I followed a link from Tyler Cowen to the book, “Inside Job: How Government Insiders Subvert the Public Interest,” by Mark Zupan (but not this Mark Zupan, I think). The link points to the book’s Amazon page, and here’s the very first blurb:
‘In the tradition of Parkinson’s Law, this fascinating and novel contribution to political theory examines in horrifying but eloquent detail just how vulnerable government is, not just to demand-side capture by special interests, but to supply-side take-over by insiders operating for their own benefit and at the expense of the public good.’ Vicount Matthew Ridley, Journalist, Member of the House of Lords and author of The Evolution of Everything
A viscount is a kind of lord, right? Ummm, I better check. From Wikipedia:
A viscount is the fourth rank in the British peerage system, standing below an earl and above a baron.
And here’s the full chart:
Who better than an actual Lord to lecture us on the “horrifying” aspects of “insiders operating for their own benefit and at the expense of the public good”?
I guess no emperors, kings, or dukes were available, so the publisher had to go with a mere 6th-generation aristocrat and member of the House of Lords to endorse the case that “government insiders have the motive, means, and opportunity to co-opt political power for their benefit and at the expense of national well-being.”
P.S. Just to clarify: it’s perfectly reasonable for a rich, powerful hereditary lord to decry the political power of insiders operating for their own benefit. But it seems a bit ridiculous for him to not even seem to recognize that he himself is a stunning example of the problem he’s talking about.
Well, that sounds like the homeless advocacy NGO lobby here in Seattle. They’ve wormed their way into becoming “partners” with city. They’re dependent on homelessness for their survival. Not surprisingly, the problem is getting worse, not better. But thankfully a new city income tax has been proposed to give them the funds they need to tackle this problem. Snort. The more government you have, the more money will be spent on things not in the public interest. But wait! There’s more! The city recently passed by initiative a new tax to fund a new “parks district”. But the new chief of the new parks district has discovered parks have hard problems. So he’s spending this year studying whether or not to give some parks to private orgs to operate.
Government wastes money. It all starts out good. But once the public isn’t watching every move, the rot sets in and grows like cancer.
[ ” ‘In the tradition of Parkinson’s Law, this fascinating and novel contribution to political theory examines … just how vulnerable government is…but to … take-over by insiders operating for their own benefit and at the expense of the public good. ” ]
Hardly a new idea in political theory — German sociologist Robert Michels’ “Iron law of Oligarchy” identified this problem in year 1911.
It states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies… run by key insiders for their own self-interest.
Any large organization, Michels pointed out, is faced with problems of coordination that can be solved only by creating a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy, by design, is hierarchically organized to achieve efficiency—many decisions have to be made daily that cannot efficiently be made by large numbers of people. The effective functioning of an organization therefore requires the concentration of much power in the hands of a few. Those few, in turn—the oligarchy—will use all means necessary to preserve and further increase their power (Power Corrupts).
Frequent replacement of an organization’s insider power-personnel is the only possible defense against the “Iron Law of Oligarchy”. Very large/complex, nominally democratic organizations (like the US Federal Government) are especially prone to oligarchy… a formal royal/aristocratic class is not required.
Brings to mind the old saying, “You can conquer China on horseback, but you can’t rule China on horseback.”
Nice comment, Simon.
Perhaps this is why large corporations are continually reorganizing. Some departments are likely to stay the same — legal, for example. But others shift around. Marketing research might be a separate department, might report to marketing, might be split into consumer research and sales research. You consolidate to get economies of scale and provide cross-fertilization, then you split it up among divisions to get closer to your customers. Yin and yang.
Each reorganization shakes things up, often by shaking headcount out. In the ordinary course of events, getting rid of an underperforming employee means going through HR paperwork steps, a PIP (a performance improvement program lasting several months), and getting a bunch of approvals. In a reorg, people just disappear without any process at all. Cruel but functional?
Your inferiority complex is showing. Ridley is a substantial scholar, refer to Wikipedia. He is an elected member of the House of Lords, most hereditary Lords are not. The fact that he was born into an aristocratic family, in a country which still recognizes titles, should not inhibit his right to comment any more than if he had been born coloured or gay.
Norman:
Wow—I didn’t know anyone said “coloured” any more! Learn something new every day.
In all seriousness, I don’t know what you’re talking about regarding inferiority complex. I understand that England, like many European countries, has hereditary titles, lords, knights, etc. That’s just how they roll. And Lord Ridley should feel free to comment on whatever he wants. But, if he’s going to talk about the horrifying aspects of insiders operating for their own benefit, then it seems a bit ridiculous for him to not even seem to recognize that he himself is a stunning example of the problem he’s talking about.
That seems a big assumption that he doesn’t realize it that he’s a part of the problem. How are you so sure?
And he could have mentioned it in his review, for all we know, but Amazon didn’t excerpt that part for their website.
There aren’t any elected members of the House of Lords.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/about-lords/lords-appointment/
Matt Ridley’s most notable achievement was presiding over the collapse of Northern Rock bank a few years ago.
I imagine Norman Carton is referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_hereditary_peers_under_the_House_of_Lords_Act_1999
Ah, OK, elected by the other members (or a subset of them). Not by the electorate.
Your argument appears quite valid, but I need to check where Harvard PhDs rank on the chart before I accept them.
Oncodoc:
I’m a Harvard Ph.D., and if I happen to write that Harvard Ph.D.’s have too much power, I’ll certainly explain that I’m writing from that perspective!
A bigger problem is the fact that the publisher couldn’t spell “viscount.”
That’s a mitake anyone could make.
“Vicount” is an archaic form of viscount (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vicount), so maybe the publisher is just living in the past.
Sex sells, and pointless titles do the same. Not that there are titles and pointless titles, at the end of the day, all titles are pointless. If a book gets reviewed by Dr. X, rather than Mr/Ms/whatever X, the book will sell more copies. Now if the reviewer is a lord too, that will probably sell some extra copies on top. Sad world.
As I take it, while viscount is an inherited title, it is not itself an inheritable one, so maybe he is in a good position to know.
Though considering themselves the ultimate owner(s), they would consider theirs the general interest, thus, l’etat c’est moi.
> But it seems a bit ridiculous for him to not even seem to recognize that he himself is a stunning example of the problem he’s talking about.
Is this comment based just on the blurb? Would a member of the House of the Commons, or the US Congress, be a much less stunning example of the problem?
Carlos:
The topic is “insiders operating for their own benefit and at the expense of the public good.” A congressmember is an insider too, but a lord is the ultimate insider, as he was born on the inside.
But are these ultimate insiders more likely to operate for their own benefit that the insiders who worked their way into the system? I really don’t know. Anyway, fifty words may be too small a sample to say how ridiculous it is that he doesn’t seem to recognize something.
Rich, powerful lords might be among the ultimate insiders — but I doubt that all lords are rich and powerful these days. And one can argue that non-lords such as the Rockefellers, the Kennedies and the younger Bushes were “born on the inside” just as much as a British viscount (or even more so, especially if compared to viscounts who are not rich or powerful.)
Carlos, Martha:
See this from Wikipedia:
Sounds like the ultimate insider to me. The guy’s life is as full of connections as a character from a Jonathan Coe novel. If he wants to decry that insiders are manipulating the system for their own benefit, fine. But he’s a prime example so at the very least I think it would make sense for him to recognize this.
Andrew:
I wasn’t objecting to your calling Ridley an insider (or even an ultimate insider — I’d looked up the Wikipedia article already), but was responding to your statement, “A congress member is an insider too, but a lord is the ultimate insider, as he was born on the inside,” which is more general that just saying that Ridley is an ultimate insider.
I was reading a book about Victorian historian and in it, Prime Minister Gladstone ennobled his ally Matthew Ridley, the first Viscount.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/04/you-cant-get-much-richer-and-whiter.html
Inherit banks.
Run bank into the ground.
Persuade UK government to bail out bank.
Write a lot about personal responsibility, need for less government meddling in business.
