The B-Word: Rule by the Unelected

Chidem Kurdas

Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank law gave new powers to regulatory agencies. The interventionist state, which has been growing for a century, took another steep turn upward.

One result- B for Bureaucracy.

From Ponzi Regulation:

“One word haunts the regulatory state like a dirty secret. Advocates are careful not to use this word in public, as if it were an obscenity…

Proponents of regulation…employed the positive-sounding terms “administrative agency” or “public administration.” These substitutes are free of bureaucracy’s bad connotations such as inertia and corruption of purpose. If you are out to build or defend a boundless network of the same, you had best avoid the B-word and use innocuous substitutes. It would have been hopeless public relations to propose the building of vast congeries of bureaucracies……

A remarkable feature of the growth of the U.S. regulatory state is how it undermined governance by elected representatives. The surrogates who make most decisions are not elected; they are appointed. Inadequate electoral control has been compounded by the weakening of elected politicians’ control over public bureaucracies.”

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Tags: Bureaucracy, Government, Regulation