Breakneck versus Paralysis?
China’s autocratic society comes to life in Breakneck, the new book by Dan Wang. Nothing gets in the way of public works. Subways go through buildings. High-speed rail lines are built seemingly overnight. Industrial dominance in solar panels and electric cars is the result of deliberate policy.
Breakage is common. Top-down mandates can’t adapt to unforeseen circumstances and market realities. Cities of apartment buildings remain empty. One provincial czar had a kind of genius for idiotic mega-projects, including a giant ski resort in a place without snow.
What’s most breathtaking, to me, is the state’s intrusion into personal lives. Daily movements of millions of citizens were monitored in an obsessive and futile approach to eradicate Covid. Assembly-line workers were locked into their factories. Orwell comes to life. China’s Big Brother tolerates little deviation—the idiotic official with the ski fantasy was, as they say, terminated. But even Orwell could not imagine the brutality of ending late-term pregnancies by women suspected of violating the one-child policy. I could barely make myself finish that chapter.
Wang contrasts China’s explosive development with paralytic government in the US. China builds. America bickers. Wang sees this as a matter of training. Xi Jinping and most of his officials are trained as engineers. Congress is packed with lawyers. In a global competition of engineers versus lawyers, Wang suggests that lawyers won’t do well. But that’s not our only choice.
China and America share one trait, causing the worst excesses of each. Both countries govern through top-down mandates that disempower people on the ground. Dictates from Beijing are followed slavishly. Law too is a form of central power when it prescribes exactly how to do things. In the US, processes for infrastructure permits go on for years because responsible officials lack authority to make trade-off judgments. Schools fail because principals lack authority to uphold standards and values—no authority, for example, to remove ineffective teachers.
By protecting against misconduct such as crime and pollution, the rule of law should enhance free activity, not suffocate it. Instead, law after the 1960s was reconceived as a kind of software program for daily choices—telling officials and citizens exactly how to do things, even mediating personnel decisions in the workplace. Instead of a protective fence around a field of freedom, law replaced freedom.
Paralysis in America is caused by a flawed philosophy of law, not by the rule of law as contemplated by the Framers. In my forthcoming book, Saving Can-Do, I argue that America must return to simpler frameworks that are activated by human responsibility. People on the ground must have freedom to make sense of daily choices. Top-down dictates from any source will always cause misery, alienation, and frequent failure.
– Philip
In his multi-part series on capitalism for his Substack Elevate, Mats Lederhausen cites our work: “Howard argues convincingly that overly complicated regulations not only slow down processes but actively discourage risk-taking and innovative thinking. He believes regulations should be outcome-oriented and straightforward, rather than overly prescriptive and detailed, allowing room for creative problem-solving. Simplifying rules in this way helps unleash entrepreneurial creativity.”