Why does he assume that if bureaucracies are staffed with educated professionals and given autonomy that they'll just magically do their job? It's as if he never considers that bureaucrats are not fucking robots and are capable of immoral behavior. Obviously, he talks about corruption in the book, but it's not a part of his actual model of bureaucratic autonomy and capacity. It's all just
>muh clientelism.
Did I miss something?
Rule of law and accountability mechanisms exist to reign in corruption. He talks about those at length.
He misses how the elite's demand cheap labor has caused all liberal democracies to import millions of third worlders.
This in turn threatens to undermined Western culture, and will result in the collapse of the West and liberal democracy.
He's stuck in the 1990's, his big moment of success.
Fukuyama has been discredited so many fucking times it's not even funny, he's really not worth reading. He's far too idealistic.
The End of History pissed me off so much when I read it, what a fucking idiot. How dare he appropriate that title from Hegel.
>>7710319
It was really just The End of History. He admitted he was wrong and his other work is respected.
>>7710319
All political science has massive holes and gets discredited.
At least all the ambitious stuff. You pick what works and leave off the rest.
>>7710335
Political science is a fucking bullshit field of study that rests in this weird grey area between economics, sociology, philosophy, and law. Like I don't even know why this field exists.
The worst part is I've actually got a degree in the field.
>>7710354
Damn son.
>Why does he assume that if bureaucracies are staffed with educated professionals and given autonomy that they'll just magically do their job?
Such an idea would make Sowell die from laughter.
>>7710379
When I was reading some of this stuff all I could think of was Hayek and Sowell giving disapproving looks and all-knowing smug faces.
It also annoyed me how he ignores the fact that government autonomy creates uncertainty among the population thus discouraging risk/innovation.
>>7710354
Very little political science is Huntington or Fukuyama. That's just what we give undergrads.
It's mostly formal models or massive regressions with 100 billion extra controls to appease editors.
You focus on little bits of theory at a time, which makes it a lot easier to ground your arguments.
>>7710291
Okay, now that I'm done hating on this fag, the key issue here is that there is a dichotomy between a highly politicized governing body, and a technocratic one.
Typically, politicians are the most corrupt, venal idiots in our society. There are effectively no requirements to be a politician, though most have degrees, they are elected on the whims of the people. The people are good at responding to their own needs, if they're doing shit they vote for someone new (or revolt if they can't vote), if they're doing good they pick the same guy. This tendency is first articulated in Confucius, via the Mandate of Heaven.
So during good times, there is a tendency to fall into decadence and corruption. Politicians, typically being unscrupulous, can afford to make sweetheart deals in good time. Nobody gives a shit if they skim a little off the top when the milk jug is overflowing anyways. But bad times will come, possibly because in their corruption, they start skimming too much. Making too many sweetheart deals, too many political appointments of incompetent idiots, too many regulations intended to hurt their enemies and benefit their friends. See Venezuela to see what a purely political bureaucracy looks like. They have a finance minister who literally believes inflation is a capitalist myth.
Technocracy, by comparison, means letting agencies do mostly whatever they want. This has its own set of problems, agencies tend to make work to justify their cries for bigger budgets and dodge cuts. The bigger you are, the harder it is to cut your budget. Technocrats, unlike politicians, are typically do-gooders with MPAs. They're usually much more ethical people than politicians, but they tend towards a certain kind of tunnel vision, narrow focus on their particular specialty, they understand their field as uniquely and critically important and begin to have Atlas delusions, that any scaleback in their operations will have world shattering effects on the people. Look at the USA for an example of a society with a relatively independent bureaucracy. Look at how the EPA regulates and how the parks service shuts down access to the Washington monument first whenever its budgets are cut, until its budget is restored or increased.
Both ends of the spectrum have huge disadvantages, but generally speaking the former is worse than the latter. Fukuyama is again, an idealist by nature and tends to downplay the perils of technocracy.
>>7710414
Yeah, I've done research work too, but polsci is a very cobbled together kind of field. I guess direct study of elections or international relations doesn't fit well anywhere else, but the majority of the work being done is, as you said, those p-value hacking regressions using the kitchen sink control approach.
>>7710388
Doesnt he he deal with that at the end of the book when he starts talking about how most US govt employees work to keep their jobs, not DO their jobs?
>>7710416
Thanks for the post.
>>7710379
Sowell is a complete hack though
>>7710498
>one of the most, if not the most gloriously erudite and logical intellectual of contemporaneity
>a hack
>>7710526
>praise smith
>implying that neo-libs don't just quote random quips of the dead english alienation from muffin work man
>Also implying that economics hasn't become a refined field that builds complex mathematic theories off of Neo-keynesianism
>mfw
>>7710416
Ain't always that simple. Read about the Singapore system and their meritocratic bureaucracy, which subverts a lot of stuff that Fukuyama wrote.
https://books.google.fi/books/about/Public_Administration_Singapore_style.html?id=B5MZFR6qp8sC&redir_esc=y
https://books.google.fi/books?id=UzdnkQEACAAJ&dq=the+singapore+story&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZxqz6s4DLAhWI_SwKHVDoA9AQ6AEIITAB
The system is characterized by intense meritocracy and competition because they've put effort in adapting systems from the private sector to encourage performance, and they put in effort to hire the highest performers from schools and universities with attractive wages and promotion schemes. Plus, corruption is basically nonexistent. It's not a perfect system but their take on public administration is very refreshing.
>>7710657
Singapore's a city-state, they can run leaner than elsewhere.
>>7710787
So how do we make more places like Singapore?
>>7710808
decentralize
fuck huge nations
make small areas of self-government, however the government must be strong so the city-state can react quickly and collectively to events
plato approved
>>7710414
>It's mostly formal models or massive regressions with 100 billion extra controls to appease editors.
It depends a lot on what school you got to. A lot of schools including the Ivy Leagues focus a lot on the theoretical and philosophy aspects, while other schools, like mine, focused on making sound models and experiments.
>>7710869
I'd like to live in this world.
>>7710657
singapore doesn't have to worry about corruption because they can sentence criminals to be beaten and executed...when ur a corrupt official in the usa you get a small fine and maybe a 6 month stay in a federal "prison" camp that's nicer than most housing projects...in singapore you will get beaten by a cane and then thrown in a shitty cell...or executed...also singapore's founding president didn't fuck around with political correctness...he said america was stupid for letting in "fruit picker" immigrants instead of highly skilled, he solved the fruit picker mass immigration problem by having no minimum wage...sure, u can come to singapore but u ain't gonna get anymore money than whatever shithole u came from
>>7710808
Neo-Feudalism. I think there was some experiment being done with it in one of the central American countries, where legislation regarding free cities was introduced.
It should be noted that the 'polis' period of Greece is when we got 90% of the major developments of Greek civilization, the 'polis' period of Italy is when the Renaissance happened.
Free cities would face some of the same corruption problems endemic to the communities around them, not everywhere would find a Lee Kuan Yew. But the city-state does have a huge advantage in governmental efficiency, you don't need to bother with any layers of government, everything can be centralized, when you have so few bureaucrats, you can get good ones and pay a lot of attention to what they're doing.
>>7712102
>Free cities would face some of the same corruption problems endemic to the communities around them, not everywhere would find a Lee Kuan Yew. But the city-state does have a huge advantage in governmental efficiency, you don't need to bother with any layers of government, everything can be centralized, when you have so few bureaucrats, you can get good ones and pay a lot of attention to what they're doing.
the problem is how is every city state going to pay for defense? it would be hugely wasteful for every city states to halve a bunch of b-52s and aircraft carriers and nukes, so then if you have some kind of federated army among local states you need a federated bureaucracy and if u have a federated bureaucracy u have a federal government and u back down the road to tyranny the united states find itself on as we speak
