Bureaucratic Tyranny – The Hugh Hewitt Show

We tend to think about tyranny in monolithic terms.  That a single individual, or consortium of individuals, rule tyrannically over a peoples.  But I think in modern America we have invented a new type of tyranny – a tyranny of multiple and competing bureaucracies.  I first wrote about the bureaucratic entanglements that were to plague LA from the fires as the fires burned.  Yesterday an article appeared that makes the point most vividly.

A San Francisco based newsletter ran a story story on how Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii remains a wasteland three years after it was devastated by fires.  As you read through it and try to understand why a place that was so lovely and an economic engine (virtually ever tourist that hit the island headed there at some point [I know I did]) could still be so devastated three years later your eyes will glaze over.  It’s a soup of bureaucracies, competing local interests, insurance companies and individuals competing against each other to control what happens with the area.  Instead of people having the freedom to rebuild the area as they want, there is bureaucratic warfare over control of the rebuild.  And there is your tyranny, not of a monolith but of a thousand interests competing for monolithic control.  Most tyrannies are dedicated to a specific goal, but here we have invented a tyranny that can only prevent anything from happening – and yet it is equally tyrannical.

I have saved throughout this week a number of articles about just how very silly the LA Mayoral race has become, and how Spencer Pratt is making a large impact just by speaking common sense into the mix.  The key issue for Pratt has been the post-fire rebuild – of which in 18 months there has been very little.  But I have never been very animated by the election.  For one, party registration in LA is such that even if Pratt won a significant number of registered Democrats, it probably would not be enough.  But more importantly, any mayor of LA is severely limited in what they can accomplish by the bureaucratic soup.  Hence I see little point in working our way through all those articles – other than their sheer entertainment value – which in light of the facts on the ground is not really that entertaining.

California, and LA especially, suffer under this bureaucratic tyranny.  Changing one of the bureaucracies, say the mayor of LA or the governor of California, only changes one of the many agencies that constitute the tyrannical morass.  Please remember, the purpose of this morass is not to promote, but to prevent.  The executive in question could propose action after action only to have one of the other agencies in the morass stifle it for whatever reason is in that agency’s jurisdiction – and the stalemate would simply continue.  It might be argued that a strong executive could just sweep it all aside, but in a place like California that is impossible.  Some agencies are independent of any state, county or municipal government.  And then there is the constant competition between the county and municipal agencies that often cover the same jurisdictions.

In the sense that executive elections are symbolic, the mayoral race in LA and the gubernatorial race in California are important.  They are a signal to the morass that the people of the area are fed up.  But since the tyrannical morass is in reality a bunch of micro-focused little fiefdoms it is unlikely they will ever perceive the bigger picture and so the tyranny will continue.

The article on Lahaina points out that people are moving off of Maui at an alarming rate – just as they are abandoning California.  Short of revolution this is where I think the fix for this problem will come from.  Eventually these areas will be so devoid of productivity as to be inhabited ghost regions.  Then the federal government can justifiably step in and sweep the morass away.