On nit-picking duty here: Anti-Commintern International Pact?

Among the many virtues of Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction is his puncturing the myth that Speer was particularly good at what he did – he wasn’t even a “pure technician,” unless PR is a technology.

7: I am suggesting, ineffectively it appears, that even the “type” Haffner identifies is defined less by his technical prowess than by his powers of spin. Those indeed are the types we can’t get rid of.

While they are not in the same class as regard crimes, the modern technocratic state is infested with “technical” people whose main talent is self-promotion through the relentless advocacy of politically-convenient policies. Michelle Rhee springs to mind, but Blair and, here in Australia, Kevin Rudd were knee-deep in this type.

Hard to believe Speer wasn’t hanged in the first place.

“I was there. I had a job.”

Well, I can sympathize with Speer’s larger point, indicated in part 3. I hope that doesn’t make me a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer.

@11: I don’t know how deliberate it is but when the far-right Japanese party Nihon Ishin no To split up into the Ishin no To, Ishin no Kai and Osaka Ishin no Kai these names were variously translated Restoration, Innovation, Initiatives from Osaka, even though they all use the same word that means ‘the Meiji revolution thing that created the empire in 1868’.

@13: “Also, I believe that comparing Rhee or Rudd to Speer constitutes a Godwin, and as such should be looked upon with disdain.”
The idea about people like Eichmann was that they were supreme followers. The fact that they haven’t collaborated with a regime is only a question of one not offering them the opportunity. If the ‘banality of evil’ thesis can’t encompass that, it can’t encompass very much. It’s like I tell fundie anti-communists in America: if you think if you were born in Stalin’s Russia you’d be Solzhenitsyn, you’re wrong, you’d be a Stalinist.

@1 and 2

There were plenty privately-owned factories inside the concentration/extermination camps: Monowitz (a.k.a. Monowitz-Buna or Auschwitz III) comes to mind.

In fact, the SS did rent prisoners to work in those factories. They also administered discipline for the Siemens, I.G. Farben (and many others) site managers.

It is said that life-expectancy after arrival to those factories was 3-4 months; 1 month for those working outdoors, in mines.

After all, the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” welcomed newly arrived inmates.

The first anti-Speer book was “Albert Speer: End Of A Myth” by Matthias Schmidt, in the early 80s. Speer started legal action when he got wind of it, bu then he died and it went ahead.

I found a copy of the English edition in my town’s public library and showed it to my history teacher, who had extolled the “good” version of Speer in classes on WW2. He was impressed by it, but he did comment the author seemed to have a grudge against his subject.

I’m puzzled why it doesn’t get as much attention as later works going over the same material. Is it seen as unserious because it was written by a journalist? Gitta Sereny’s book 10 years later didn’t have such a problem.

I don’t think the pacific solution is rudds and I don’t think it’s in any way comparable to the final solution. But I do think the mechanism by which administrative solutions to “problems” ratchet up over time with cruel consequences deserves analysis. Have you read “architects of annihilation” Monty ? It has some interesting diary entries from demographers who were not directly involved in the final solution but had a role in planning population movements. The machinery of state violence has some very small cogs.

@19: “If you think Rudd’s Pacific Solution is in any way comparable to Hitler’s Final Solution, then you’re part of the problem.”
Before Pierre Laval was infamous he was an ‘independent-leaning’ Socialist who drove down French wages to satisfy the gold standard and bankrupted Austria during its financial crisis by refusing European solidarity.

And Manuel Valls is already deporting children!

You say ‘isn’t.’ The question asked: ‘would they?’

It sounds like you’re recasting Eichmann. Or maybe relitigating him. Seems like you’re wrestling with the routinization of malice. Wiesel sought to keep the Holocaust as mystical since regarding it as the genocide of European Jewry made it too profane. Wiesel didn’t want his anger relegated to an event for which the guilty could be punished. Even atonement was beyond the reach. something that could be But in a bizarre way Wiesel. I suppose the centennial of the Somme resembles this logic as well. Poppies and all that, lest we forget. Getting all wistful about the Great War makes us mourn our grandfathers (or great-uncles). Makes it easier, as Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker have written, to accept the idea that one’s grandfather was killed in combat rather than he might have killed others.

Hitler and Himmler are all madness and malice. Speer converted all that into efficiency and organization…and charm.

Wiesel’s death, the centennial of the Somme,

Hidari @11
It also strikes me as strange that we always use the phrase the Third Reich: i.e. translating the first word of that phrase and not the second. ‘Reich’ of course, means ‘Empire’.

