Quangos and the rest are instruments of government. To get rid of them, you have to get rid of their functions.
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Samizdata quote of the dayOctober 15th, 2010 |
 16 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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But then, while you are at it, smashing the shiny powe-machines with lovely coloured levers all over them does rather prevent the buggers using them.
I disagree. Absorbing some of the quangos into government departments will save money – no need for a separate building, board, boss, diversity policy, mission statement, logo etc. Someone sat a desk in the corner with a couple of assistants and a secretary will suffice.
The functions of some quangos are necessary, but quangos are a very bureaucratic and wasteful way of performing them.
I would take a look at Ian’s Post for another viewpoint:
(Quangos – the political magic trick)
I understand the word “quango” from the context. Could someone enlighten me as to how it’s derived? It’s genealogy so to speak? It’s an interesting word.
You’re certainly right, Pete – in the short term this will save some money – but as long as their functions remain under the wing of the state, money will continue to be spent… and wasted. The functions of some may be necessary, but far – very far – from all. And very, very few as part of the state.
Big Government is the problem here. The manner of its bigness is just detail.
IanPJ is definitely on to something.
It’s not a word – QUANGO means a “Quasi-autonomous Non-governmental Organization”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango
If you get rid of the organisation but transfer its functions into the depths of the civil service then that would seem to be “fixing things” by making them worse.
As Richard at EUReferendum writes:
“Also, the whole idea of quangos was to give their functions greater visibility and transparency, so that their costs would not be buried in departmental budgets.”
Whether getting rid of the quangos without getting rid of their functions makes things slightly better or slightly worse (my guess is that it makes things slightly better), misses the point.
The point is that the statement Brian gives is correct – it is the FUNCTIONS that are important.
Whilst government continues to hold that they should organize, subsidize and regulate every aspect of human life, it will not be possible to reverse the decline of civil society (this is true by definition).
Only a government (like Harris in Ontario – or New Zealand before 1995) that holds “yes these are lots of nice things – but THEY ARE NONE OF OUR BUSINESS, it is not our job to organize, regulate or subsidize them” has any chance of real reform.
Presently I do not know whether to laugh or cry – the latest absurdity being another seven billion Pound (plus) scheme to do such things as shove two year old children into government schools.
Why not just go the whole Plato – and abolish the family?
I had better shut up – otherwise our Progressive rulers will mistake sarcasm for policy advice.
The problem is that the government has these functions because the majority, the overwhelming majority, of the population believe it should have these functions. Hardly anyone really wants smaller government. How the populace came to be persuaded of this function of government is a matter of historical interest that I research a great deal, though I must admit I don’t know how much use knowing how we got here actually is.
The point is that we are where we are, and libertarians have singularly failed to find a convincing argument to sway the majority of our fellows. The basic problem is that the Anglosphere state grows due to (engineered) states of moral urgency, the constant clamour of “something must be done”. Any attempt at government declaring that it will no longer involve itself in something is certain to come a cropper when some tragedy happens- and tragedies will always happen- and our enemy can say “deregulation allowed this tragedy to happen” and any reasonable argument is drowned out in the fury of denunciation of amoral, unfeeling, uncaring, “right wingers”.
Try deregulating food for instance. Say that it is not the government’s job to inspect food for purity. Wait a little while, and something will happen- pensioners dying of listeria, babies with botulism, etc- and then the deregulation and deregulators will catch the blame. So until we can break that situation, not much is going to change I fear.
Try deregulating food for instance
That reminds me, I must try some of that nice regulated delicious halal lamb the supermarket hasn’t told me about.
Not to contradict IanB’s argument, which I think is a good and valid one, but this puts me in mind of a technique that I’ve tried from time to time. In looking for examples of relatively free markets to use to explain why government regulation of all markets is unnecessary, I try to focus on markets that hold meaning for the person I’m trying to persuade. Interestingly, markets popular with the kind of people who tend to support government regulation are often not very government-regulated, themselves.
