The Profit of Reform
vested interest sees to it that the power of the State does not diminish.
Strictly speaking, laws are made by monarchs and legislators. It was Pharaoh who proclaimed the law, not Joseph. But it was on the advice of Joseph that Pharaoh acted. In our "democratic" era, when parliaments make laws, it is the bureaucrat who phrases them, who prepares the supporting arguments (which legislators mouth), who estimates (or underestimates) the costs of operation, who sets up the machinery (jobs) to implement the laws. And when a law in operation does not effect the solution of the problem it was supposed to solve, but produces problems of its own, it is the bureaucracy that comes up with correctives. Ideologically, the bureaucracy is always "leftist" (if by that term is meant the enlargement of State power), not so much by persuasion but because of personal interest and the psychology of the trade. A bureaucrat is a socialist, or communist, because his business requires him to think like a socialist or a communist.
Once a law enters the statute books it is beyond the purview of those who made it, the legislators or the king, and becomes the special, private province of those who operate it. The more numerous and prolix the laws, the more important and the more self-sufficient are the operating specialists. No part-time legislator (whose principal concern is in getting elected) or king (preoccupied wtih enjoyment) can possibly make his way through the labyrinth of law without a guide. Thus the real governing body of the country is its practicing bureaucracy, whose prospects brighten with each reform that becomes law.
The interventionary powers of the State are in direct proportion to its revenues; it must have the wherewithal with
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