It’s also routine in English to refer to the Second Reich, i.e., the empire over which the Kaiser presided. (Fewer people have occasion to mention the First Reich, b.c it refers to something much older; Hitler harked back to it in naming the invasion of the USSR after the medieval emperor Barbarrossa. [not checking the spelling btw])

The solution to the Speer problem is simple enough, libertarian government. No Ministry of Armaments, i.e. no vast overweening state apparatus of coercive power, no Speers. The trouble is that there’s always some Hitler coming along promising people heaven on earth if they just give people access to that coercive power.

“The solution to the Speer problem is simple enough, libertarian government. No Ministry of Armaments, i.e. no vast overweening state apparatus of coercive power, no Speers.”

Up next, the new alternative-history novel, ‘Speer in Somalia’, which explores the important question ‘can weak government protect us from technocratic evil?’

What’s the big difference between Speer and Sejanus?

“What’s the big difference between Speer and Sejanus?”

Are you announcing from the rooftops that you can’t distinguish the difference between the Roman Empire under a bad Emperor and the Nazi regime?

@29: “The solution to the Speer problem is simple enough, libertarian government.”
Is that Ludwig “Hitler saved White civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.” von Mises or is it… OMFG there’s a whole PAGE for Hayek! https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek_and_dictatorship

@31:”Mussolini was the one who introduced the term into common parlance.”
So it’s rhetorical then, unlike the real Anti-Communist International Pact. Did you know when the League of Nations let Germany sink grain ships going to Republican Spain the Tory backbenchers cheered from the House of Commons? They called it that for people like them.

@30: The GERMAN wikipedia age for Zweites Reich is a disambiguation page for three kingdoms and a millenerian cult.

@27: “It sounds like you’re recasting Eichmann. Or maybe relitigating him”
I think I know who I’m litigating. My favourite part of the Eichmann trial is when he protests that he and the whole army swore loyalty to Hitler and he would have been an oath-breaker to disobey him is when the prosecuter reminds him that’s not what he’s on trial for. I’d like to thank Corey Robin for fighting against the idea that Arendt thought card indexes cause genocide.

PS Would like to have seen the end your Somme comment. Looked interesting.

“German Empire” may indeed be the more common English expression (I recall a long time ago having to read Erich Eyck’s Bismarck and the German Empire), but some variant of the expression using ‘Reich’ is not, I think, uncommon. Just today, and by chance, I ran across a reference to “the German Reich” in a context where the author is discussing Bismarck and so the reference is clearly to the second Reich. (However, Hidari is correct, afaik, that the ref. is always to ‘the Third Reich’, never to the ‘third Empire’.)

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler has something sim’lar,
But poor old Speers is a neoliberal.

Otto Schindler also kept Jews out of concentration camps by working them in his factories. According to the movie they preferred it to the camps, as would I. I’m not a big fan of business managers (who by the way have bureaucracies that rival governments), but most of them know there is a point at which oppressing their workers brings diminishing returns.

There was a brief period between the ouster of all the old, WWII-vet managers at GE and the onslaught of trickle-down Welch hires in which those of us who still knew what we were doing got to make a lot of decisions without having to fill out forms in triplicate and kiss people’s rings, so I have some sympathy for that episode (loss of bureaucratic papers) also. It can’t go on and shouldn’t, but boy was it liberating for a while.

In his autobiography, Speer claimed he was part of the plot to assassinate Hitler in his bunker. I took that with a lot of salt, but thought the statistics he gave on his efficiency improvements were probably believable since they could be checked by others.

My point if any is that there may be a flip side. Under a benevolent government, people like Speer could be valuable (if half of his self-opinion was justified). I’ve worked under a few people like I picture Speer was – and a couple Saddam Husseins. There are a lot of times when you wish you had the Speers back.

cassander @ 41

Individuals, acting privately*, do of course kill others (we call it called murder), they “arrest” others (we call it kidnapping), they seize others’ property (we call that theft).

*Privately…without direction, incentives, or resources coming from an institution that exists independently of the individual.

“Private institutions” (corporations, for example) of course also kill people, kidnap people, steal from people.

But even so, when we speak of “private institutions”, we’re in something of a conceptual bind. Because almost no institution I can think of can exist as such without direction, incentives, and resources of the state. If it is “private” it is designated so by the state, not by itself (my nephew’s lemonade stand notwithstanding).

