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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   30805 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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Do you truly believe classical liberalism is at all viable in a society that's not heavy on small businesses, small companies and independent farmers ?

Look how it ended up the first time - it stopped being viable due to increased scale of businesses. In the US it started getting replaced by the managerial state in late 1930s and this was mostly finished by 1980s.

In case anyone is unclear on what the 'managerial state' is, here's a handy explainer:

The managerial state is the system in which technical–bureaucratic elites, rather than elected politicians or private owners, exercise effective control over economy and society. James Burnham argued that the separation of ownership from control in large corporations produced a new “managerial class” whose power rests not on property but on its command of administrative expertise; the state becomes the ultimate lever, so that “the institutions which comprise the state will … be the ‘property’ of the managers” . Critics such as Samuel Francis add that this regime replaces law with administrative decree, federalism with executive autocracy, and limited government with an unlimited apparatus that pursues open-ended social goals in the name of abstract ideals like equality or positive rights .

World War II was the catalytic moment for America’s managerial turn. Wartime mobilization created vast federal agencies that coordinated production, prices, and labor; the organizational techniques forged in battle were carried into the post-war civilian economy as Washington converted military supply chains to consumer manufacturing, subsidized higher education for millions of veterans (GI Bill), and normalized Keynesian macro-management . The Cold War then locked this arrangement in place: a permanent defense–industrial complex, rising federal share of GDP, and an alphabet soup of regulators (EPA, OSHA, EEOC) extended managerial oversight into labor relations, environmental quality, and social equity, while the new social-science “policy expert” displaced the traditional politician as the central figure in legislation and adjudication .

By the 1970s the managerial state had become bipartisan and self-sustaining. Regardless of which party won elections, power continued to migrate toward executive agencies, independent central banks, and transnational regulatory networks; large corporations operated as quasi-public utilities under federal charter, and citizens were recast as clients whose behavior is continuously shaped by tax incentives, administrative rules, and court orders . The cumulative effect has been a shift from constitutional self-government to what critics call “soft totalitarianism”: an ostensibly apolitical technocracy that expands its jurisdiction by discovering ever-new social problems requiring expert management, while insulating its own authority from democratic reversal .

God, if only big-business-influenced technical-bureaucratic elites really ran things, instead of the ideologically captured bureaucratic and political and academic progressive elites we actually have (on average, of course). It's so weird to conflate Big Business and Big Government in a world where Lina Khan Thought is popular on Left and Right.

Independent central banks are wonderful inventions it must also be said.

In other words, FDR-loving progressives are responsible for the administrative state's regulatory growth and misadventures, not our kindly corporate overlords, who fundamentally wanna make a buck by increasing consumer welfare.

We have not had "an ostensibly apolitical technocracy" in many government agencies in a long time. The DoD and DoJ were some of the best ones here, but public administration theory gave up on neutrality/objectivity as "impossible" a long time ago as a field.

Sadly, the consistent attempt of political neutrality, or even the pretense, was a load-bearing effort, even if imperfect. Hard to get it back now.

Bureaucrats used to be a lot better in the 40s, accumulation of bloat and it all went to the shitter after Carter on purpose lost that lawsuit over competence exams.

In general, yes.

But consider that the State Department has continued to use a very selective hiring process, starting with an exam, this whole time and was corrupted by other forces.

If you have a selective exam but don't get enough applicants because e.g. the wages are not that attractive anymore, or the institution has a bad smell, you're not going to get as good a selection.

e.g.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/U-S-Department-of-State-Foreign-Service-Officer-Salaries-E32768_D_KO24,47.htm?experienceLevel=FOUR_TO_SIX&location=

96-140k. 140K after six years isn't going to get you top talent these days.

I assure you that you have no idea what you're talking about. They get plenty of applicants for the FSOT.

Also, a member of the Foreign Service gets their life heavily subsidized when overseas. It's one of the most competitive entry level jobs out there. https://old.reddit.com/r/foreignservice/comments/1dtl17q/pipeline_funnel_numbers/

Plenty of brilliant people make career decisions based on considerations other than monetary compensation as the primary concern, especially if an early career choice is also considered a good stepping stone for a pivot. (Do you know how much academics make?)

A number of prestigious government careers have a model where effectively it's deferred career compensation, and/or a unique job you can't do elsewhere.

a) The people who were fired at state weren't FSOT?

b) even if you say it doubles compensation, it's still nothing compared to what very capable people can get in law, trading, finance, tech..

You don't want 90th percentile, you want 99.9th percentile people for your important diplomatic roles.

The Foreign Service is who runs State (leaving aside the whole appointee issue). I don't know what the downsizing breakdown was. But that's not what we've been arguing.

You need to understand that monetary comp is but one thing people look for in their careers. And that many ambitious and highly capable people optimize for something other than wealth in their utility function. The IQ -> Income correlation is positive, but weaker than merely "smart people do things to make more money." Salespeople, for example, can be talented and wealthy from hard work and charisma, more than being "very capable" in the same dimensions as a biologist making far less money researching some fly.

Inasmuch as the FSOT is g-loaded at all you're getting pretty smart people into the Foreign Service. But you're also getting ideologically self-selected people. Same general issue as much of academia and teaching and government at large.

You don't want 90th percentile, you want 99.9th percentile people for your important diplomatic roles.

The funny thing about this is how much of US diplomacy is not carried out by career diplomats. Dang appointees.

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