“But there is a limit to how much we can gain from a combination of long-term reforms and controlled disruption. The deeper problem with the public sector is not the people who run it but the people who use it. The combination of an ageing population and a stagnant economy means that a growing number of countries can no longer afford the largesse of the post-war era. And the only viable long-term solution to this problem (barring a productivity miracle) is to cut big entitlements rather than to pretend that we can force the public sector to produce miracles. What really needs to be disrupted is not so much the workings of government as the publicâs expectations.”
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Samizdata quote of the day – Musk & Milei’s cult of disruptionDecember 12th, 2024 |
 30 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Musk & Milei’s cult of disruptionLeave a Reply |
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It is a distinction without a difference, given the cult of government (and that is the true cult) constantly propagandize their own indispensable centrality to people’s lives.
What is government mainly? Aside from police and fire, it’s Other People’s Money.
Tough addiction to break. You can’t break most strong addictions partially and by steps. Success usually only comes with cold turkey. The only real way to dispense with the dependency on OPM is to crash the economy so that there isn’t any OPM available.
Not sure that would be a viable strategy.
So I think the thesis here impractically puts the cart before the horse. The “public” will always choose OPM. If there’s any hope, it lies with (somehow) principled government.
Or unicorns. They’d be cool too.
OK, you could make a start by closing all final salary public servant pension schemes and replacing them with contributary ones. That will help manage expectations and the inevitable strikes will demonstrate how little (or greatly) the public servants work is necessary.
Then you could move on to bare bones NHS A&E with an insurance top up for other medical work by any certified provider. That will help manage expectations too.
And then defund the BBC – the Establishment’s propaganda arm. That will help manage expectations too.
Would it be a smooth ride? No. Too many people are on the gravy train to accept radical change.
The government is not trying to run a “tight ship”. It is trying to waste as much money as possible so that the artificially impoverished public cry out for more government.
“The worse the better.” As that Russian bloke said.
Most people’s expectations of something provided by government will already be that it is crap. No change necessary.
As “an ageing population” was mentioned, how is it we need immigration at the same time that AI will make millions jobless?
We may be beyond the point of no return to real government reform… We may need a massive collapse before rebuilding, and what will be rebuilt is hard to know but may not be liberty friendly.
It is a distinction without a difference, given the cult of government (and that is the true cult) constantly propagandize their own indispensable centrality to peopleâs lives.
The problem with this cult – a good term for it – is that it has been around for a very long time. Try to push the needle towards self-reliance, individualism and autonomy, and nearly any politician who tries it gets stomped into the dust.
Wooldridge is right that there has been such a rotting away of self-reliance and so on that unless that’s restored, moves to cut the State back drastically will meet with enormous resistence. Certain things can be done, such as the sale of council houses in the UK under the Thatcher govt, which gave a whole cohort of the population a sense of ownership over the roofs over their heads.
And then defund the BBC â the Establishmentâs propaganda arm. That will help manage expectations too.
Totally.
As âan ageing populationâ was mentioned, how is it we need immigration at the same time that AI will make millions jobless?
Depends on what you mean by “we”. An economy and society is not a homogenous lump of clay. Some people would benefit from being able to hire motivated, skilled foreigners (contrasting, alas, with all too many indolent, unemployable locals); AI may replace an increasingly expensive labour force thanks to things such as the current government’s wider and higher national minimum wage, new employment “rights” and higher payroll taxes.
And those emigrating to what they think are more promising places to earn a living are not generally weighing up the external impact of their movements and departures, but their own opportunities for flourishing. After all, many people, despairing of the state of the UK and its culture, its whining, “tall poppy syndrome” resentment of success and wealth, have voted with their feet and left the UK, and probably never to return unless to occasionally see friends and family.
Although I think there is some truth in the OPs comments I also think there is a lot of slack to cut down. Recently the Biden administration wanted to hire 80,000 new IRS workers. How about instead we hire just 2,000 new auditors to audit the government, to audit these programs to actually do what everyone promises: “eliminate waste and fraud”.
