A Canadian philosophy profs take on the discussion around Abundance, and how the left often ignored the existing problems of the administrative state
https://open.substack.com/pub/josephheath/p/my-two-cents-on-abundance
Posted by 2ndComingOfAugustus
A Canadian philosophy profs take on the discussion around Abundance, and how the left often ignored the existing problems of the administrative state
https://open.substack.com/pub/josephheath/p/my-two-cents-on-abundance
Posted by 2ndComingOfAugustus
6 Comments
!ping Administrative-state
I love eating my pudding before finishing my vegetables.
I mean listen there should be deregulation full scale limiting it to just the government process is not enough it must be to rules and regulations as well.
This is a very good piece. Very few people will have extensive dealings with more than one country’s administrative state, and, in my experience, most people are convinced that *their* country’s administrative state is awful. As Heath notes, Canadians complain about the CRA all the time, but everyone I know who’s moved to the US insists that the IRS is materially worse.
The comparative perspective is valuable, but the thing that actually matters (politically) is subjective experience, and I’m not aware of any country where people generally have nice things to say about their dealings with state institutions.
Also, “increasing state capacity” doesn’t mean “hiring more people.” Or, it just doesn’t mean that. The Trudeau government increased the size of the federal civil service by 43%, and I wouldn’t say that the administrative state is discernibly more efficient as a result.
I’m a simple man. When I see Joseph Heath, I read him.
And I think he’s right here. Trying to run Swedish software on American bureaucratic hardware is going to hit walls of execution errors. State capacity is a real thing that you need in place before you can reasonably expect the state to do a bunch of stuff.
I’m reminded of something from the Kaplan report on Canada Post. *”The purpose of Canada Post is to deliver mail, not be a jobs program.”*
I think a lot of people miss that fact in general, especially on the left. It’s about **outcomes**. It’s all about **outcomes**. If it’s building houses, or managing airports, or buying tanks. It’s about the end product. I think the largest difference between people on the left, and the right is that people on the left tend to focus more on the process, than the result.
The problem with Abundance as well is that it doesn’t fix, the ‘***problem***’. It doesn’t fix ‘Climate change’ or ‘inequality’ or, insert cause of the day. It’s about making it easier to…..build factories, build houses, file one’s taxes. There’s no grand bargain, no fixing any of the ills of the world, it’s about process management. It’s dull, it’s dreary, it’s process management.
I do have weird conspiracy theory third-worldist degrowth nonsense on the opposition to growth, capacity and development.
Something I like to say is. ‘Everyone wants the government to run like a business, until it does’. Since a business wouldn’t put up with things the way they are.