{"id":29873,"date":"2015-01-27T04:00:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T09:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29873"},"modified":"2015-01-26T22:56:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T03:56:16","slug":"how-to-think-like-a-government-bureaucrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/27\/how-to-think-like-a-government-bureaucrat\/","title":{"rendered":"How to think like a government bureaucrat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2015\/01\/16\/kick-em-while-theyre-up-kick-em-while-theyre-down-the-return-of-the-gas-tax\/\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Tracinski<\/a> on the essential core of a control freak&#8217;s very being:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Here\u2019s one of my favorite stories about how the mind of a government official works.<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, I was in a grocery store in Charlottesville when I overheard a conversation between two shoppers, one of whom was clearly in some position of authority (the City Council, I believe). This was right after the financial crisis. The real estate market had just collapsed, a whole bunch of local development project had just been canceled, and my wife was telling me about all the guys she knew in construction who were desperate for work. Yet here was this lady arguing for why the local government should not approve any new commercial building permits. The danger, she explained, was the prospect of \u201ceconomic ghost towns,\u201d retail areas where several shops had closed, hurting business for the others. Until these \u201ceconomic ghost towns\u201d were filled back up \u2014 whether anybody wanted them or not \u2014 there was no good reason to approve permits for new commercial construction.<\/p>\n<p>I just couldn\u2019t keep quiet and had to interrupt: Only in Charlottesville \u2014 a left-leaning university town \u2014 could an economic downturn be used as a reason to block new economic activity.<\/p>\n<p>But you have to understand the outlook of those whose faith is the creed of government. Everything is proof of the need for more government power and control. The local economy is booming? Let\u2019s hold back on building permits because we don\u2019t want to grow \u201ctoo fast.\u201d The local economy is tanking? Let\u2019s hold back on building permits because we don\u2019t want \u201ceconomic ghost towns,\u201d or whatever. On the national level, in an economic collapse the government needs more money for \u201cstimulus.\u201d But if the economy is booming, that means we can afford higher taxes, right?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Tracinski on the essential core of a control freak&#8217;s very being: Here\u2019s one of my favorite stories about how the mind of a government official works. A few years ago, I was in a grocery store in Charlottesville when I overheard a conversation between two shoppers, one of whom was clearly in some position [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,84,13],"tags":[712,379,393],"class_list":["post-29873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-government","category-usa","tag-centralplanning","tag-stimulus","tag-virginia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7LP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29874,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29873\/revisions\/29874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}