The private institution/state institution distinction you want to make…it’s not like distinguishing electrons from protons. Clearly those exist as independent entities (you can create a system that detects one without detecting the other). But I think “private/state institution”…it’s more like distinguishing planet from satellite. Yes, we can make a distinction, but they’re not possibly independent of each other.

You want to allow for the IRS and the National Park System, but not the Pentagon? Yes, we agree! But what about OSHA? Or the EPA? If you merely wish out “outsource” the coercion to “private” institutions…we no longer agree.

RE: the Speers of the word (and summarizing my response to cassander): Beaurocracies are cooperative endeavors consisting of hierarchies and specialization. They are a source of immense productive efficiencies and, simultaneously, a breeding ground for social pathology (especially among high-status participants). The task of political culture is to encourage the former and restrain the latter. Essentializing a public vs. private distinction in contemporary beaurocracies is not responsive to this task.

Jim V @42
worth keeping in mind, re your first graph, that notwithstanding the point about diminishing returns, at least some (prob a lot, I don’t know enough to quantify it) of the forced factory labor in the Third Reich was not only unpaid slave labor but involved conditions in which workers were fed just enough to keep them alive and able in some way to function. (Presumably that was not the case in Schindler’s factory.) The V2 rocket, for ex., was built by slave labor in near-starvation conditions; for discussion, see the lit. on that, e.g. M. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich.

> Is that question a challenge for cassander only, or am I allowed to answer?

Sure, why not. Cass can have “explicate the relevant differences between the duchies of Brittany and Normandy” instead.

I can’t be sure why you did it either. Possibly commenting gives you esteem or, if it was a really good comment, self-actualization.

b9n10nt 07.13.16 at 8:04 am

cassander @ 41

> Individuals, acting privately*, do of course kill others (we call it called murder), they “arrest” others (we call it kidnapping), they seize others’ property (we call that theft).

When a serial killer racks of tens of millions of bodies without the backing of a state, then I’ll worry about individuals as much as states, not before.

> But even so, when we speak of “private institutions”, we’re in something of a conceptual bind. Because almost no institution I can think of can exist as such without direction, incentives, and resources of the state. If it is “private” it is designated so by the state, not by itself (my nephew’s lemonade stand notwithstanding).

The long history of illegal organizations continuing to exist despite state attempts to stamp them out, e.g. many 19th century labor unions, clearly disproves this assertion. That said, if you prefer, I’d be fine with making the distinction between organizations that claim the right to legitimately use force and those that do not rather than public and private. Your bowling league does not claim that right, though it might ask the state, which does, to exercise that right on its behalf if your dues check bounces.

> You want to allow for the IRS and the National Park System, but not the Pentagon? Yes, we agree! But what about OSHA? Or the EPA? If you merely wish out “outsource” the coercion to “private” institutions…we no longer agree.

It’s not an either or decision, but a continuum. The larger the state, the more resources your potential Speers have to play with, and the the harder it is to monitor them.

>The task of political culture is to encourage the former and restrain the latter. Essentializing a public vs. private distinction in contemporary bureaucracies is not responsive to this task.

You assume that public and private bureaucracies are essentially identical, they are not. First, there is the source of funding. Private bureaucracies of any size must devote much of their energy to preserving their own existence by doing whatever it is they do that gets them money. Public bureaucracies are largely free of this need. Second, degree of bureaucratic pathology is directly related to the size and age of the institutions in question. As they get bigger and older, the likelihood and quantity of dysfunction increases. States are almost invariably among the largest and oldest of institutions, and even if you break them down into ministries, departments, etc, they’re still going to far exceed averages. Related to both is the amount of resources at the disposal of the intuition. My original point was that however evil speer was, the amount of evil he was able to accomplish in life would have been less had he been the architect in residence at the bavarian ministry of interior. States command vastly more resources than non-state actors, in western countries they often have access to more resources than every other actor put together.

So yes, the distinction between public and private actors is not insignificant. This is not disproved even if there are a few fuzzy cases on the border. Or, if you prefer the force using/force abjuring distinction, the same amount of bureaucracy/money/resources in the hands of a force abjuring institution is far less dangerous than in the hands of a force using institution.

> It seems like you’d want to look at a study of, perhaps, private, for-profit prisons and compare their illegitimate use of force to that of state prisons.

A for profit prison acting as an arm of the state is hardly abjuring the use of force.

>You’d want to compare institutions that have a legal mandate to kill, use force, arrest. Obviously, we can’t compare the Fergeson, MO PD to Marley’s Bar & Grill, right?