I think many of the ideas from DOGE are very powerful. Two in particular — stop all remote work and move as many government agencies out of Washington (or Whitehall) to other parts of the country, has a decent chance to make a big difference. The “move out” has a big advantage that is is almost irreversible. As soon as the agency moves to Paducah, KY, or (as the Brits did) the DMV to Cardiff, then there immediately becomes a constituency to support KEEPING it there. The physical decentralization of power isn’t quite as good as giving the power back to the states, but it is still pretty helpful.
What we don’t want is what happened to the Department of Agriculture where a lot of the department moved to Kansas but the head office remained in DC. We want it all in Kansas. If the heads of government need to meet there is always zoom or United Airlines to make that possible.
if our friends M&V can get that done they will have done a great service to the American people. And if the Trump Bump in the economy is sufficient and sustained maybe we can begin to transition new workers from Social Security to a 401k style pension where that 15% which might be mandatory, at least goes into real assets. Probably not, but I can only dream.
On this last point I think it is important to recognize that a fairly large chunk of the budget is not going on welfare payments which are unearned, but benefits that are actually earned. Social security and Medicare is not some sort of charity program, it is a mandatory saving for retirement program where the government takes money to pay for every week out of your check (and similar for NI in UK and other places.) So it isn’t really the same thing. The problem is that instead of saving and investing that money like I do with my 401k tax deferred savings plan, the government instead steals the money for its own use and to cover up its past theft of previous contributions.
So the OPM concern isn’t entirely valid. The money drawn from Social Security and Medicare is not other people’s money, it is the recipients money, greatly depleted by the avarice and sticky fingers of government. It is in many ways like the payment on the national debt interest. The debt is just collateralized differently. And it is why the actual national debt is not a measly $34 trillion, but, by some calculations, closer to $140 trillion.
Mr Wooldridge makes a good point – once people become dependent on the state for such things as old age provision and medical care, it is very hard to restore the voluntary (Civil Society) cultural institutions that used to deal with such terrible problems.
The suggestion of Thomas Paine, more than two centuries ago now (in the second part of his “Rights of Man” and in his “Agrarian Justice”) that the state provide XYZ services and benefits to the population (not a small part of the population, as in the Roman Empire providing stuff to the parasite population of the city of Rome, a small part of the Empire, but to the MAJORITY of people) has turned out to be a terrible error – a road to destruction for any society that carries out the suggestion (as we will see in such cities as Chicago and New York, and London and other British towns and cities, in 2025).
The achievement of President Milei in balancing the budget is astonishing – considering that the fiscal deficit in Argentina was 13% of the economy. But is this achievement sustainable?
As for the United States – an American President has a lot less power than an Argentinian one, and the “Deep State” (the Administrative State) is very firmly entrenched – President Trump and his allies, such as Mr Musk, face an incredibly difficult situation. Especially as the Credit Money economy will soon collapse – internationally.
The left have not gone away – for example the British “Guardian” newspaper is supporting a 100% inheritance tax supposedly to fund the Welfare State, the fact that this measure would lead to the collapse of civilisation does not bother them – indeed it may be their intention (the left being both evil and insane – “if a policy produces mayhem, consider the possibility that mayhem was the intention – the objective” as Jordan Peterson sometimes says).
The American left is no different – and neither is the left in Argentina and other countries.
The right hand path is a steep and difficult climb, whereas the left hand path is a broad and easy road – but one that leads to a very bad place.
To those who do not know….
The vast majority of the population of Britain and the United States used to be members of mutual aid societies – both religious and secular, this historical fact has been shoved down the memory hole. The culture of support – of traditional families, churches and secular mutual aid societies, has been systematically destroyed – I strongly suspect deliberately destroyed.
Fraser,
If you think NI is in anyway a hypothecated tax you are mistaken. That is a “polite fiction” (like “Auntie” Beeb and the “NHS – envy of The World”). It is simply a parallel tax that goes into the same pot with all the rest. I know this because I temped at NICO, Longbenton, Newcastle. At the time the second largest office complex on the planet. Second only to The Pentagon!
