Bureaucracy Blog Debate

Ideally the government should be fully efficient to provide the best service for the people as the bureaucracy is meant to serve the people and it is our government. The bureaucracy provides people with services that they need so if the government is the one to implement those then they need to provide the people with the best service they can.  However, as we know the government is not efficient with pretty much any of its agencies and it does not do a great job all the time.  Realistically, the government should try to be as efficient as it can and keep that in the back of their mind but really they need to make sure that are adequately serving the people.  For the government in order to properly serve us they might not be able to be as efficient as we would like.  However, the main priority is them fulfilling their duties to us.  Saying this it shouldn’t mean that they take forever but they shouldn’t have to rush.  Them rushing would only lead to them not properly serving us and meeting our needs.  Like ally mentioned in her blog post about the 900,000 veterans who are waiting to receive health benefits I see where she thinks the government and our bureaucracy should be efficient to take care of that.  I think that in certain situations the government should rush and prioritize those cases especially for people who served our country. 

              It is true, the way the government is set up causes the bureaucratic pathologies to be inevitable.  For example, the red tape pathology can never be avoided.  The government has to write everything down and file paperwork and have regulations on so many things in order for the government to run properly.  That is necessary for the safety of the people.  So with all of this the efficiency is then affected.   If the government was run like a business it would just become more corrupt.  The government was meant to service the people and businesses only look to help themselves.  This would even further hurt the people.  The power that the government already holds over the people would be taken to a whole new level. However, it can be seen that only certain programs might be able to be run like a business.  The dmv for example might run better as a business because it cannot be corrupted and an outside source might run that system better and quicker. 

             

Bureaucracy Blog Debate

Efficiency in government and the bureaucracy is the most important goal in mind because the main point of having government and the bureaucracy is to ensure the public stays in control and is able to function, without major problems. If the systems are inefficient and do not perform the required function, then government would be pointless. Efficiency is not the only goal of the government, however. The government must also ensure its people are safe and to protect all of its citizens rights, but in order to do this the system must be efficient. The Daily Show clips explained how over 900,000 veterans are currently waiting in order to receive health benefits coming home from war and how almost the entire system was still being conducted using paper. This inefficiency causes the veterans who have served to protect our country to suffer without the benefits which they were promised. Since these people have risked their lives and fought for our country's freedom, they should not have to wait for their benefits they deserve because the system is inefficient. Efficiency of all government and bureaucratic agencies must be the first priority in order to function. However, even though the systems do take a long time in order to function and are not extremely efficient, a majority of the time they do work in the long run. The process for example of veterans receiving their benefits takes on average about a year, but they do end up getting their reward in the end.
 Weber wanted for a bureaucracy to work like a business where everyone is in charge of their own job and they all work their own task to get the job done. This would be the ideal way for any company or agency to work, but with mixed ideas from different parties and outside opinions, this is not how the bureaucracy in the United States works. Since the nature of government is competition between the parties, the republicans and democratics are constantly working to gain the most power and have the most influence in the way government runs. This constant conflict causes for the bureaucratic agencies to not function to their best ability. The obsession to try to gain control causes competition between the parties and the system does not run as an organized structure as Weber had envisioned. Therefore, the nature of the government does cause the bureaucracies to operate differently than Weber has expected.

There are positives and negatives to running the government like a business. If the government were like a business, everyone would have a specific role that they have to accomplish and it would cause the system to be much more efficient because it would model Weber's idea. Also, the productivity would increase if one person was working on a task rather than many people arguing on how to make it better. One negative result of the government being run like a business is many people who now are in the bureaucracy would lose their jobs, creating a higher unemployment rate throughout the country. Millions of jobs would be unnecessary if only one person had a specific role, so there would be fewer people needed to make decisions. If less people were hired however, then this would be less people the government has to pay for unnecessary jobs in the government. So, either way there are positives and negatives to making the bureaucracy run more like a business.

