Grifters Gonna Grift – Unless We Stop Them
It's great to see so many outsiders named to top positions. But the only way to effect systemic change is to reverse years of horrible incentives that sidelined the best and promoted the worst.
It’s the Vibes, Stupid!
A few short months ago, the Democratic Party and its media megaphone urged America to focus on “the vibes.” Being a disturbingly compliant people, we did. Lo and behold! Outside a few tiny elite enclaves, the vibes were horrible. Turns out, governance by a detached, apathetic, self-important, elitist oligarchy mired in denial, subject to an alien set of values, and captive to a fictional worldview is not terribly popular. Who knew?
On November 5, the American people took an important step in the right direction. Since then, the vibes have improved quite noticeably. Fairly little, however, has actually changed. What we gained on November 5 was not a victory, but an opportunity. For the first time in a long time, Americans are bristling with optimism about the prospects for dismantling what has become a deeply oppressive system. And in all fairness, we have seen some successes—notably last week’s defeat of the pork-laden continuing resolution.
Yet it remains unclear how many people understand the difference between disease and symptom, between process and output. The medical metaphor is intentional. Because systems are systems, political, economic, and education systems have a great deal in common with biological systems. A human body harboring a disease may sneeze, cough, and run a fever. Alleviating those symptoms may bring comfort, but the body will remain diseased until the underlying bug is defeated. One of the biggest problems facing American health today is that the perpetual treatment of symptoms produces steady, reliable revenue streams; the defeat of underlying causes does not.
America’s important institutional systems are all—yes, all—deeply diseased. Some of us have been making this point for years, but it’s only quite recently that the broad public has begun to notice—in part because the symptoms have grown increasingly extreme. Bill Ackman provided the best worked example. For decades, he’d supported Harvard University—by reputation, one of the finest learning institutions the world has ever seen. One day, he was shocked to discover that Harvard was a haven for antisemitic terror supporting students who cheered rape and dismemberment as legitimate weapons of war. Clearly, something was amiss. That symptom motivated Ackman to do a deep dive—only to learn that Harvard and most of its compatriots were deeply infected.
Ackman provided a detailed description of his inquiry into academia. Others of comparable (or even greater) influence conducted parallel deep dives into the media, public health, regulatory agencies, C-suites, and the courts—only to find variants on the same themes. These influential voices appear to have succeeded where those of us who’ve been screaming from the sidelines have failed: They’ve embedded the scope of the problem deep in public thinking and generated a legitimate, widespread, grassroots clamor for a solution. Trump’s victory made clear that we might, possibly, have a chance at effecting a solution. That’s when the vibes made a sharp turn into positive territory.
A System is what its Incentives Make it
Good vibrations, however, don’t get things fixed. Two critical questions remain: First, how many people understand that we need to gut and redo our institutional systems, not just alleviate the most obvious symptoms? Second, are we bringing in the right people to effect systemic change?
I’ve been writing about these issues for years, though I probably articulated them most clearly in the context of academia. To put the matter succinctly, a system is what its internal incentives motivate the people working within it to make it. The problem with American universities is not that they are woke; wokeism is merely the symptom. The problem is that their internal incentives motivate academics to push in increasingly radical directions increasingly divorced from reality. The term I coined for this phenomenon is “incremental outrageousness.”
Academic success flows to those whose work is slightly more outrageous than that of their predecessors. Too far out, and you lack the foundational claim of “science.” Backward, and you’re a dangerous reactionary. Sideways and you’re denying “scientific consensus.” And so, for example, it’s not too hard to show the incremental “scientific” advance taking us—one step at a time—from the valuable observation that it might be interesting to study history from perspectives other than those of royals and conquerors to today’s conclusion that the nuclear family is a tool of oppression.
I also showed that similarly misplaced incentives have destroyed media and government. It’s long been obvious to anyone willing to pay attention. Spend any time living in Washington with friends who work in the agencies, and it becomes clear that mission statements are largely irrelevant for any purpose other than recruiting. The EPA, for example, may draw enthusiastic recent graduates eager to protect the environment. Those who succeed, however, are those who learn quite quickly that their actual job is to protect the EPA.