These “polite fictions” need to be slain. The NHS is the worst. Criticising it in the UK is weird. It is routine. Everyone bitches and moans about the customer side: “My Uncle has now been waiting 18 months for a new knee”, “You seen what a faff getting a repeat prescription is!”, “Can you get a dentist?” ad nauseum.
But…
Suggest the root problem is the system and concept itself and you will be pilloried. It is often stated that the UK is no longer a very religious country. This is true as far as things like Christianity go. I don’t believe we’ve actually become less religious. I think we’ve had a transfer of faith. What was “Clap for Carers” if not a state sanctioned act of worship?
And a poorly branded one at that. I don’t want to be examined by a medic with an STI.
“…And England’s dreaming” – John Lydon. Who, BTW, got cancelled many years ago for calling-out the BBC over Jimmy Saville.
NickM – the cult of “Social Reform”, of seeing the state as the solution rather that the problem, has very deep roots here.
Even in the early 19th century Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby) the leader of the Tories and Lord Russel (leader of the Whigs) made their name suggesting state interventions for every problem.
Stanley-Derby was so pronounced in his statism (for example it was he who pushed a state school system on Ireland in 1831) that J.S. Mill (who himself suggested some state interventions) said that his philosophy could be summed up with one word – “liberticide”. Disraeli did not have to corrupt Derby to the Dark Side, he was already very much there.
As for Lord John Russell – far from being a supporter of “laissez faire” (as the inaccurate history books claim) he was an ardent state interventionist – supporting (for example) the introduction of the Poor Law Tax into Ireland in 1838 (that did not turn out well – check what happened only a few years later, a response to poverty that depends on putting taxes up-and-up leads to a vicious circle of ever more poverty and death), but also (in England and Wales) more government intervention in schools and teacher training, more bureaucracy at both local and national government level, bank bailouts (Peel’s Banking Act was suspended when the ink was hardly dry) and-so-on.
Somehow the only thing that mattered was “free trade” as long as there was that – then the state could do anything else, an Economist magazine view of what a “free market” is – and I do not mean that as a compliment.
It did not get better – for example the ardent statism of the “New Liberals” from the 1890s onwards should not conceal the fact that the Conservatives were little better – for example Balfour (Conservative leader in the early 1900s) was convinced that the answer to every problem was, yet more, “Social Reform” (statism).
When “the state” is seen as the source of all that is good (as with Woodrow Wilson and “Teddy” Roosevelt in the United States) liberty is going to get a bullet in the back of the head.
Given the attitudes of the establishment it is astonishing that statism did not grow faster than it did.
Indeed up to the 1870s the economy was growing faster than the state (in England and Wales) so statism, relatively speaking, was on the decline as a proportion of the economy.
Politicians such as John Bright in the United Kingdom or Senator Roscoe Conkling in the United States, people who have gone into politics to defend and advance liberty, have long been rare indeed.
Bring public sector pensions in line with private.
The Greatest Generation – the ones who fought WWI and rebuilt after – are already mostly gone. They deserve every penny they paid in.
Although I am technically a Baby Boomer – I am on the far cusp of that distinction…. and I have very little sympathy for boomers who enjoyed peak Western prosperity while they trashed Western society – and didn’t bother to put money aside as they tore apart traditional families and communities.
I really would not feel all that sorry if Social Security and other gubmint pension plans went bankrupt on these folks – or were severely cut back.
There is not even a means test for Social Security – why should wealthy pensioners should be getting payments?
What idiot depends on the government to care for them when the are old and weak?
What fools trust politicians and their promises?
A collapse of Social Security would be a very healthy restorative of common sense and accelerate the rediscovery of conservative common sense truths.
Maybe it would even put the final spike through the heart of the Socialist vampire – at least for another century.
Stuart:
I agree. The public sector have become a privileged caste whose pensions are index linked and guaranteed.
I also think the whole question of state pensions needs to be addressed. When they were introduced 120 years ago most people died before reaching retirement age. That is not the vase now, and fewer and fewer workers are expected to support more and more pensioners. The money people pay in NICs should go into private pensions, it was a mistake ever to have the state pay pensions to people. I have never understood why it is accepted that for the last years of one’s life one should become a ward of the state.
