I don’t know, Marty. I haven’t read the whole book, just the excerpts at the link. (As well as numerous articles by the author in libertarian publications over the years, from which I assume he is well acquainted with the phenomena of government corruption and the revolving door.) It is on my reading list now though.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
···
On Jul 7, 2023, at 9:32 AM, iMRMosLV! via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org wrote:
FRNP https://forum.lpsf.org/u/frnp
July 7
Does Sandefur omit that well heeled unelected corporate staff or ceos themselves often pack or lead these agencies in order to create monopolies for their own corporate interests & then use the revolving door of #USgovt to enrich themselves to the tune of Billions of Taxpayers’ Earnings & Savings?The “FREE MARKET” is made up of The Entire Citizenry individually making choices & VOTING with each purchase on which products & services & industries are useful & worthwhile — without any #USgovt meddling tipping the scales.
Starchild:
SandefurVisit Topic https://forum.lpsf.org/t/the-permission-society/21838/2 or reply to this email to respond.
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Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
July 7
Beyond the most odious and morally repellent things that governments do – genocide, democide, torture, war, police murder, prison slavery, systemic corruption, etc. – there is a whole level of routine outrages that normally fly under the radar or get taken for granted. The book “The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do About It The Permission Society - Encounter Books http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-permission-society-how-the-ruling-class-turns-our-freedoms-into-privileges-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/”, by Timothy Sandefur, does a good job shining a light on some of this layer and how it operates.An excerpt:
"A politician runs for office on a platform promising, say, to stop pollution. Once in office, he writes a bill that forbids anyone from emitting pollutants without a permit—and also establishes a new bureaucratic agency charged with determining what qualifies as a “pollutant” and how one goes about getting a permit.
Once the bill is passed, the politician can tell his constituents that he has taken bold action to solve the problem and move on to the next issue. While voters are applauding his achievement, the new agency begins writing regulations, often with little public attention. These regulations are intricately complex, are backed up by severe penalties, and sometimes have nasty unintended consequences.
The unelected officials employed by the agency have every incentive to interpret their mandate as broadly as possible because, after all, they act ‘in the public interest.’ Within a few years, the agency has implemented thousands of petty and complicated rules, which are in effect a code of laws that no elected official ever approved and which neither they nor the voters can realistically control.
If the agency ever takes a step that causes a controversy in the media—for instance, declaring a July 4 fireworks display to be illegal “pollution”—the politician who wrote the law can shake his head, claim that was not his intention, and chide bureaucrats for going too far—again winning the applause of voters. But since nothing short of a new law is likely to rein the bureaucracy in, he can probably do nothing meaningful about it, even if he wants to."
I suspect this is erroneous only in suggesting that politicians do much of the actual law-writing themselves.
More insights at The out-of-control bureaucratic branch of government | WORLD https://wng.org/roundups/the-out-of-control-bureaucratic-branch-of-government-1617230148
Love & Liberty,((( starchild )))
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