How did people like Anthony Fauci and Mark Milley rise all the way to the top?Were they America’s finest minds solving tough problems facing public health and national defense?Hardly.Several decades ago, they cleared the fairly generic credentialing hurdles to enter their respective fields.Once there, while the sharpest and most dedicated of their classmates focused foolishly on conducting excellent work, Fauci, Milley, and their like focused on getting promoted.That’s who we elevate in America: Those who best read the internal incentives to master the bureaucracy.
They’re Starting to Notice
Last June, we hosted Scott Atlas’s Global Liberty Institute at New College of Florida for an amazing one-day symposium on institutional corruption. Successive panels discussed the ways in which teaching, research, medicine, law, science, and other prestige professions have turned sharply away from the missions that most Americans—including the overwhelming majority of those laboring inside those professions and institutions—believe they serve. Speaker after speaker told variants of the same story. To paraphrase:
I’ve dedicated my entire career to this field. I got into it because I wanted to do good work, push the boundaries of knowledge and understanding, and help people. I’ve been quite successful. I’ve had appointments at top places, won awards at conferences, and received glowing reviews for my work. One day, questions of direct relevance to my area of expertise became front-page stories. Much to my dismay, nearly everything being said and advocated was backwards. So I spoke up, saying things I’d long considered common sense and matters of consensus among my colleagues. Yet I suddenly found myself vilified, ostracized, and threatened. I was canceled, sanctioned, and/or relegated to the periphery of my field, whose luminaries now deride me as some sort of conspiracy-theoretic quack.
It was an exhilarating day. I wondered, however, how many of them understood the underlying message: While they had navigated their fields well enough to rise to the “top,” their influence on the field had been severely limited. They may have dedicated their careers to doing good work and training new professionals, but those shaping the field had very different agendas.
Pardon me while I Emote
It also evoked an emotional reaction I’m still trying to characterize. As with so many things in my intellectual and professional life, I’d arrived too early (which is ironic, because in the physical world I’m always hustling to avoid being late). What struck these professionals as a bolt from the blue at some point over the past five years is where I’ve spent most of my career. I’d figured it out in the early 1990s, before my thirtieth birthday. Had I been just a bit luckier and a bit less savvy, I too might have enjoyed a career of prestige and success prior to my cancellation. As it is, I’ve spent most of my career on the sidelines, analyzing problems, proposing solutions, and explaining why conventional wisdom was pointed in flawed and dangerous directions.
To give just a few examples:
My academic work from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s took the highly controversial position that the guidance for AI—systems designed to make decisions in uncertain environments—should incorporate large scale data mining and statistical reasoning.
My assessment of the early information age ca. 2001-03 described a cycle that first appeared in the music industry. I showed how new technologies would invite innovators to provide services of genuine value. Powerful incumbents, enraged at the competition, would fight to restore their positions, largely by lobbying for legal and regulatory change. Given the erosion of technological barriers that had long protected them, the only way for the law to restore them was with increasingly extensive prohibitions and draconian penalties. Because I disliked this path, I also recommended ways to avoid it.
My continuation of that work ca. 2004-06 included a deep dive into innovation economics. I showed how a conscious decision made in the late 1970s / early 1980s had unleashed rapid innovation rewarding small businesses and startups. I argued that we were entering a period of oligopolist consolidation, entrenching a power-sharing arrangement between a few big companies (particularly in the information, software, and Internet sectors) and the federal government. Again, because I disliked this path, I also recommended ways to avoid it.
My assessment of Middle East politics argued as far back as 1990 that the centerpiece of American policy should be getting its two reliable allies—Israel and Saudi Arabia—to cooperate. I went on to show that the Arab and Islamic rejection of Israel was an imperial claim opposed to national self-determination. Israel’s success arose precisely because it was a state built around a pre-existing nation, and that the only path toward a stable Middle East involved liberating comparable small states to embody the dreams of the region’s various minority nations.
I had a hard time getting much of this work published—and an even harder time getting it noticed. