The Life of Ants

A centrally managed, but inherently unnatural, system requires a lot of inputs and control mechanisms to keep up the appearance of stability. Because everything is imposed from the top, not from the operation of rational choice from below, the level of costs rises in proportion to the level of desired control. By contrast, a society that relies on individual rational choice need only watch out for the outliers, such as criminal behavior. They can leave everything else alone, and manage things by exception, not by detailed specification.

Recently, Fox News reported the story of a little girl whose lunch box was disallowed (and her parents fined) because it did not meet some obscure standard. Who knew there were food police in school? “Trace Gallagher reported that a lunch inspector at the school told the girl she couldn’t eat her turkey sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice. Instead, providing the girl with a USDA-approved lunch with the following guidelines: one serving of meat, one serving of grains, and two servings of fruit or vegetables.”

Well, you learn something new every day. But the most interesting aspect of the incident came from a follow-up story. The inspection system is paid for by the administration’s “stimulus program.” Stimulus program? But of course. The effort required to protect little girls from turkey sandwiches is not to be underestimated. Without billions, how could you afford it? Here’s what it takes to screen a sandwich:

it still isn’t clear who the inspector was who deemed this little girl’s lunch was unhealthy, but that it was an agent from the Department of Health and Human Services at the state level. Apparently a division within the department comes to the school every year to conduct an evaluation related to the More at Four program, which is a North Carolina state program.

Burrows said, “As part of the evaluation, they look at students lunches that are brought from home to make sure that they meet USDA guidelines. And this school, we’re told, lost points this year because too many children were bringing their lunches from home and they did not meet, according to this inspector, the USDA guidelines.”

The costs of running a society by detailed regulation do not scale in a linear fashion. Adding a single little thing requires committees to coordinate between committees; oversight and review functions; evaluation units and managers to manage everything. And that doesn’t even count the cost of politically selling and defending each and every new mandate.

Defending and selling all these expansions of government power is also expensive because you have to beat down the objectors. The most interesting thing about reports that Media Matters, a George Soros-funded tax-exempt organization, has an “enemies list” is that it exists at all. Because once you start, where does it end? A leaked internal memorandum shows that its confidential intention is to investigate “the backgrounds, connections, operations and political and financial activities of the individuals” of the following:

News Corp

Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox News’ websites

Conservative news sites

WorldNetDaily
BigHollywood.com
NewsMax
BigGovernment.com

Conservative think thanks

The Heritage Foundation
American Enterprise Institute
Cato Institute

News Corp executives

Rupert Murdoch
Chase Carey
David DeVoe
Lawrence Jacobs
James Murdoch

Conservative donors

Peter Thiel
Richard Mellon Scaife
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation
Koch Family Foundations

Fox News executives

CEO Roger Ailes
Senior vice president Michael Clemente
Vice president of news Sean Smith
Vice president of new editorial product Jay Wallace
Fox Business Network executive vice president Kevin Magee

Fox personalities

Glenn Beck
Sean Hannity
Bill O’Reilly

Fox senior production and corporation staff

Hannity executive producer John Finley
On the Record executive producer Meade Cooper
O’Reilly Factor senior executive producer David Tabacoff
Fox & Friends executive producer Lauren Petterson

Political figures

Carly Fiorina
David Vitter
Eric Cantor
John Boehner
Mitch McConnell
Michele Bachmann
Steve King

Whether or not one believes Media Matters is acting properly or improperly with respect to their tax exempt status, anyone can see this effort will cost a lot of money. What is less obvious is that it is also prone to geometric increase. Because the list isn’t long enough. It is never long enough.

The more “Hope and Change” grows, the longer the Media Matters list of enemies will become, and not by a linear degree. How many bishops in the Roman Catholic church must now be added to the list? How many parents of little girls? Sooner or later the list of enemies will grow to the point where even the resources of George Soros will be strained.

One of the reasons conservatives do not as well as the Left in areas like Media Matters is that most of them have a life. You know, they want to go bowling or have a barbecue with the family or maybe get some sleep. But on the Left, endless and tireless conspiracy is the stuff of life. That is living. If you’re not meeting, not connecting, not watching, then you’re not alive. J.R.R. Tolkien, who was ahead of most of us in such matters, remarks that the Mouth of Sauron was once a personality who eventually got too absorbed in his work to see a dentist. He

… entered the service of the Dark Tower when it first rose again. His name is remembered in no tale, for he himself had forgotten it.

You would too if you had to watch kids; lunches and chase every shadow. The requirements eventually grow so large that even the Eye of Soros cannot cope. The number of minions who must daily toil in this seething mess to discern and implement their Master’s Will is enormous. And sooner or later, they will start getting in each other’s way. That is directly reflected in the costs of implementing every new program. Obamacare, for example, will wind up becoming incredibly expensive simply because of the cost of its impositions. Left to itself, it will expand and expand and explode.

What finally undermines centralized systems as diverse as the Soviet Union and the EU is cost. Eventually they become too complex to remain workable and run out of other people’s money. Picture of the day: the Russian Embassy in Havana. Maybe Sean Penn likes it.