Economies of Scale in Government

Government "Services" are generally run by bureaucracies staffed with risk-adverse people with high degrees of protection for their jobs. Such Bureaucrats are only very rarely held accountable for the "efficiency" of their operations, and dismissing incompetent of poor performing staff is nearly impossible, given the protections of our Civil Service laws and the forced unionization of most Federal agency staffs.

Increasing the size of the Agencies budget and the scope of its regulatory authority are usually the main reoccupations of the leaders and senior staff of these agencies. As a related matter a couple of decades ago our Congress started writing legislation with often only vaguely specified rules, standards or procedures, delegating "rule making" to these agencies to fill out the details as they authorize. A result is that Numerous Federal Agencies now have their own "Administrative courts" for the enforcement of the myriad "rules" they create; together with police and other enforcement staff to handle the fines and penalties they increasingly levy in what has become a new, highly undemocratic system of Administrative law enacted by bureaucrats, unaccountable to the people they serve.

In such a system there is no pursuit of either efficiency or economy in any form or by any means.

Big Cities tend to have inflated administrative staff and are usually more accountable and responsive to vested interests than the people they ostensibly serve. Compared to smaller communities, where the influence of democratic process is greater they are far more bureaucratic and less democratic. As a result the rules and methods of bureaucracy apply : Bigger budgets, more spending and longer tenure in power are the goals of the leadership, and not the interests of the people they ostensibly serve.


There is no such thing as economy of scale in government services: the opposite is the rule.

georgeob1-

Thank you.