Tim Worstall

The Mahdi on Farm Payments

Yes, it’s the Mad Mahdi Bunting on the farm payments fiasco. It’s actually a good piece of reportage (yes, I know, shock, horror!) on the complete mess the politicians have made of it.

But there’s still something of a disconnect in her thinking: what do you want to bet that next time out she’ll still be calling for the politicians to do something about whatever bee gets under her bonnet?

She, correctly, notes that politicians are incompetent. Yet will not, I guarantee, absorb the lesson that their incompetence means that we don’t actually want them to do anything.

In

9 responses

  1. james c Avatar
    james c

    The same old story-hire some management consultants and watch them screw it up.
    James

    Reply
  2. FishAreFun Avatar
    FishAreFun

    It’s too lazy to say ‘politicians are incompetent.’
    If your contention is that democracy is not the most efficient management system imaginable, that may be true. It has its compensations, though – and personally I am convinced by Karl Popper’s analysis that democracy is in fact more efficient than the once-praised ‘benign dictatorship’. Largely due to the competition of ideas, which doesn’t happen in a dictatorial system.
    As James C notes above, politicians in fact delegate or contract-out to the private sector (or cronies, if you prefer) the management of most services which are nominally under democratic control. The results are less than impressive.
    Tim adds: No, my logic runs a little differently. That government as a way of getting things done is itself inherently inefficient. There are some things it must do and which only it can do (national defense, legal system, property rights etc) so of course, however inefficient, it has to do those. But after that short list then it should do nothing, being so inherently inefficient.
    That’s government, not democracy or any other form of it.

    Reply
  3. ernest young Avatar
    ernest young

    Which leads indirectly to the old saying among government contractors that for government work, ‘Any old stuff is good enough’- Old, but oh so true.

    Reply
  4. ajay Avatar
    ajay

    That government as a way of getting things done is itself inherently inefficient. There are some things it must do and which only it can do (national defense, legal system, property rights etc) so of course, however inefficient, it has to do those. But after that short list then it should do nothing, being so inherently inefficient.
    This makes no sense at all. Government doesn’t have to provide national defence: it could be provided by private military companies on a regional subscription basis. There are plenty of historical examples of privatised legal systems. And so on.
    The point is that governments are more efficient at providing national defence than private contractors, not that it is impossible for private contractors to do so.
    This is entirely unsurprising, of course. Only the lunatic fringe would claim that the private sector would provide a better navy, or (at the other end of the scale) that we would be better off if every corner shop was nationalised. The interesting stuff happens in the middle, where we start discussing matters like “which side of the public-private line should health care be on?” In other words, what should or should not be on the short list of things that you mention. So far, so banal.
    But, unfortunately, by making sweeping statements like “government is inherently inefficient”, the lunatic fringe is exactly where you put yourself.
    It’s so broad as to be meaningless. Inefficient in what terms? Inefficient compared to what? Inefficient in what areas?
    Try harder.

    Reply
  5. Bishop Hill Avatar
    Bishop Hill

    The point is that governments are more efficient at providing national defence than private contractors, not that it is impossible for private contractors to do so.
    This is an extraordinary suggestion. The Navy has (IIRC) forty-one admirals and forty capital ships. There are (again IIRC) more bureaucrats in the MoD than soldiers in the army.
    The state does nothing efficiently. Nothing.
    Ajay, please tell us the name of a government department which provides a responsive, efficient public service. Any department will do. If you can’t then Tim is more likely to be making a statement of fact than a sweeping generalisation.

    Reply
  6. john b Avatar
    john b

    Bish – can you provide the name of a bank, insurer, mobile phone provider or utility that provides a responsive, efficient service? If so, I’d love to switch to them.
    If not, then (given that these are the companies whose interactions with the public are closest in nature to our typical interaction with government) I’d agree with your scepticism about the public sector, but question your faith in the private sector to do any better.

    Reply
  7. ajay Avatar
    ajay

    Bishop Hill: the Navy has, depending on your definition, either zero, three, four, or seven capital ships, not forty. Silly man. (Capital ships, the core of the fleet, was originally defined as another term for battleships, of which we have none: since the War, various people have argued that either nuclear missile submarines or aircraft carriers should take their place, of which the Navy has three and four respectively. Offhand, the Navy has probably never had forty capital ships since the term was invented.)
    My point is: who is to say whether having 41 admirals is efficient or inefficient? How do you know that an army with a tenth the number of civilians behind it would be a better army? A Burger King restaurant might have as many people in the back as at the counter. Does that make it inefficient?
    Efficient is a relative term – unless you mean 100% efficient, which obviously nothing is. Is Oxfam efficient? Maybe it’s more efficient than Save the Children, but does that make it ‘efficient’?
    Is the Royal Navy more ‘efficient’ than the US Navy? How on earth could you measure such a thing?

    Reply
  8. Bishop Hill Avatar
    Bishop Hill

    John
    My insurance is with Norwich Union. Renewal was actually fantastic this year. My phone call was answered almost immediately. The service was brisk efficient and friendly and they matched a competitor’s quote while I waited. All done in ten minutes. My bank is pretty good too, but I won’t bore you with the details. Don’t have a mobile.
    There are thousands of really good businesses. There are no good government services. Not one. Your point about finding a similar business is to miss the point.
    Stand back and look at what you are saying to me. You can’t find any effective government departments, but you suggest that if I can’t find the name of a decent bank, then somehow my point is invalidated? The question is who should provide services: the state which provides nothing well, or the private sector which provides lots of things well. How can there be any argument?

    Reply
  9. Bishop Hill Avatar
    Bishop Hill

    Ajay
    I bow to your superior knowledge of the numbers of capital ships. As my statement was from memory (and was clearly marked as such) that hardly makes it a “silly” statement. The numbers you give seem to reinforce the point I was making however.
    You have moved from denying that the state is inherently inefficient to arguing that we can’t know how efficient or otherwise it is. This is, of course, another thing altogether.
    It seems to me that your suggestion that efficiency is a relative term is incorrect. A business can measure efficiency in absolute terms – a retailer might for example measure sales or gross profit per square foot. If Burger King had too many staff in its back office it should quickly pick this up from its cost controls. If it failed to do so, it would quickly find itself unable to compete with competitors who were more efficient.
    Obviously the state will find this more difficult because it is more difficult for them to measure efficiency, as you so rightly pointed out. In many government departments it is in fact possible to construct reasonable measures of efficiency but obviously this can’t apply to the military. The fact that there is no risk of going out of business means that there is rarely any need to take steps to act on these measures anyway. So I agree with you that efficiency is very difficult to measure for the state. Which is of course why they are inherently inefficient. If you can’t measure efficiency how can you take steps to improve? If you’re not under threat from a competitor who cares anyway?
    Crying “We can never know” about the efficiency of state services is an argument for taking those services out of state control except for those rare cases, like the military, where the necessity of a state monopoly means that the inherent inefficiency is just something we have to put up with.

    Reply

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