The Institutionalization of Intended End Purposes

Institution Design Thoughts

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Stupidity and evil do not fully account for the failures of people in our institutions.

Ordinary human weakness suffices to explain government failures. I.e., most of us would probably wind up doing the same things if we were in their positions. We are all fallen creatures before God.

It is entirely human for those in government to simply lose sight of the wider world and be out of touch with general humanity. They are human beings like us all and their human weakness causes the failures of our government.

The incentive structures are wrong.

We should design government systems to compensate for ordinary human frailty.

The Founders started us down that design road. We have to continue to develop what they started.

Definition

I mean institutionalization to be the process by which an organization’s internal priorities come to take precedence over, even to the exclusion of, those priorities it was created to pursue.

The trees of process, institutional identity and self-interest, i.e., intramural concerns affected by our sin nature, come to obscure the organization’s original purpose forest.

Examples

Soviet Union

I read how Stalin once went on a rant about “careerists” infiltrating the Soviet system ( which suggests an explanation for his subsequent purges).

Stalin, after all, had completed all of his courses while at seminary. What the Bible teaches about human nature would have given Stalin his understanding of the human heart.

If Stalin’s purges had been effective in limiting the institutionalization of the Soviet state and party, the lack of them after his death in March 1953 resulted at least partially in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

The gods of Marxism will only grant success to their worshipers in return for regular sacrifices of human blood.

I might note that a free market liberal society accommodates human weakness better than a Marxist society does. Marxism seems to be premised on the idea that men can be godlike. That’s where it fails.

FBI

We learned that the FBI engineered the Witmer kidnapping “conspiracy”. If I recall correctly, all but two involved were FBI “assets”.

Why would the FBI go around creating criminal conspiracies? My answer is power and money.

I have heard from a whistle blower that FBI offices are under pressure to come up with “threats” that justify funding from Congress (In competition with other agencies of course).

It stands to reason that if there is not enough going on, an office can fabricate “threats” using its contacts in the criminal/”extremist” underworld. It’s a small step from running informants to setting up stings to getting informants to do favors in return for favors to fabricating criminal conspiracies justifying additional resources and money.

J6 at the Capitol was a “threat” farming bonanza.

Because this was “good” for the FBI as an institution, it was good, period.

NATO

NATO was formed because Joe Stalin had tried to blockade West Berlin in 1948.

NATO ceased to have a purpose in 1991 since Joe Stalin wasn’t going to blockade West Berlin by then.

Those whose employment depended on the West’s NATO associated military industrial complex would lose their livelihoods unless a new purpose replaced that of deterring Soviet aggression. Russia filled the bill perfectly.

We see here that institutionalization guarantees that, once created, an organization’s top priority is self-perpetuation. Morality becomes defined according to the needs of the institution.

“The Science”

Mattias Desmet draws a distinction between a true science and “mechanistic science”.

My take:

True science seems to be based on human abilities which transcend cognition. It’s something of a divine inspiration which implies a dependence on God.

Mechanistic science proceeds from the proposition that man can master the universe through the use of his rational faculties. This can be construed as denying a dependence on God.

Mattias Desmet illustrates the difference by quoting a famous samurai swordsman to the effect that if you have to think about your swordplay, you will lose. A master swordsman operates on intuitive ability, on instinct (i.e., higher faculties). The idea I have is that the true scientist is similarly inspired not being limited by rational calculation and the mechanistic science person proceeds methodically by calculation.

Science, being the work of inspired individual effort, does not lend itself to “consensus” (This accords with my belief that all true scientific advancement proceeds from works of God and therefore transcend human rational calculation).

Consensus or “the science” proceeds from an institutionalization of mechanistic science. Mechanistic science rests on a idolatrous faith in man’s abilities being godlike – self worship.

Side Aspect: Official Confusing Of An Institution With the Purpose For Which It Was Formed

One frequently hears officials in government argue the necessity of taking care of the needy or of the homeless. And we hear that such and such hurts “education”, hurts the poor or hurts “the homeless”.

This is a form of ventriloquism wherein the speaker is referring to something factually in a way that intentionally uses suggestion to plant an entirely different concept in the minds of the hearers.

When they say “education”, they can plausibly claim they are referring to an institution which in fact accumulates wealth and power for the ostensible purpose of providing a valuable service. The concept planted in our minds by suggestion is that of a process of imparting necessary skills to the young – two different things.

It’s bait and switch.

The bait is society’s need for its young to be prepared for a life of work and family.

The switch harnesses that need to the satisfaction of an institution’s empowering and perpetuating itself.

Examples

“The Homeless”

In a talk show discussion on the subject of homelessness in California, it was mentioned how homeless NGOs are a big, well-funded industry. There is a constellation of big government party allied NGOs receiving government grants.