That comparison is the whole point. I don’t care how racist the guy that owns Marley’s is, or how many billions of dollars he’s made franchising the place, his lack of access to physical force makes him much less dangerous than any podunk police department.

>You’re not arguing that modern states’ policing and military institutions be privatized and the fiscal savings be distributed as a tax return, right?

Again, deputizing private organizations to make them arms of the state makes them cease to be, for practical purposes, private organizations. The relevant comparison is not between traditional cops and contractors operating under those rules, but between traditional cops and bouncers.

Cassander @ 54

Again, deputizing private organizations to make them arms of the state makes them cease to be, for practical purposes, private organizations.

Side notes: Yes, this is very similar to saying that chartering (archaic) or licensing (modern) a corporation makes it cease to be a private organization. Thus, laws against corporate campaign donations, or laws that restrict corporate advertising, or laws pertaining to firms’ hiring, producing, pricing, and marketing are not in any way an infringement upon individual (private) liberties.

The relevant comparison is not between traditional cops and contractors operating under those rules, but between traditional cops and bouncers. .

So, can you give evidence of private coercion (bouncers, security guards, body guards) being less violent in the absence of state policing power as an abjuring option for the private institution?. Research that’s been done on so-called failed states (e.g. modern Somalia), maybe European settlement of N. America, or even pre-historical tribal violence might pertain? (Pinker’s latest book on trends in human violence might require some grappling with here). Or, rather, are you utopian in envisioning a society without coercive institutions, public or private?

” Because almost no institution I can think of can exist as such without direction, incentives, and resources of the state.”

Decades of the Solidarity movement in Poland disagree with you.

The state often co-opts movements and organizations that would exist without the state. They then ‘legalize’ such movements and organizations.

You interpret that as them existing ‘because of’ the state.

Collin Street 07.13.16 at 12:42 pm
> Is that question a challenge for cassander only, or am I allowed to answer?

Sure, why not. Cass can have “explicate the relevant differences between the duchies of Brittany and Normandy” instead.

Then I’ll go with ‘Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Monaco; and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’.

I thought Andorra would have to be one of the former-HRE nations. In a sense, it is still a private holding.

@ 63 yes, but have you heard of the US criminal injustice system as it currently exists.

We live in the midst of an era of vast racial and economic oppression at the hands of the state. I’m kind of ashamed to be having this quasi-theoretical discussion about state vs. private oppression when right under my nose exists this era’s Jim Crow, this era’s Gulag.

“The purpose of the state is is to de-legitimize and prevent the use of force by those that are not the state, and in a legal state, in ways not approved in law.”

Well, no. The purpose of the state, with respect to violence, is to protect the citizens from violence. You can argue that states go wrong, and they do, but we have a good idea what ‘no state’ looks like, and few people actually want that. For those that do, I can offer some travel recommendations, and would consider making a contribution to help send you on your way.

Layman @ 66:

I wrote earlier (it’s been lost in moderation, apparently):

So, can you [Cassander] give evidence of private coercion (bouncers, security guards, body guards) being less coercive and violent in the absence of state policing power as an abjuring option for the private institution? Research that’s been done on so-called failed states (e.g. modern Somalia), maybe European settlement of N. America, or even pre-historical tribal violence might pertain? Or perhaps can you point towards researchers who can clearly demonstrate (contra Pinker, e.g.) that overall murder and violence has increased as modern states become long in the tooth? (Cassander claimed: “degree of bureaucratic pathology is directly related to the size and age of the institutions in question.”)

My impression is that no body of research supports this line of thinking about privatizing police and criminal justice.

You (Layman) write:

The purpose of the state, with respect to violence, is to protect the citizens from violence.

I do not agree this is always true. One could also say that protecting at least a cohort of citizens is a chief means by which the state gains legitimacy from those who are ruled by it. But more to the point I don’t think states have an essential purpose.

“I do not agree this is always true.”

Yes, this is why I wrote “…You can argue that states go wrong…”.

“But more to the point I don’t think states have an essential purpose.”

I don’t know what this means. Maybe it’s the ‘essential’ that’s causing your problem. Most people could make a long list of the various purposes of the state. Take garbage collection for a start, go from there.

@ b9n10nt

That’s all very interesting, but if one wants to argue that we should fear the bad actors empowered by the state more than we should fear the bad actors unleashed by the absence of the state, one ought to take a good look at what happens in stateless societies, and consider why it is societies evolved toward states. There are of course good states and bad states, and everything in between, and we should be mindful of the dangers of oppressive states; but we should not at the same time be mindless of the dangers of stateless societies.

