In recent weeks I have come across several cases in which officialdom appears to be entirely set on sabotaging both their own goals as well as any trust that non-bureaucrats might have in government policy.
I fully agree. Ultimately this is an issue of accountability. Commentators and politicians who say that more must be done are entirely unaccountable. On the other hand, strict liability or tort systems are extremely blunt and inefficient ways of imposing accountability. Class actions work occasionally but in the UK they have almost all been driven by retrospective changes in rules which is a stupid way of proceeding.
Compensation schemes are a bit better but only if they are not sabotaged in the ways that I discussed. Even worse are the examples of compensation for contaminated blood transfusions which are a classic example of "justice delayed is justice denied".
"However, this is not the issue. Even if the two events were independent, a signalling arrangement only works if the general population believes it. What matters is not some sophisticated professional judgement, but how the signals are understood. That means that compensation must be paid in all cases for which the public – not doctors or statisticians – believe that it is more likely than not that the vaccination caused the harm which occurred.
If claims that seem clear-cut to a reasonable outsider are denied, then the signal given is not the one intended but the exact opposite. Instead of conveying confidence that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh potential harms, the bureaucracy is saying, though probably unintentionally, that it fears the cost of compensation will be high because the harm caused by vaccination is large."
Suppose that the two events are not independent, that the government knows for sure that they are not independent and knows for sure that a huge number of similar events are also not independent. Suppose that the government knows, in the case of Covid-19 vaccination, that the population wide benefits do not outweigh the harms and that the harms are significant, serious and potentially extremely costly if the government was to offer compensation for all those harms which are publicly perceived to be caused by the vaccine, because in fact, the vast majority of those perceived to be caused by vaccination, are indeed caused by vaccination, and the government knows it. In that case the government is going to be desperate to maintain the entirely false perception that benefits outweigh harms, and they are damned if they do open the floodgates to compensation, but also damned if they resist opening those floodgates, even an inch. Public trust is going to be lost either way, so what the government has decided to do is carefully manage public DISTRUST.
Vaccine compensation schemes have a history that long precedes Covid-19. That is why I chose the polio example because few people believe that the benefits of those vaccines are less than any harm caused by them. I was trying to be neutral by focusing on examples where there are few grounds for public distrust but for which foolish parsimony amounts to self-sabotage.
Governments are rarely as competent and coherent in managing bad policy as you appear to think. Under your assumptions most of the ones I have dealt with would pay compensation in order to persist with the illusion that everything is ok.
I'm not sure that I was implying that the government was competent, merely rather desperate! If the previous government (fully supported by members of the current government) was competent, they would never have allowed highly experimental gene-based vaccines to be rolled out to the public in the first place, having granted blanket immunity to the vaccine manufacturers from potential vaccine damage compensation claims, thus effectively opening up the public purse to settle any such claims.
I fear the authorities are very reluctant to pay compensation for alleged Covid vaccine injuries because they know, but cannot admit, that these vaccines were very harmful indeed, by design according to independent vaccine experts such as Dr Mike Yeadon and Dr Sucharit Bhakdi.
I incline to the foul-up rather than conspiracy view of the world. Nothing in my experience leads me to believe that governments were either competent or organised enough to persist with vaccines that were seriously harmful. There have been such treatments and vaccines in the past, but they were quite rapidly withdrawn. I think that the record indicates blind wishful thinking on the part of policymakers who could not admit that they have little control over the course of pandemics.
Covid-19 was a coldly-premeditated, globally-coordinated “plandemic”. Reiner Fuellmich (now locked up in prison on trumped up charges) was spot on in his 2022 Covid-19 Crimes Against Humanity model trial. Listen to his closing arguments and read the evidence of Yeadon, Bhakdi and many others in https://metatron.substack.com/p/reiner-fuellmichs-grand-jury-court.
Fuellmich and his colleagues concluded that the main motivation for launching the plandemic was the unsustainable levels of fiat money debt our irresponsible politicians had racked up. They clearly wanted to digitally shackle the populace in advance of a potential global financial meltdown. They will probably try again via some different pretext, e.g. CBDC linked to digital ids. Hopefully the Donald Trump administration will successfully spike their guns.
Could it also be that those who draft the policy are not around to defend it or enforce it when it comes under scrutiny?
As you point out, good policies and plans usually show their worth in the second and third order results that they drive or don't drive. People making decisions, usually under emotional or time stress, tend to fixate on first order considerations.
Clearly at some point someone in gov was smart enough to think up these policies, where did they go?
I think that this is a good point. Still a separation between those who devise policies and those who implement them later is inevitable in a bureaucracy. Sometimes new policies are imposed on officials who object for various reasons, in which case sabotage must be expected unless either staff are moved or they are very carefully supervised.
In these cases, I think part of the problem is the passage of time - tax credits go back to 2000 - and another part is the overwhelming emphasis on parsimony when money is short.
The other factor is many policy innovations are driven by people with very limited toleration for administration and bureaucratic infighting, so the framework is set up but too little time is spent on ensuring that schemes work properly and consistently.
Thank you Gordon for another lucid and thoroughly informative piece. I confess when I hear the well-worn phrase "the government must do more", I want to put my head in my hands and sob.