Perhaps because, for our entire working careers, on top of federal taxes and state taxes and local taxes and Medicare payments, the federal government took a little over 12% of my gross pay out of every income stream as an additional deduction, with the social contract formed of placing that into a non-means-tested retirement supplement program.
And then gives us a rather lousy return on it.
Now, if you want to make the argument of “and you believed us?! Ha! Screw you!”, you can, but at least be honest about it instead of couching it in fairness terms.
I view Adrian Wooldridge’s quote with scepticism. On the face of it, it has some merit: as long as most of the public expect to live off the State for a large portion of their lives we’re never really going to be economically viable as a country, much less free. But I still dislike his attempt to reframe the issue from reform of State institutions a la Milei to “reducing public expectations”. That sits too easily alongside Net Zero and the general enshittification of everything.
If we adopt Mr Wooldridge’s approach, I fear we will end up a bloated, dysfunctional, randomly oppressive State, just with no pensions.
And, to add to what bobby b. wrote, the gummint certainly did not means-test the deductions they made from every paycheck I ever earned in the US to pay for Social Security. It was ‘f**k you, pay me’, all the way down.
I’d suggest that running a scheme whereby money is taken by force from wage earners on the cast-iron promise that it will be used to fund a retirement pension programme, with the added promise that benefits will be directly linked to how much was paid in, is one of those government promises that should be prioritized over a lot of other spending. Much of government spending is a choice, not a promise, and I find it hard to accept that millions of seniors should now be stiffed of the benefits they were forced to pay for because we want to provide ‘gender-affirming surgery’ to illegal migrants, or tanks and bombs to nations far away who have never paid a single dime into the US Treasury. I don’t count cash payments to US officials, or their sons đ„șđ„șđ„ș.
llater,
llamas
Mary Contrary: “the general enshittification of everything.” That has a nice ring to it, and summarizes quite a bit. What a great term, thanks.
JohnK
I think independence from the state and therefore your fellow people is good.
I believe Reagan said that even the right had accepted destitution should not follow old age. That is the only thing I’d say should be avoided. How that’s achieved is another question.
But I don’t agree with those paid by our taxes in their entirety should be better off than the rest. No retiring at 55!
There are no Social Security productive investments – just government IOUs (“Treasuries”).
This and other welfare schemes will not prevent destitution – they will help create it. The old society of traditional families and mutual aid groups (both religious and secular – and the vast majority of people were in one or the other, often both) has been systematically destroyed – leading to a society of “atomised” individuals dependent on the state. Families and mutual aid groups (religious and secular) mostly undermined.
This will not prevent destitution – it will create it.
The present system, of the great majority of people being dependent on the state for their old age and so on, in Western nations, is insane – the question (which I am not sure about it) was did the people who created this system, create this mess on purpose – did they KNOW what it would lead to?
I repeat – there are not, and have never been, any productive investments connected to any of the government welfare state programs (for old age, medical care – or whatever) – talk of “Trust Funds” and so on, is, and has always been, a lie.
We are dealing, in the Western world, with Ponzi Schemes or Chain Letter swindles – that is “the system”.
No one seriously questions this. The Lockbox idea was fiction.
But the promises were real, and “promissory estoppel” is real, and, pursuant to llamas’ point, I’ll fight for my right to this money over the other choice of handing it out to Somali thieves in Minnesota to my dying day.
(By the time the dust settles, it will be clear that this small Minnesota group stole almost a billion federal taxed dollars with the happy and willing complicity of our state socialist government. Remember, home of Ilhan Omar. Nope, ain’t gonna concede any “fairness” argument on SS.)
Post war spending averaged 30-40% of GDP, the lower end achieved during the Thatcher era, since Blair it is now 45% or more, consider that defence spending has plummeted with no post war or cold war to fight, if post war is “largesse” then that’s infinitely preferable to what we have today.
What really needs to be disrupted is not so much the workings of government as the publicâs expectations
Laughable, as if the “public expectation” was to flood the country with unproductive migrants.
bobby b
When the family of Debbie Reynolds were hungry – the father went out to hunt jack rabbits.
