Safe Bets: Minerals Management Service Edition
Reacting to news that Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum — who was ostensibly charged with regulating drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — has been fired, Dave Schuler offers a sucker bet:
Prediction: the MMS will be abolished and its responsibilities split among several other agencies. Most of the same people will remain in place.
I made the same prediction vis-a-vis airline security when TSA and the DHS were being created and was, of course, vindicated.
See, also, Dave’s related post, “Why I Don’t Like Technocracy.” A snippet:
None of [Obama’s cabinet] has ever started a business, made a payroll, built a bridge or a building, or, possibly, run a large project with specific deliverables or even hired somebody to do that. Of all of President Obama’s cabinet those I’d trust most to do those things are Steven Chu (physicists frequently actually build things) and Eric Shinseki. They’re the secretaries of the Department of Energy and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, respectively.
Formally, technocracy means the rule by experts or authorities. Practically, it means that authorities in some particular field run every field.
There is apparently an idea abroad in the land that any bright attorney from a good school can do anything. It ain’t necessarily so.
So it would seem.
