Administrata

In the New York Times, David Brooks opines on the growth of the "administrative apparatus" in the United States, and how that "redistribute[s] power from workers to rule makers, and in so doing sap[s] initiative, discretion, creativity and drive." Not to mention taking a quick dig at the "dangerous ideology" of diversity, equity and inclusion.

I tend to like David Brooks' writing, which is why I read him. But he seems to evince the same tendency in most his articles; decrying change in the world without understanding why it came about. The closest he comes in speaking to the incentive structure that brought about the rise of the administrative apparatus is to note: "Organizations are trying to protect themselves from lawsuits." But he doesn't investigate why organizations need such protection. Instead, he goes on to say "but the whole administrative apparatus comes with an implied view of human nature. People are weak, fragile, vulnerable and kind of stupid."

This, however, is not unique to administrators. Dan Ariely posted a link to the column on LinkedIn (which is where I first saw it), and he notes that there is a dilemma between "1) having more and clearer rules (and more people to make us keep those rules) and 2) creativity and freedom that is needed for motivation." I disagree with him on that. Rather than "more and clearer rules," I suspect that people are looking for greater and more comprehensive safety. And they often define "safety" in a way that not only means that nothing bad ever happens to them, but that anything bad that does manage to happen isn't their fault.

Childhood is now thoroughly administered. I’m lucky enough to have grown up at a time when parents let children roam free to invent their own games and solve their own problems. Now kids’ activities, from travel sports to recess, are supervised, and rules dominate. Parents are afraid their kids might be harmed, but as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have argued, by being overprotective, parents make their kids more fragile and more vulnerable to harm.

It's a worthwhile point, but what's missing from it is any means to assuage parent's fears of immediate harms. I'm old enough to remember for myself "a time when parents let children roam free to invent their own games and solve their own problems." But I'm also old enough to remember the Chicago Tylenol Poisonings (which were never solved). Not only did they cause a panic (especially in the Chicago area, where I lived at the time), but they reignited fears of poisons and other foreign objects being placed into Halloween treats (despite the fact that the real threat to roving trick-or-treaters tends to be automobile traffic). These events marked, for me anyway, a gradual shift in parental attitudes; one that was well under way, if not complete, by the time I graduated from college.

The Overton Window was shifting, and it's likely going to take quite a bit to shift it back. Mr. Brooks' speaks of the "administrative apparatus" as a thing unto itself, but it's being driven by social attitudes. Parents are highly invested in their children's success, and society at large tends to hold parents accountable for any ills that befall said children. Mr. Brooks is incredulous that colleges have directives on how students should practice bondage-discipline-sado-masochism (BDSM), but as noted earlier in the piece, the goal here is to protect themselves from lawsuits. And who is going to bring those lawsuits? Students and their parents. If Mr. Brooks wants to roll back the tide of administrators in the United States, step one is going to be making parents more at ease with the idea that terrible things are going to happen to children, and that a hunt for the guilty, either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion, serves no-one.

Studies have shown that when subjects are informed that this or that group of people have some sort of power or agency over their lives, the subjects' sympathy for those people diminishes. This creates a direct benefit to being seen as "weak, fragile, vulnerable and kind of stupid;" and if people don't naturally gravitate towards playing that part, personal injury lawyers will happily coach them at it. And so, yes, people come off as barely able to care for themselves. After all, it's not like there's a YouTube video showing you how to iron your clothing while wearing it, or anything... While some warning labels are corporate cover your ass, some are basically there to say, "hey, if you do this, and it goes sideways, you can't say we didn't warn you."

I would argue that it's difficult for an administrator to make the case that people should be treated as strong, resilient, tough and intelligent when if someone comes to harm, that administrator will be on the sharp end of a lawsuit. Accordingly, rolling back the various systems of administrators that have sprung up to protect people is going to mean rolling back conceptualizations of harm, likely quite substantially, because the definition of "safety" is going to have to change.

Many modern Americans see themselves has just having enough to feel the sting of its loss; whether that's children, housing, employment or whatnot. Convincing them that they're well enough off they they needn't worry about what they have is going to be a tough sell.