That was within living memory – the skills to hunt and the skill to prepare what was hunted, husband, wife, and children working together. And a husband who betrayed his wife and children, or a wife who betrayed her husband – was socially disgraced.
But they were also members of mutual aid societies – both religious (the church) and secular – Debbie Reynolds was a member of Job’s Daughters International (as well as the scouts – back then scouts were taught such things as shooting).
Most people were members of some society or other.
That America could withstand hard times – can this America withstand hard times?
Paul Marks:
“This America” really no longer applies. It’s no monolith. But (dependent on how hard the hard times get), I think MY America could.
Urban America can’t, and won’t. But if you maintain a foothold in rural life – if you have extended family clans across farmland like we do – there’s hope.
We hunt for everything, always have. My kids are great shots, and they maintain their own guns and equipment. Everyone fishes. (There’s a lot more available protein in fishing than in hunting. You can hunt an area out quickly.)
More importantly, we know how to farm (large scale) and ranch (moo! cluck! baaa!) and how to maintain truck gardens (medium scale.) We all know how to can and preserve – we’ve all stood in that steamy farm kitchen after putting up 150 quarts of sweet corn or beans. (And, yes, at that scale it’s no longer just a fun hobby, it’s food production.)
All of us guys were Boy Scouts at some point, and so have rudimentary live-off-the-land skills. All of us – even us “professional” types – have great mechanical and carpentry skills, because we were all raised in that expectation. You have to be able to do what’s needed.
And (and this is probably the biggest advantage) we all consider ourselves part of the clan, and will assemble and pull together in the face of that kind of adversity. Most people seem to lack that critical step.
So, MY America would pull through at least medium bad times. Urban-centrics, though – not so much. There’s no depth to their existence. They don’t know things. They’re unconnected to other people except through their phones. Community – the loss of it – is the biggest danger to people in tough times, and they seem to lack community.
Bobbyb – I understand the problem. But the “lock box” is empty – now what?
My parents didn’t just “get back the money they paid in” – there have been numerous “Cost-of-Living Increases” and other politically-motivated hikes that, like the rest of the Ponzi scheme, are paid for by others… Social security is at base a political patronage scheme, and seniors vote en bloc for these expansions of benefits…. You are invited to talk to some young working people about whether they consider you an innocent victim of gubmint mugging.
If your answer is “screw them” – it’s no better than mine.
Means testing will be an obvious first step whenever this is finally tackled.
I know. I agree. I get worked up by the “fairness” argument, but I agree that it’s unsustainable and needs to be fixed.
There’s a huge swath of one or two generations who got the yearly benefits summary and prediction – “here’s how much we’ll send you every month based on your earning history” – and worked that into their retirement calcs.
Some portion of those people understood what a pyramid is, and knew that the base needs to get larger every year for the system to live, and predicted that it would not, and planned accordingly.
But a bigger portion (remember, half of IQ’s are below 100) didn’t. They believed what their government was telling them and never had the econ chops to question it.
And those are the people who now face destitution if it goes away. The smart ones could both earn more money, and save more money, and they did.
And so we’re going to have to means-test it eventually, and get rid of the contribution cap. This is why defined benefit plans are dinosaurs, and defined contribution plans are taking over.
But we need to do it so that millions of relatively poor oldsters aren’t scrounging for cat food in their final years. If we have money, THEY deserve it more than many other groups I could name.
And, let me add to the above: I’m speaking of people old enough so they didn’t have long access to qualified savings vehicles like IRA’s and 401k’s.
If you’re working today (and not rich) and you’re not maxing out contributions in one of those systems, you’re nuts.
bobby b – you and others like you will survive.
This is good.
As for the collapse of the cities and the fate of the population in them – well there is not much you can do about what will happen.
There is no “lack of compassion”, as the left falsely claim, in your position – if you could save these millions of people you would do so, but it is just not possible – and you and people like you would doom yourself to death if you tried. You would not save the vast urban population – you would just doom yourself (and your family and friends).
Save yourself and those who can be saved – who are people who would also help you.