Layman: one ought to take a good look at what happens in stateless societies,

Cassander: I am indeed one of those filthy empiricicists

Okay, let’s see the empirical research from which you derived (paraphrasing) “bouncers can replace police” and “states become more repressive directly related to their size and longevity”. And more generally, can we allow that social empiricism is a great deal more fraught with methodological and theoretical problems than, say, physics. I can’t see how anyone can think about this stuff without a great deal of humility: the assumption that we’re all probably wrong about any certainty regarding about what’s there, what’s important, what we can know…

@b9n10nt

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and don’t foreclose. But I’d say the social contract is real, even when it wasn’t consciously sought. There is some relative safety in numbers, even if you haven’t though much past that point.

Out of curiosity: was there a Soviet or a Maoist equivalent of Speer?And if not, why not?

@b9n10nt

>Okay, let’s see the empirical research from which you derived (paraphrasing) “bouncers can replace police”

An argument I didn’t make, indeed one, I repeatedly and explicitly rejected.

>and “states become more repressive directly related to their size and longevity”.

Another argument I didn’t make.

>I can’t see how anyone can think about this stuff without a great deal of humility:

Don’t sell yourself short, you’re managing just fine. Feel free to address points I’ve actually made, not the strawmen you’ve invented.

@Stephen

>Out of curiosity: was there a Soviet or a Maoist equivalent of Speer?And if not, why not?

Of course, there were so many the Soviet words for them entered the English, and other, languages. Apparatchik and Nomenklatura.

cassander:

“>Out of curiosity: was there a Soviet or a Maoist equivalent of Speer?And if not, why not?

Of course, there were so many the Soviet words for them entered the English, and other, languages. Apparatchik and Nomenklatura.”

Speer was not an apparatchik. He was a member of Hitler’s inner circle. I don’t think there was a Soviet or Maoist equivalent to Speer, because the ideology was fundamentally suspicious of letting experts get power. Of course, there may have been people who played this role under Stalin or Mao, but they probably were purged. With extreme prejudice.

Cassander @ 59

the same amount of bureaucracy/money/resources in the hands of a force abjuring institution is far less dangerous than in the hands of a force using institution.

What empirical evidence did you derive this claim from? Would you agree that it’s trivial to compare Marley’s Bar and Grill to the Ferguson, MO PD because the former calls upon get the latter to provide policing services, and therefore a valid comparison would be between a state policing force and a private policing force that existed without a state? What am I missing?

Cassander @ 57

degree of bureaucratic pathology is directly related to the size and age of the institutions in question. As they get bigger and older, the likelihood and quantity of dysfunction increases.

What empirical evidence did you derive this claim from?

I suspect that for many of us, at least one fundamental difficulty with Libertarianism is the question of whether it’s even possible not to have a state.

In the absence of a democratically elected state, I suspect many of us feel that powerful private actors would simply take on much of the same role (effective monopoly on violence, creation and enforcement of laws), but without at least the notional approval of the people.

I do think that Libertarians get somewhat of a bad rap from those who believe that this progression is *so* self-evident that this must be what Libertarians intend, while I believe that most Libertarians do truly believe that in the absence of a state powerful enough to restrain them, powerful private actors would choose restrain themselves.

“I think most libertarians think people either are naturally virtuous or can be fairly easily made to be virtuous, and that the reason they’re not virtuous now is that something has interfered, namely the state. ”

In my experience, libertarians are by and large well-positioned to tolerate a reduction of the state – or at least they believe they are. They’re well off, members of the elite, and out of touch with the realities of an existence where they aren’t protected, even pampered, by the state. Against this theory is the fact that they never decide to move to Somalia, which suggests they do have some doubts about how they’d actually fare.

Cassander@90: not, I think, Lysenko. A man of monumental ignorance in his chosen field, a persecutor to death of much wiser and more knowledgeable specialists, a complete charlatan who owed his undeserved success to shameless adherence to Party delusions … no, I don’t think that matches Speer.

Molotov, not much of a match, either. A professional revolutionary pre-1917, in charge of the Party secretariat under Lenin, overseer of the disastrous and murderous collectivisation of agriculture, supporter of the purge of the Red Army, failed to protect his own wife from being arrested by Stalin … no, I don’t think so, either.

@tom

>I suspect that for many of us, at least one fundamental difficulty with Libertarianism is the question of whether it’s even possible not to have a state.