One example would be “organic” food which, at least where I live, seems to be regulated almost exclusively by free-market mechanisms. Art markets are another. It’s getting harder and harder to find such examples, but I think it’s important to try to have an arsenal of them ready to deploy in conversation when the subject comes up. Civil society is dying a death from a thousand cuts, but perhaps still possible to heal them faster than new ones are added.
Tedd, not to contradict your own argument, but the organic market in the US has been regulated by the Department of Agriculture for several years now. At the time there was much opposition to this, mostly because in the US a typical consumer of organic food is quite a different person from the one in Europe or the American West Coast.
“Why not just go the whole Plato – and abolish the family?”
Paul, I think they got their first as far that being a worthwhile conclusion is concerned. The family is fairly much dismantled already.
However. Being as things have to be ‘democratic’ they can’t be so crass as to abolish. They have to persuade us that they are bad things, or at the very least, that someone else knows better. I guess that is about 85% accepted reality as far as families go? 100% in some aspects.
Ian, the clamour for state intervention and direction of public life is something achieved by the rulers. I don’t know if Joe Public actually asked for it until he had big sticks waved at him.
It is indeed the whole freedom-phobe attitude that has been established by simple on-going propaganda and “never letting a good crisis go to waste”.
No doubt there would be a salmonela outbreak somewhere that would be conclusively linked to deregulation, if that was in ‘danger’ of happening.
Margaret Thatcher braved out many such attacks, but they got her in the end.
Ian B.
I can not think of many (perhaps not any) functions the govenrment took on because the “majority” of people wanted them to.
That is not how British politics works – perhaps it is not how politics works anywhere.
In reality a small group of “intellectuals” (academics and non academics) campaign (openly and, more importantly, via back door means) to impose various polices. The politicians go along (partly because they are convinced – partly because it is just too much like hard work to resist all the official reports).
The demands of “the people” or “the majority” are nothing to do with this process.
The people never demanded the creation of a single Quango.
Government financing of the arts?
The people were quite happy when the Carl Rosen Opera Company went around on its private train in the 1930’s – it did lots of different productions in a week (which modern art establisment people will tell you is impossible) and, horror or horrors, made money.
“Yes but what about health and education – the real core stuff”.
No great public movement for any of it – sorry but there was not.
It is all elite stuff, movements in the political class (of which elected polticians really are a rather unimportant part – most of the time).
The will of the public has got naught to do with such things.
John B.
Yes.
And they got Harris as well (and he was more effective in many ways than Mrs T.).
They get all the politicians who try to resist them – in the end they get them.
However, before one is too depressed the words of M. Stanton Evans spring to mind (in the last chapter, “Samson in the Heathen Temple”, of his work “Blacklisted by History”):
“So finally they got him….” and completes the story of how McCarthy was destroyed.
But then he goes on to remind readers “but it is equally true that, before this happened, he got them – or at least a sizable number of them…” and then goes on to point out that (contrary to the legend) a lot of Communists were uncovered and a lot of Communist schemes smashed.
That works with Fabian “planners” also – remember that although their tactics may be very different the objective of the “moderates” and the Marxists is the same (the crushing of privage property and civil society that is independent of the will of the collective – a will that is not the will of the majority of actual persons, but rather what they “should” truly want and believe).
Indeed the leaders of the moderates (of the Fabians) all went off to the Soviet Union (under Lenin and Stalin) and said how wonderful it was – B. and S. Webb, H. G. Wells, and G.B. Shaw (and so on, and so on).
It is no different now – inside the moderate intellectual planning the latest bit of statism is often (not always) a totalitarian (at least in their final aims).
In ever one can mess up one of their “development plans” or what not, one should do so.
It is a matter of observing closely – and judging where and how to hit.
It may well be a matter of “fighting the long defeat”, but that does not mean that one should not fight.
But also remember “oft evil does evil mar” – their own policies, in the end, destroy them.
Alisa:
I just picked an example from where I live, I wasn’t trying to pick a universal, or even an American, example. The point is to try to find examples that are relevant and meaningful to the person you’re trying to persuade.