As wasteful as they are and as poetically as you remind us, I think, cynically, that perhaps they do serve a purpose, keeping the "system" stable with the current elites on top of it:
"The “waste” we see today is, for those within our regime, but the cost of solving the “alignment” problem of humans. Everyone with ability or wealth has to be bought off to keep them within the system, and yes, even it means creating a hundred thousand well-paid gender studies commissars or more generals than we’ve ever had in a real war, well, it’s just the cost of keeping them aligned with the direction of the rest of the regime. The system evolves layers of garbage wastefulness as a self-defensive measure against too much talent being aimless, and perhaps, interested in alternatives. Even the foreign waste serves the same purpose, keeping foreign regimes like those in Brussels, aligned to U.S. deep state values by making their elites align themselves with ours."
Really well written! I like the point about Public vs. Private salaries and how hard that is for private sector to complete and of course talent is sucked away from the private sector and into the functionaries positions. Thanks, I feel smarter every time I read your stuff and that's worth the price of admission.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the Blob-why it exists, what it's doing, and the qualities it cultivates and rewards (courage and resilience and independent spirit aren't among them).
We obviously have a lot of social problems, which are curiously worsening even as more resources are shoveled into the furnace... but my real worry lies with the younger generation. They seem born and bred to be bureaucratic creatures. I worry that many of them won't ever realize the reasons for their unfulfillment or find the proper focus of their resentment. Already many young women seem to have made the semi-conscious trade: 'men and families' for 'bureaucracy and consumer culture'.
As wasteful as they are and as poetically as you remind us, I think, cynically, that perhaps they do serve a purpose, keeping the "system" stable with the current elites on top of it:
"The “waste” we see today is, for those within our regime, but the cost of solving the “alignment” problem of humans. Everyone with ability or wealth has to be bought off to keep them within the system, and yes, even it means creating a hundred thousand well-paid gender studies commissars or more generals than we’ve ever had in a real war, well, it’s just the cost of keeping them aligned with the direction of the rest of the regime. The system evolves layers of garbage wastefulness as a self-defensive measure against too much talent being aimless, and perhaps, interested in alternatives. Even the foreign waste serves the same purpose, keeping foreign regimes like those in Brussels, aligned to U.S. deep state values by making their elites align themselves with ours."
https://grainofwheat.substack.com/p/have-pity-on-the-poor-old-bureaucrat?r=1mcpmt
Really well written! I like the point about Public vs. Private salaries and how hard that is for private sector to complete and of course talent is sucked away from the private sector and into the functionaries positions. Thanks, I feel smarter every time I read your stuff and that's worth the price of admission.
Brilliant.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the Blob-why it exists, what it's doing, and the qualities it cultivates and rewards (courage and resilience and independent spirit aren't among them).
We obviously have a lot of social problems, which are curiously worsening even as more resources are shoveled into the furnace... but my real worry lies with the younger generation. They seem born and bred to be bureaucratic creatures. I worry that many of them won't ever realize the reasons for their unfulfillment or find the proper focus of their resentment. Already many young women seem to have made the semi-conscious trade: 'men and families' for 'bureaucracy and consumer culture'.
We need more writing like this.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/leviathan
Brilliant! But it would be an obscure language to a bureaucrat.