While our more emotional friends are wailing about "assault rifles" and "bump stocks" it is pretty clear that the problem with America is the ruling class and its bureaucracy.
What is it about school shooters? Well, they are almost all fatherless, thanks to the sexual revolution and the welfare state that enables fatherlessness.
Why wasn't the Parkland school shooter restrained? Well, one main reason is the Broward County policy of not arresting school children that commit crimes, because racism.
Why didn't the Broward County deputies enter the Parkland school? Well, because in this post-Ferguson world the way for a policeman to stay out of trouble is not to engage the perp.
Let us make the problem bigger.
What in the world were the bureaucrats at the DOJ and the FBI doing in getting the FISA court to enable spying on the Trump campaign? Well, most likely the ambitious folks in those bureaucracies saw advancement in helping the Next President of the United States, Hillary Clinton, and turning a blind eye to her monstrous Clinton Corruption.
OK, here's an even bigger question.
Why in the world are we still doing this bureaucratic administrative state thing when the science clearly shows that bureaucracy is a mess?
Science #1: Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices.
Science #2: A thousand bureaucrats in Washington DC cannot outperform millions of consumers and producers.
Science #3: Any regulatory scheme fails because of regulatory capture.
So why do we continue with the administrative state? Is it just that the sons and daughters of the educated professional class get lots of jobs in it? Is it that we the people are really quite content to be ordered around by politicians and bureaucrats, because it makes our lives less stressful? Is it just that the ruling class has fooled us, cunningly undermining our authentic social institutions, from churches to fraternal organizations to rights organizations while we weren't looking, and replacing them with a bureaucratic, administrative hierarchy that is responsible only to the ruling class? Or is it just the stupidity of the ruling class that, having invested itself in the administrative state model a century ago, has now found itself unable to admit its error and help us transition to a more effective and more just model?
Of course, my preferred understanding is that the ruling class are idiots, they don't really know what they are doing, they have opted for the administrative state model because they don't know any better, and because the administrative state model gives them the illusion of control. And, of course, once you have set up a bureaucratic system it becomes almost impossible to reform or update it because the folks in the system will raise holy hell against anyone that tries to change it. And thus the ruling class, like any ageing dynasty, is just lurching from crisis to crisis and ruling in total reactive mode.
Or let us listen to my interpretation of Jordan B. Peterson to understand the position of our ruling class and its instrument, the administrative state.
Our current "story" is the domain of the known and the predictable. But what happens if something unexpected happens, or what happens if things aren't turning out the way we expected? Well, the normal thing to do is to cling to what we understand anyway. But that might lead to disaster. However, if we try to interpret the unexpected and make a radical change that might lead to disaster too.
The two disaster scenarios are the only thing that politics understands. The one is to keep with the current narrative and pretend that nothing is wrong, as the ancien régime did in France in the 18th century. The other is reckless revolution, as per lefty activists. Thus politics.
In the real world, that we see in the market economy, actors are endlessly making adjustments to their understanding of the world and to their actions. Some actors do nothing; other actors try to completely change. But in the middle there are actors that, by luck or by cunning, understand the tenor of the times, develop a understanding of the situation that turns out to be confirmed by events, act upon their understanding, and get it right. And so the ship of state manages to continue on its way.
We humans desperately want to avoid a sudden irruption of the unknown and its chaos. So we "will go to almost any length to ensure that [our] protective cultural 'stories' remain intact." The nature of politics and the actions of ruling classes is to act to prevent almost all adjustments to our cultural "stories" until it is too late. This is what we are seeing in Venezuela, where the socialist government cannot admit that its Bolivarian narrative is horribly, disastrously wrong. That is what we see in the United States where the ruling class and its supporters cannot bear to admit that their whole plan is tearing the country apart, and cannot afford to inconvenience their supporters with genuine reform. Reform the sexual revolution? Roll back single-parenthood? Get the cops out on the beat harassing gang-bangers? Actually tell the Clintons to clean up their act? You must be kidding!
But there is another way.
But when you limit the power of government and the administrative state, then you allow the knowledge of actors outside the charmed circle of ruling class notables and their bribed apologists to evaluate the situation and then propose and start to implement a whole range of solutions -- for which each will pay if they are wrong and for which they and society as a whole will benefit if they are right.
