You might think Colt’s slogan a relic. But there’s a modern analogue. Think about a different kind of power asymmetry. One that’s bureaucratic rather than ballistic, persistent rather than point-blank, and seemingly impossible to break.
Bureaus usually have an information advantage over their Ministers.
A Minister’s office has a handful of staff. A Ministry has hundreds, or sometimes thousands.
Ministers come and go. Officials stay.
Ministers face deadlines. Officials can play to the timetable.
A Minister can direct officials to produce legislation that achieves a specified outcome. Officials know the legislative schedule. They can deliver hundreds of pages of legislation, right at the deadline, and claim it does the job. At that point, it is too late for the Minister to do much about it if it doesn’t.
Public choice economists have wrestled with this principal-agent problem for decades. Can the legislature really control the bureaucracy?
It’s a hard problem. But there’s a new equalizer in town.
It’s something any Minister could use right now.
Get a subscription to the best frontier AI model. On the most recent data, their capabilities double about every four months. That pace will accelerate as today’s best models help build the next generation of models. But even the current ones are excellent.
For less than five hundred dollars per month, any Minister can have a very capable assistant that can parse hundreds of pages of draft legislation in minutes.
It can test whether the draft does what was asked, or whether officials have gone off on their own adventure.
It can suggest questions to put to officials.
It can even provide a first cut at legislative drafting, so a Minister can provide officials with a starting point.
A frontier-model subscription is a great equalizer, of a sort. Ministers will know a lot more about their area than most people. And having that kind of domain knowledge is necessary – just like knowing how to aim a Colt.
And like revolvers, it’s a bit of an arms race. Officials will also use it.
Ministers should not go unarmed if they want to hit their targets.
Dr Eric Crampton is Chief Economist at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
A Minister’s office has a handful of staff. A Ministry has hundreds, or sometimes thousands.
Ministers come and go. Officials stay.
Ministers face deadlines. Officials can play to the timetable.
A Minister can direct officials to produce legislation that achieves a specified outcome. Officials know the legislative schedule. They can deliver hundreds of pages of legislation, right at the deadline, and claim it does the job. At that point, it is too late for the Minister to do much about it if it doesn’t.
Public choice economists have wrestled with this principal-agent problem for decades. Can the legislature really control the bureaucracy?
It’s a hard problem. But there’s a new equalizer in town.
It’s something any Minister could use right now.
Get a subscription to the best frontier AI model. On the most recent data, their capabilities double about every four months. That pace will accelerate as today’s best models help build the next generation of models. But even the current ones are excellent.
For less than five hundred dollars per month, any Minister can have a very capable assistant that can parse hundreds of pages of draft legislation in minutes.
It can test whether the draft does what was asked, or whether officials have gone off on their own adventure.
It can suggest questions to put to officials.
It can even provide a first cut at legislative drafting, so a Minister can provide officials with a starting point.
A frontier-model subscription is a great equalizer, of a sort. Ministers will know a lot more about their area than most people. And having that kind of domain knowledge is necessary – just like knowing how to aim a Colt.
And like revolvers, it’s a bit of an arms race. Officials will also use it.
Ministers should not go unarmed if they want to hit their targets.
Dr Eric Crampton is Chief Economist at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
4 comments:
I understand there are something like 6000 policy analysts in NZ, with AI that number could fall to 10.
There is one weapon that the minister has real power and that is money, defund.
By way of example when Adrian Orr had his fit about underfunding etc. The Govt. should have put a tender out to several countries such as Australia and Singapore to out source our reserve bank processes, the mind focusing outcome would have been immediate and this could work for many departments.
Presumably AI can examine proposed legislation, policy statements etc and rate for incipient support of maori takeover. Bring on AI!
Great suggestion Eric. But do they have the brainpower to operate that way? On the other hand, maybe the results we are seeing out of Parliament are exactly what they want? The bureaucrats make perfect scapegoats.
Bill T has a point about outsourcing the NZ Reserve bank process, but it should be enlarged to joining or affiliating NZ to the Reserve Bank of Australia. We, NZ are but the size of a single state of Aussie and their direct pacific neighbour.
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