In this case, “the homeless” refers to those big government party pet NGOs and not the ostensible ultimate beneficiaries of the government grants to those NGOs.

Of course, this begs the question as to whether a homelessness that is so remunerative to the politically connected will ever be cured.

I hear California has something like a half of the nation’s homeless.

“National Security”

I would refer you to President Dwight David Eisenhower’s January, 1961 farewell speech in which he warned us against the dangers inherent in the military industrial (and academic) complex.

“The Poor”

This is notorious for being associated with the destruction of the Black family to the aggrandizement of a whole government-NGO apparatus/poverty industry. The historical evidence seems to support the conclusion that when an institution is amply endowed for the purpose of curing a problem, this endowment guarantees that the problem will get worse. The self interested don’t want to work themselves out of a job.

Again, it’s the institution.

We need to better manage our system’s incentive structures through intelligent design of government based on human nature reality.

Institutionalization, generally

One notices how institutions can do things that create or contribute to problems that in turn can be used by them to serve their purposes.

It’s like a fireman who starts fires to make himself indispensable when putting them out.

Good examples are gun confiscation politics and Obamacare.

Gun control: Liberals push gun control. Liberal prosecutors and liberal judges tend to ignore existing penalties for gun crime and are lenient with those who commit those crimes. The result is more gun crime.

More gun crime generates headlines. Headlines help anti-gun elements to coerce the public into accepting more restrictions on their gun rights.

See how it works?

Obamacare: Barack Obama was quoted as saying Obamacare was conceived as a stepping stone to single payer, i.e., a government takeover of private health insurance.

How do you use Obamacare to do that? You craft Obamacare to deliver substandard care at exorbitant rates. How does Obamacare do that? Obamacare imposes taxes and regulations that degrade care availability, degrade care quality, and drive up costs. What happens then? The public becomes dissatisfied with insurance companies while not being aware that Obamacare is behind the failures. They demand that government “do something”. What government does is the fulfillment of the purpose of Obamacare.

See how it works?

Note: Jonathan Gruber notoriously called the American voter stupid. The context was the process of crafting Obamacare. Gruber noted that John Kerry responded to Obamacare consultants’ concerns that Obamacare’s taxes would turn voters against Obamacare. Kerry referred them to the example of corporate taxes which were only acceptable to the public because the public didn’t figure out that those corporate taxes wound up being passed along to them.

Consequently, Kerry recommended that Obamacare would be accepted by the voters if Obamacare taxed the health insurance companies directly instead of adding taxes to the healthcare premiums where people could see them. Presumably, that way the public would blame the insurance companies and demand that the government do the something that Obama and company had intended they do all along.

Those who craft policy need better incentive structure guard rails.

Existing Remedy Principles

We, as a civilization, have turned away from God and therefore from the wisdom of His Word. We neglect to our disadvantage that we are inherently weak and limited beings who can’t safely be trusted with power – none of us.

The incentive structures in our organizations must be constituted so as to accommodate that fallen nature that the Bible tells us that we have.

We need to design government systems around our fallen natures.

The Founders’ principles for accommodating human weakness:

That the people are religious and moral is a fundamental necessity.

Getting things done in government can’t be done during the spirit of the moment.

Craft structures and processes to filter out passions leaving reason to guide decision making.

And the power of people in government must have definite limitations.

One Existing Remedy Method

The Convention of States Project (@COSProject) presents us with a starting point from which we might improve the incentive structures inherent in our government.

Amendments now being considered will:

• Limit Supreme Court Justices to nine members.

• Prevent the addition of states without the affirmative

consent of three quarters of the existing states.

• Require members of Congress to live under the same laws

they pass for the rest of us.

• Impose term limits on members of Congress.

• Require a balanced federal budget.

• Impose limits on federal spending and/or taxation.

• Get the federal government out of our healthcare system.

• Get the federal government out of our education system.

• Stop unelected federal bureaucrats from imposing regulations.

• Set term limits for Supreme Court Justices.

• Set term limits for federal bureaucrats, ending the

dominance of the “swamp.”

• Remove the authority of the federal government over

state energy policy.

• Force the federal government to honor its commitment

to return federal lands to the states.

I submit that if we can’t even safely amend the Constitution using the Article Five process which is driven by state legislatures, then we cannot manage our government and we therefore are going to lose our freedom anyway.

Conclusion

Our system confers total sovereignty on the whole people.

That means that only we, the people, are responsible for every big thing that goes wrong with our country.

It means we are responsible for providing that our government works as intended by the Founders.

The fate of our country is in our hands alone.

Nobody is coming to save us.

No one man can save us.

We have to fix our government ourselves or it won’t get done.

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