Bureaucratic Pathologies

In my personal opinion sometimes efficiency can breed problems of its own. There is a lot of grid lock in Congress that "gunks" up the bureaucratic system, however, if programs were changed to appease those who have dug their heels into the dirt it could create a lot of problems of its own. This can cause programs to be bias and work more for those that it aimed to appease than for the public good in which the program is supposed to help. A person that complies with all changes and requests to a system can also be considered effieicnet, however, it is important to honor the merit system. If programs are in a constant flux to match the fickle requests of the gorvernment than it would never be able to function. By handing the power to enfore the rules and regulations given to the bureaucracy to officials that are knowledgeable enough to make the decisions necessary to promote effectiveness allows for programs to live up to their fullest potentional even if ithey doen't always comply with the government and could create inefficiency. Another important point to remember is that while duplication can create waste and inefficiency it allows for an important checks and balance system. There is a competition within the agency for budgeting on certain programs that they share in common. That competition allows for innovation and productivity that may not be otherwise accomplished if all programs that held similar jobs were cut.

Weber believed that for a bureaucracy to work it needed to be structured in a hierarchial system, there needed to be task specialization, extensive rules, clear goals, the merit principle, and impersonality. he wanted a cold, cut and dry system that worked more like a machine. Everyone in the machine has a well defined task and no matter what happens around that person they remain on their objective so that their goal is accomplished. The system dreamed up by Weber is very black and white. The American system of government is a lot more gray. The nature of government is to be ever changing so that it can match the culture in which it protects and resides over. Some goals may not be clear at the beginning of an endeavor. There are many instances in which the end goal isn't really defined and the means at which achieving it are even blurrier. For example, the EPA was created to protect the enviroment and the people that live in it. It was created due to an outcry from the people. What types of regulations fall within the domain of the government and what can the government do to both protect the enviroment and the profits of the companies that are polluting it. Gray areas that are left up to people to define. There will always be human error and uncertainity. People are not machines and they can, with 1005 certainty, identify the outcome of any actions that they take. People more or less make it up as they go along, a trial-and-error that allows us to find a system that works the best even if it does not stay confined within the peraminters of Weber's Beaucractic System.

One solution that has been posed is changning the system that exists and make the bureaucracy run like a business. I don't agree with this solution because businesses strive to make a profit without necessarily caring sbout the well being of the public. These agencies were created to protect the public good. Privitization can lead to less regulation and higher risk to the people of the United States. If the EPA was privitized some regulations might be taken away to maximize profits and the Connecticut River may turn green once again.

The bureacracy has a lot of non essential employees that makes it hard for the government to reduce spending. Marco Rubio beleived that for every 2 people that retire only one person should be hired back to cut the amount of people on the payroll. This spending doesn't even account for what the agency is supposed to be doing it only counts for the people hired to do it.

A lot of back logging is creating a serious problem in the VA like seen in the videos from the Daily Show. 97% of their records were paper in 2013 and modernization was slow because computer programs meant to help reduce this problem can't work together. This causes for a lot of people not to recieve the benefits they need in a timely fashion. It can also lead to inadequate accountablitity of those in charge of the various programs within the VA.

There is a lot of dupplication and excess in the Bureaucracy that causes excess spending and adds to the deficit and instead of reducing the number of programs they just press forward with what they have and even add more to it causing even more spending.

Bureaucracy Blog Debate

As we have discussed in class, the popularly held view of the American bureaucracy is that it is a bloated and inefficient system staffed by incompetent employees. Needless to say, it is not a very flattering portrayal of an essential part of our government. However,while most agree there is inefficiency, just what causes this inefficiency and what reforms can be made to fix these bureaucratic pathologies is a topic of much debate. 

The Assignment:

1. View the videos on bureaucratic pathologies and reform posted below and take notes.
• The Daily Show clips “Red Tape Diaries”
• Marco Rubio’s Bureaucratic Reform
• Democracy in America’s The Bureaucracy: A Controversial Necessity (Just the EPA section).
2. Generate arguments for the following  statements on your assignment sheet:
•  “Efficiency is not the only worthy goal and not all publicly run programs are inefficient.”
• Bureaucratic pathologies are inherent because of the “nature of government”.
• Think about Weber's 6 characteristics of an ideal bureaucracy here!!
• The best way to reform American bureaucracy is to privatize it (run it like a business).
3. Debate each statement  by commenting on each of the blog posts below.

Bureaucracy Blog Debate: Statement 1

“Efficiency is not the only worthy goal and not all publicly run programs are inefficient.”

Bureaucracy Blog Debate: Statement 2

Bureaucratic pathologies are inherent because of the “nature of government”.

Bureaucracy Blog Debate: Statement 3

The best way to reform American bureaucracy is to privatize it (run it like a business).