAA advances R&D of the commercial space industry and climate science. USPTO’s intellectual property (IP) protections ensure American innovators profit from their work.

These dudes have 13 different bureaus, in just one Department. They have laboratories and scientists doing research. The creepiest part, though, is where the Department publicly admits that it “touches every American every day.”

I never asked to be touched. This is nonconsensual touching, people.

For the past four years, all that touching, in 13 bureaus, has been done by bureaucrats wearing blue (Democrat) latex gloves. Why would I be reassured if we switch to bureaucrats wearing red (GOP) latex gloves? I’m still being touched, without my consent and (apparently) without my knowledge.

It is tempting to reform government agencies, to revise organization charts and create new bureaucracies with the right people, and scrap old ones with bad people. It may be hard to understand what all these bureaucrats are doing, but it does seem like “we” could do better, if we could just get the right people in office to run things.  

That solution — and it is what the new Trump administration seems to be doing — is no solution at all. The incentives and folkways of bureaucracy are not partisan; the giant bureaucracies, their very existence, is holding us back.

Bureaucracy is the sine qua non of the territorially extensive state. It reminds me of what Chris Rock said, on hearing that a tiger in a zoo attacked a person who had entered the tiger compound: “That tiger ain’t go crazy; that tiger went TIGER!” 

The nature of the beast cannot be changed. Tigers eat meat; government bureaus gobble up resources and issue a fog of regulations and rules. Trump’s bureaucrats aren’t going to go crazy; they are just going to go bureaucrat.

This post is adapted from a presentation made at the AIER panel at the “American Politics and Government Summit,” Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, DE, November 7-9, 2024