There is so much chaos these days it’s hard to keep track of it all or even prioritize the problems.  But in terms of long-term consequences there is a single worst thing we are doing.  We’re eliminating professional competence in government.

This is of course a joint project of the Supreme Court and the Trump administration.  The Court has decided that all federal employees serve at the uncontrolled whim of the President, and Trump has fired anyone he considers inadequately loyal.  There is no remaining notion of a professional career in government.  You are a political appointee, there only to prove the President is right.

As we’ve noted here before—government is needed to support both the development of the economy and the well-being of the population.  Business by itself will do neither.  Adam Smith himself was explicit: “The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.”  The job of government isn’t simple; it requires considerable technical knowledge, foresight, and understanding of how to get things done.  That’s how we produced the dominance and prosperity after the Second World War.  Our success didn’t just happen.  There were people who made it happen.

That lasted until those running things got too greedy (while China emulated our success and rose as a challenger).  We’ve now reached the stage where Trump and his oligarchs have decided they don’t need anyone else:  they know all there is to know, and  they certainly should not be saddled with the needs of their inferiors. So they don’t need the kind of people who enable government to do its job—because they don’t want that job to get done.

We have eliminated professional competence in government. That’s the definition of decadent decay.