Rules
Megan McArdle and I tend to come at many issues from different perspectives, since she's writing from a well-established political position, and I'm writing as a reporter. But I think this post of hers on the accumulation of rules in the federal bureaucracy is thought-provoking. It's hard to roll back rules once they're in place, and it's an enormously daunting task to even consider going through the entirety of federal regulations to determine which of them ought to be eliminated in the first place. Instead, we discover that a rule is cumbersome when we bump up against it, and then the contingency passes, and the rule's troublesome nature fades from memory again. It's a huge problem. I don't know how it can be fixed, though.
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Government Executive Editor in Chief Tom Shoop, along with other editors and staff correspondents, take a fresh look at news affecting the management and operations of the federal bureaucracy.
The referenced article has made me a whole-hearted proponent of rules! The author states "there are now as many as thirty-two layers of federal officials between the person doing the job and the person on top. (The rule of thumb for well-run companies, by contrast, is five layers."
TC Stein Posted Thursday, February 26, 2009 9:23 AMThe number of "layers" in the above is clearly exaggerated for government and under-estimated for companies. When I was in the private sector there were many, many more than five layers between me and the CEO, but in Government I have have fewer than five layers between me (a lowly civil servant) and the political level decision maker (who I do not need for most decisions anyway!)
Generally, the party that is in power decrys the rules that constrict their behavior, while applauding the rules when they are out of power.
In the article the author asks "But has all this minute rule-making really made us better of than the days when we simply elected officials, had them appoint agency heads, and fired them when they seemed to be doing a bad job?" I will answer her question with a resounding yes.