Bureaucracy

2.4. The Crux of Bureaucratic Management

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

A bureau is not a profit-seeking enterprise; it cannot make use of any economic calculation; it has to solve problems which are unknown to business management. It is out of the question to improve its management by reshaping it according to the pattern of private business. It is a mistake to judge the efficiency of a government department by comparing it with the working of an enterprise subject to the interplay of market factors.

From Chapter II: "Bureaucratic Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

2.5. Bureaucratic Personnel Management

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

A bureaucrat differs from a non-bureaucrat precisely because he is working in a field in which it is impossible to appraise the result of a man's effort in terms of money. The nation spends money for the upkeep of the bureaus, but what it gets for the expenditure cannot be appraised in terms of money, however important and valuable this "output" may be. Its appraisal depends on the discretion of the government.

From Chapter II: "Bureaucratic Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

3.1. The Impractiability of Government All-round Control

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

Socialism (i.e., full government control of all economic activities) is impracticable because a socialist community lacks the indispensable intellectual instrument of economic planning and designing: economic calculation. The very idea of central planning by the state is self-contradictory. A socialist central board of production management will be helpless in the face of the problems to be solved.

From Chapter III: "Bureaucratic Management of Publicly Owned Enterprises". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

3.2. Public Enterprise within a Market Economy

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

As soon as an undertaking is no longer operated under the profit motive, other principles must be adopted for the conduct of its affairs.

From Chapter III: "Bureaucratic Management of Publicly Owned Enterprises". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

4.1. How Government Interference and the Impairment of the Profit Motive Drive Business Toward Bureaucratization

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

No private enterprise will ever fall prey to bureaucratic methods of management if it is operated with the sole aim of making profit.

From Chapter IV: "Bureaucratic Management of Private Enterprises". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

4.2. Interference with the Height of Profit

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The virtue of the profit system is that it puts on improvements a premium high enough to act as an incentive to take high risks. If this premium is removed or seriously curtailed, there cannot be any question of progress.

From Chapter IV: "Bureaucratic Management of Private Enterprises". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

4.3. Interference with the Choice of Personnel

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

Every kind of government meddling with the business of private enterprise results in the same disastrous consequences. It paralyzes initiative and breeds bureaucratism.

From Chapter IV: "Bureaucratic Management of Private Enterprises". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

4.4. Unlimited Dependence on the Discretion of Government Bureaus

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

In the bureaucratic environment the entrepreneur must resort to two means: diplomacy and bribery. It is a dangerous kind of double-dealing; only men devoid of fear and inhibitions can last in this rotten milieu.

From Chapter IV: "Bureaucratic Management of Private Enterprises". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

5.1. The Philosophy of Bureaucratism

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The State is the only institution entitled to apply coercion and compulsion and to inflict harm upon individuals.

From Chapter V: "The Social and Political Implictations of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

5.2. Bureaucratic Complacency

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

It was a purposeful confusion on the part of the German metaphysicians of statolatry that they clothed all men in the government service with the gloriole of altruistic self-sacrifice.

From Chapter V: "The Social and Political Implictations of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

5.4. The Bureaucratization of the Mind

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The truth is that the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody. A subsidy is never paid by the government out of its own funds. Inflation and credit expansion do not add anything to the amount of resources available. They make some people more prosperous, but only to the extent that they make others poorer.

From Chapter V: "The Social and Political Implictations of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

5.5. Who Should be the Master?

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

Under a market society the profit motive is the directing principle. Under government control it is regimentation. There is no third possibility left.

From Chapter V: "The Social and Political Implictations of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

6.3. Authoritarian Guardianship and Progress

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

Bureaucratization is necessarily rigid because it involves the observation of established rules and practices. But in social life rigidity amounts to petrification and death.

From Chapter VI: "The Psychological Consequences of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

6.4. The Selection of the Dictator

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

All champions of salvation through the rule of noble despots blithely assume that there cannot be any doubt about the question of who this lofty ruler or class of rulers should be and that all men will voluntarily yield to the supremacy of this superhuman dictator or aristocracy.

From Chapter VI: "The Psychological Consequences of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

6.5. The Vanishing of the Critical Sense

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The capitalist variety of competition is to outdo other people on the market through offering better and cheaper goods. The bureaucratic variety consists in intrigues at the "courts" of those in power.

From Chapter VI: "The Psychological Consequences of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

7.1. Past Failures

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

Bureaucratization is only a particular feature of socialization. The main matter is: Capitalism or Socialism?

From Chapter VII: "Is there any Remedy Available?" Narrated by Millian Quintero.

7.2. Economics Versus Planning and Totalitarianism

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The spurious catchwords and fallacious doctrines of the advocates of government control, socialism, communism, planning, and totalitarianism cannot be unmasked except by economic reasoning. Whether one likes it or not, it is a fact that the main issues of present-day politics are purely economic and cannot be understood without a grasp of economic theory.

From Chapter VII: "Is there any Remedy Available?" Narrated by Millian Quintero.

7.3. The Plain Citizen Versus the Professional Propaganist of Bureaucratization

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The aim of the popularization of economic studies is not to make every man an economist. The idea is to equip the citizen for his civic functions in community life. The conflict between capitalism and totalitarianism—on the outcome of which the fate of civilization depends—will not be decided by civil wars and revolutions. It is a war of ideas. Public opinion will determine victory and defeat.

From Chapter VII: "Is there any Remedy Available?" Narrated by Millian Quintero.

Conclusion to Bureaucracy

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The strait jacket of bureaucratic organization paralyzes the individual's initiative, while within the capitalist market society an innovator still has a chance to succeed. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords.

Narrated by Millian Quintero.

Preface to Bureaucracy

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The main issue in present-day social and political conflicts is whether or not man should give away freedom, private initiative, and individual responsibility and surrender to the guardianship of a gigantic apparatus of compulsion and coercion, the socialist state. Should authoritarian totalitarianism be substituted for individualism and democracy? Should the citizen be transformed into a subject, a subordinate in an all-embracing army of conscripted labor, bound to obey unconditionally the orders of his superiors? Should he be deprived of his most precious privilege to choose means and ends and to shape his own life?

Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

Introduction to Bureaucracy

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

Mises's introduction includes five parts:

The Opprobrious Connotation of the Term Bureaucracy
The American Citizen’s Indictment of Bureaucratism
The "Progressives'" View of Bureaucratism
Bureaucratism and Totalitarianism
The Alternative: Profit Management or Bureaucratic Management

Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

1.1. The Operation of the Market Mechanism

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The capitalists, the enterprisers, and the farmers are instrumental in the conduct of economic affairs. They are at the helm and steer the ship. But they are not free to shape its course. They are not supreme, they are steersmen only, bound to obey unconditionally the captain's orders. The captain is the consumer.

From Chapter I: "Profit Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

1.2. Economic Calculation

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The impracticability of all schemes of socialism and central planning is to be seen in the impossibility of any kind of economic calculation under conditions in which there is no private ownership of the means of production and consequently no market prices for these factors.

From Chapter I: "Profit Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

1.3. Management Under the Profit System

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The sovereignty of the consumers and the democratic operation of the market do not stop at the doors of a big business concern. They permeate all its departments and branches. Responsibility to the consumer is the lifeblood of business and enterprise in an unhampered market society. The profit motive through the instrumentality of which the entrepreneurs are driven to serve the consumers to the best of their ability is at the same time the first principle of any commercial and industrial aggregate's internal organization.

From Chapter I: "Profit Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

1.4. Personnel Management Under an Unhampered Labor Market

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The price of labor is a market phenomenon determined by the consumers' demands for goods and services. Virtually every employer is always in search of cheaper labor and every employee in search of a job with higher remuneration.

From Chapter I: "Profit Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

2.1. Bureaucracy Under Despotic Government

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The first virtue of a government administrator is to abide by the codes and decrees. He becomes a bureaucrat.

From Chapter II: "Bureaucratic Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

2.2. Bureaucracy Within a Democracy

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

There has always been bureaucracy in America. What characterizes our time is the expansion of the sphere of government interference with business and with many other items of the citizenry's affairs. And this results in a substitution of bureaucratic management for profit management.

From Chapter II: "Bureaucratic Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

2.3. The Essential Features of Bureaucratic Management

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

In public administration there is no connection between revenue and expenditure. The public services are spending money only; the insignificant income derived from special sources is more or less accidental.

From Chapter II: "Bureaucratic Management". Narrated by Millian Quinteros.

5.3. The Bureaucrat as a Voter

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The bureaucrat is in a peculiar position: he is both employer and employee. And his pecuniary interest as employee towers above his interest as employer, as he gets much more from the public funds than he contributes to them.

From Chapter V: "The Social and Political Implictations of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

6.1. The German Youth Movement

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

Capitalism is a system under which everybody has the chance of acquiring wealth. Not everybody, of course, is favored by good luck. But everybody knows that strenuous effort pays. All roads are open to the smart youngster. Life is worth living because it is full of promise. All this was literally true of America. But it is quite a different thing under the rising tide of bureaucratization.

From Chapter VI: "The Psychological Consequences of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.

6.2. The Fate of the Rising Generation within a Bureucratic Environment

Ludwig von Mises — Tue, 02 May 1944 01:00:00 -0500

The German youth movement was an impotent and abortive revolt of youth against the menace of bureaucratization. However, it was doomed because it did not attack the seed of the evil: the trend toward socialization.

From Chapter VI: "The Psychological Consequences of Bureaucratization". Narrated by Millian Quintero.