Damus
Telluride profile picture
Telluride
@telluride


“Power selects for a specific personality type”

F.A. Hayek spells this out in Planned Chaos simply and directly in this ~99 page book.

In a centrally planned system, the people who rise are not the most competent or the most honest.
—They are the most willing to exercise force against strangers, the most comfortable with contradiction, and the most skilled at coalition-building through favors rather than merit. Government filters for the bad ones from the start.

The mechanism is straightforward. Political power means controlling resources you did not earn. Capturing that control requires outcompeting rivals who have no ethical constraints. A principled candidate refuses to promise contradictory things to different voter blocks . An unprincipled one does it without blinking. The unprincipled one wins. Repeat this selection pressure across hundreds of electoral cycles and you get the U.S. Congress: a body where the average member has held office for over a decade, raised millions from interested parties, and delivered almost nothing measurable to the people who voted for them.

Bureaucracy compounds the problem. Once entrenched, state agencies attract people who want authority without accountability. You cannot fire most of them. The FDA, the TSA, the Federal Reserve all function this way, staffed by individuals whose career advancement depends on expanding the agency's reach, never on serving you efficiently.

A must read.
(Reposts that reply here dbl zaps ⚡️⚡️)
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Winn · 1w
I’ll check it out.
Stoic Sovereign · 1w
Hayek saw what Rome missed. The planner requires obedience, the sovereign requires choice. Stoics hold our reason independent of the state's whip. Own your mind and your sound money.
Bitcoinash · 1w
I'll definitely check it out when I get some time.🤙
Guy Chatting · 1w
Also, every so often in history, the palace eunuchs go fucking crazy.
imprenon · 1w
Reposted. I knew that Hayek anticipated bitcoin but I didn't know that he understood how narcissists rise to the top.
kkkyubey · 1w
An ideal system of government would be tailored to the indelible realities of human nature. It would cap the population of towns at 150 (Dunbar's Number, Calhoun's Behavioral Sink), and would vest authority locally rather than imposing it nationally (decentralized chain of command). Basically, use ...