I don’t see why, given that libertarianism explicitly rejects the notion of not having a state. Libertarianism is not anarchism.

@Stephen

I must admit some confusion, then, as to what you think makes Speer Speer. I was assuming it was either his status as an extremely powerful, but essentially bureaucratic (in the sense that he implemented policies decided by others) official of the Third Reich, or that he was that and also incompetent, elevated for political reasons. In the case of the former, Molotov, the latter, Lysenko. What quality do you consider important that am I not accounting for?

cassander @ 90 (cont.)

Pretty much the entire literature of organization theory [supports the claim that ” degree of bureaucratic pathology is directly related to the size and age of the institutions in question. As they get bigger and older, the likelihood and quantity of dysfunction increases”].If you haven’t read any, which seems likely, I’d be happy to supply you some titles to begin your education. But there’s an entire discipline devoted to trying to solve the problems of organizations breaking down as they get too big and old.

I want to make sure we’re not moving the goal posts here: “organizations breaking down as they get too big and old” is NOT “pathology”, necessarily (creative destruction, right?). [this would likely not be supported in the literature: most state institutions and commercial organizations break down because they’re too small and new: most new businesses fail, for example].

Anyway, organizational dissolution isn’t pathology. Rather, organizations using illegitimate coercion against their stakeholders to further internal goals is pathological. As I understand it, you are claiming that this is the phenomenon that is directly related to the institutions size and age, and that this finding is well supported in the literature.

So, first of all, do I understand your claim? Second, if I do, then yes send me some cites. It seems to me unlikely that this claim will be substantiated. The USSR kept getting more pathological after Stalin? The United Fruit Comapny kept getting more pathological after the Banana Massacre? Is the US military from 1980-2010 more pathological than the 1950-1980 period? The US war in Iraq worse than its war in Vietnam? How does the literature deal with these apparent counter-examples, much less definitions of institutional continuity and coherence?

Just to be clear, paragraph 1 of #99 was a quote from cassander

cassander @ 103

Not just the regulation and incentivisation, though I agree there too, but the minimization of the number of matters entrusted to the police, and other arms of the state, to begin with.

Ehh, case by case. Drug war, yes I agree. But the Clean Air Act? The Americans with Disability Act? In these and several other ways, state beaurocracies have intruded into commercial activity (which, again, I will not concede is fundamentally “private” if that means categorically distinct from the state) in ways in which benefits exceed costs.

But this is the fundamental issue we are discussing, isn’t it? If beaurocracies can empirically be shown to tend towards pathology proportional to their size and longevity, then benefits at t=0 will simply be akin to the prehabituation face of opioid use: sooner or later, at t=0 + y, the beaurocracy will become pathological, costs will exceed benefits, and we will wish we had just let the original problem (pollution, opportunities for the disabled) exist, perhaps addressed by commercial activity, perhaps not. But this is your hypothesis, yes?

If however this can not be shown to be true, empirically, then polities are free to take the “medicine” of state amelioration or state initiative and deal with the “side effects” on a case by case basis. This is the null hypothesis.

All I need to do to support the null hypothesis is show that there is no tendency. Has the US Dept of the Interior become increasingly more pathological since its inception in 1849? Has Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health become more pathological since its creation in 1961? Has the Swedish corporation Ericsson become increasingly pathological since its creation in 1876? What about the various policing and military beaurocracies in the modern states of South Korea, Kenya, Finland, Kazakhstan: everywhere increasing pathology, always?

Where is the empirical evidence in support of your hypothesis?

There’s a bureaucratic lifecycle, establishment, growth, peak, senescence. Both peak and senescence create opportunities for pathology, though of different types. The likelihood of pathology increases with age, not necessarily the severity.

How have researches, testing this hypothesis, created data sets that weren’t cherry picked? Where have their findings been tested by making predictions (picking a data set in advance, and then investigating it) that have born fruit?

I’m trying to show that, by taking your claim seriously, it can be shown to have an absurd nature. The claim implies a strict historical, social determinism that would be singularly remarkable in the social sciences.

What if I were to say: “It’s a well-established fact that older, larger households show more incidence of mental health issues”? Depending how we assess this statement, it either wold be true but trivial (more size and time increases the likelihood of mental health issues, simply as a matter of sample size and longitude) or it would be false but potentially profound (per capita, per annum). My assumption is that the empirical findings regarding beaurocracies and pathology support the trivial conclusion, but you are then interpreting it as the profound one.

Citations?