“But it seems a bit ridiculous for him to not even seem to recognize that he himself is a stunning example of the problem he’s talking about.”
You’re upset that a three-line blurb recommending a book doesn’t contain a full description of the blurb-writer’s background and biases?
Raghu:
I never said I was upset. I just thought it was a bit ridiculous. You can call me on it next time I write a three-line blurb decrying the outsized influence of Ivy-league-educated statistics professors.
I agree the blurb is amusing, and worth pointing out!
I just came here to give props for the inside-baseball title.
perhaps, but maybe Andrew really meant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats_(film)
Whether he meant the joke or the movie about the joke, its still inside baseball, as the joke itself is. Then the cat picture tie in, its like the old days of the original MST3K.
I was expecting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocats
Follow the cat link
I hadn’t. But now wish I had. (there’s always one person who misses the joke…)
hereditary peerages are less an example of insiders using power for their own benefit that of their using it benefit a certain line among their possible lines of descendants
When I grew up, the land lease for our house was a 999-year leasehold with the landlord the Premier Baroness of the United Kingdom. I think this means she had the right to process ahead of all of the other barons and baronesses on certain state occasions. To all intents and purposes, she was a farmer’s wife, and her husband a retired naval officer and (according to my father) a not especially successful farmer. My father could remember when some other aristocrat had one of the first motor cars, and annoyed him by expecting other people to walk to the side of the road to let their car pass – but he was born in 1922. The great houses of most of the aristocracy are now run by the National Trust, a charity, and opened for visitors as museums with well kept gardens, which I have enjoyed walking round on many occasions. The House of Lords is packed with failed politicians put out to grass. While there are still some hereditary members, their power was broken with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Act_1911. Every now and again some party tries to clean this mess up and fails – not because of the remaining hereditary members, but because conflicting attempts by the different parties to gain political advantage from the reform end in gridlock.
To the extent that Matthew Ridley has inherited power, this has been by inheriting the money to give him a very good education and the brains to make use of it, not by inheriting a title which for all practical purposes will be of little more use on its own than to impress Americans blinded by history and pageantry.
That and an automatic bank executive position with a get out of trouble free card and a golden parachute…
Agmcdowell:
I am stunned the extent to which people want to minimize the privileges of an immensely rich hereditary lord who inherited the chairmanship of a bank!
The privileges adhere to the immense riches and nepotism; the hereditary lordship is vestigial.
+1
Vestigial perhaps, but often associated with considerable vestigial wealth. Look up Duke of Westminster, or Duke of Bedford: families which have enjoyed wealth, power & titles since the time of Henry VIII.
Sure, there are some families of British “Lords” who have hereditary wealth and power — but a) not all “Lords” have such, and b) there are families in the U.S. which have had hereditary wealth and power — e.g., the Rockefellers.
From my first hand experience the hereditary titles mostly only confer social privileged.
For instance, my high school friend whose mother was a baroness, worked as a cleaning lady but always got the best seat in any social event from her community.
Seemed similar in England.
Perhaps not so far fetched – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5ba1OKY7Xc
+1 (especially the Monte Python clip)
If you are disagreeing with the arguments presented in the book or with arguments presented in support of the book’s thesis by Ridley then his peerage is irrelevant (textbook genetic fallacy). If you are criticizing Ridley’s character, for example, calling him a hypocrite then you haven’t shown that he is guilty of hypocrisy. Insinuation is not methodologically sound.
I’m not sure what you were trying to achieve with this post.
Samedi:
No, I’m not disagreeing or agreeing with any arguments. I just thought it was funny that such an insider was writing about the “horrifying” aspects of “insiders operating for their own benefit and at the expense of the public good.”
To say that someone said something ridiculous is not a criticism of his “character.” Jeez! We all say silly things from time to time. And it’s good that people are out there to point out the silliness.
The Blagdon Estate’s website says:
The Families of Ridley and White
Blagdon has been home to the same family since 1700. The first three generations of owners were all named Matthew White. The next nine generations of owners have all been named Matthew White Ridley. For more than 300 years Blagdon has been owned by somebody called Matthew.