Imagine that.
What is it about school shooters? Well, they are almost all fatherless, thanks to the sexual revolution and the welfare state that enables fatherlessness.
Why wasn't the Parkland school shooter restrained? Well, one main reason is the Broward County policy of not arresting school children that commit crimes, because racism.
Why didn't the Broward County deputies enter the Parkland school? Well, because in this post-Ferguson world the way for a policeman to stay out of trouble is not to engage the perp.
Let us make the problem bigger.
What in the world were the bureaucrats at the DOJ and the FBI doing in getting the FISA court to enable spying on the Trump campaign? Well, most likely the ambitious folks in those bureaucracies saw advancement in helping the Next President of the United States, Hillary Clinton, and turning a blind eye to her monstrous Clinton Corruption.
OK, here's an even bigger question.
Why in the world are we still doing this bureaucratic administrative state thing when the science clearly shows that bureaucracy is a mess?
Science #1: Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices.
Science #2: A thousand bureaucrats in Washington DC cannot outperform millions of consumers and producers.
Science #3: Any regulatory scheme fails because of regulatory capture.
So why do we continue with the administrative state? Is it just that the sons and daughters of the educated professional class get lots of jobs in it? Is it that we the people are really quite content to be ordered around by politicians and bureaucrats, because it makes our lives less stressful? Is it just that the ruling class has fooled us, cunningly undermining our authentic social institutions, from churches to fraternal organizations to rights organizations while we weren't looking, and replacing them with a bureaucratic, administrative hierarchy that is responsible only to the ruling class? Or is it just the stupidity of the ruling class that, having invested itself in the administrative state model a century ago, has now found itself unable to admit its error and help us transition to a more effective and more just model?
Of course, my preferred understanding is that the ruling class are idiots, they don't really know what they are doing, they have opted for the administrative state model because they don't know any better, and because the administrative state model gives them the illusion of control. And, of course, once you have set up a bureaucratic system it becomes almost impossible to reform or update it because the folks in the system will raise holy hell against anyone that tries to change it. And thus the ruling class, like any ageing dynasty, is just lurching from crisis to crisis and ruling in total reactive mode.
Or let us listen to my interpretation of Jordan B. Peterson to understand the position of our ruling class and its instrument, the administrative state.
Our current "story" is the domain of the known and the predictable. But what happens if something unexpected happens, or what happens if things aren't turning out the way we expected? Well, the normal thing to do is to cling to what we understand anyway. But that might lead to disaster. However, if we try to interpret the unexpected and make a radical change that might lead to disaster too.
The two disaster scenarios are the only thing that politics understands. The one is to keep with the current narrative and pretend that nothing is wrong, as the ancien régime did in France in the 18th century. The other is reckless revolution, as per lefty activists. Thus politics.
In the real world, that we see in the market economy, actors are endlessly making adjustments to their understanding of the world and to their actions. Some actors do nothing; other actors try to completely change. But in the middle there are actors that, by luck or by cunning, understand the tenor of the times, develop a understanding of the situation that turns out to be confirmed by events, act upon their understanding, and get it right. And so the ship of state manages to continue on its way.
We humans desperately want to avoid a sudden irruption of the unknown and its chaos. So we "will go to almost any length to ensure that [our] protective cultural 'stories' remain intact." The nature of politics and the actions of ruling classes is to act to prevent almost all adjustments to our cultural "stories" until it is too late. This is what we are seeing in Venezuela, where the socialist government cannot admit that its Bolivarian narrative is horribly, disastrously wrong. That is what we see in the United States where the ruling class and its supporters cannot bear to admit that their whole plan is tearing the country apart, and cannot afford to inconvenience their supporters with genuine reform. Reform the sexual revolution? Roll back single-parenthood? Get the cops out on the beat harassing gang-bangers? Actually tell the Clintons to clean up their act? You must be kidding!
But there is another way.
But when you limit the power of government and the administrative state, then you allow the knowledge of actors outside the charmed circle of ruling class notables and their bribed apologists to evaluate the situation and then propose and start to implement a whole range of solutions -- for which each will pay if they are wrong and for which they and society as a whole will benefit if they are right.
Imagine that.
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