I fully agree. Ultimately this is an issue of accountability. Commentators and politicians who say that more must be done are entirely unaccountable. On the other hand, strict liability or tort systems are extremely blunt and inefficient ways of imposing accountability. Class actions work occasionally but in the UK they have almost all been driven by retrospective changes in rules which is a stupid way of proceeding.
Compensation schemes are a bit better but only if they are not sabotaged in the ways that I discussed. Even worse are the examples of compensation for contaminated blood transfusions which are a classic example of "justice delayed is justice denied".
"However, this is not the issue. Even if the two events were independent, a signalling arrangement only works if the general population believes it. What matters is not some sophisticated professional judgement, but how the signals are understood. That means that compensation must be paid in all cases for which the public – not doctors or statisticians – believe that it is more likely than not that the vaccination caused the harm which occurred.
If claims that seem clear-cut to a reasonable outsider are denied, then the signal given is not the one intended but the exact opposite. Instead of conveying confidence that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh potential harms, the bureaucracy is saying, though probably unintentionally, that it fears the cost of compensation will be high because the harm caused by vaccination is large."
Suppose that the two events are not independent, that the government knows for sure that they are not independent and knows for sure that a huge number of similar events are also not independent. Suppose that the government knows, in the case of Covid-19 vaccination, that the population wide benefits do not outweigh the harms and that the harms are significant, serious and potentially extremely costly if the government was to offer compensation for all those harms which are publicly perceived to be caused by the vaccine, because in fact, the vast majority of those perceived to be caused by vaccination, are indeed caused by vaccination, and the government knows it. In that case the government is going to be desperate to maintain the entirely false perception that benefits outweigh harms, and they are damned if they do open the floodgates to compensation, but also damned if they resist opening those floodgates, even an inch. Public trust is going to be lost either way, so what the government has decided to do is carefully manage public DISTRUST.
Vaccine compensation schemes have a history that long precedes Covid-19. That is why I chose the polio example because few people believe that the benefits of those vaccines are less than any harm caused by them. I was trying to be neutral by focusing on examples where there are few grounds for public distrust but for which foolish parsimony amounts to self-sabotage.
Governments are rarely as competent and coherent in managing bad policy as you appear to think. Under your assumptions most of the ones I have dealt with would pay compensation in order to persist with the illusion that everything is ok.
I'm not sure that I was implying that the government was competent, merely rather desperate! If the previous government (fully supported by members of the current government) was competent, they would never have allowed highly experimental gene-based vaccines to be rolled out to the public in the first place, having granted blanket immunity to the vaccine manufacturers from potential vaccine damage compensation claims, thus effectively opening up the public purse to settle any such claims.
Appertaining to vaccine injuries, your erstwhile Edinburgh University colleague Professor Richard Ennos has an article in TCW today which may be of interest (and my own comment beneath it): https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/misuse-of-a-museum-naked-covid-propaganda-parading-as-science/.
I fear the authorities are very reluctant to pay compensation for alleged Covid vaccine injuries because they know, but cannot admit, that these vaccines were very harmful indeed, by design according to independent vaccine experts such as Dr Mike Yeadon and Dr Sucharit Bhakdi.
I incline to the foul-up rather than conspiracy view of the world. Nothing in my experience leads me to believe that governments were either competent or organised enough to persist with vaccines that were seriously harmful. There have been such treatments and vaccines in the past, but they were quite rapidly withdrawn. I think that the record indicates blind wishful thinking on the part of policymakers who could not admit that they have little control over the course of pandemics.
Covid-19 was a coldly-premeditated, globally-coordinated “plandemic”. Reiner Fuellmich (now locked up in prison on trumped up charges) was spot on in his 2022 Covid-19 Crimes Against Humanity model trial. Listen to his closing arguments and read the evidence of Yeadon, Bhakdi and many others in https://metatron.substack.com/p/reiner-fuellmichs-grand-jury-court.
Fuellmich and his colleagues concluded that the main motivation for launching the plandemic was the unsustainable levels of fiat money debt our irresponsible politicians had racked up. They clearly wanted to digitally shackle the populace in advance of a potential global financial meltdown. They will probably try again via some different pretext, e.g. CBDC linked to digital ids. Hopefully the Donald Trump administration will successfully spike their guns.
Could it also be that those who draft the policy are not around to defend it or enforce it when it comes under scrutiny?
As you point out, good policies and plans usually show their worth in the second and third order results that they drive or don't drive. People making decisions, usually under emotional or time stress, tend to fixate on first order considerations.
Clearly at some point someone in gov was smart enough to think up these policies, where did they go?
I think that this is a good point. Still a separation between those who devise policies and those who implement them later is inevitable in a bureaucracy. Sometimes new policies are imposed on officials who object for various reasons, in which case sabotage must be expected unless either staff are moved or they are very carefully supervised.
In these cases, I think part of the problem is the passage of time - tax credits go back to 2000 - and another part is the overwhelming emphasis on parsimony when money is short.
The other factor is many policy innovations are driven by people with very limited toleration for administration and bureaucratic infighting, so the framework is set up but too little time is spent on ensuring that schemes work properly and consistently.
Thank you Gordon for another lucid and thoroughly informative piece. I confess when I hear the well-worn phrase "the government must do more", I want to put my head in my hands and sob.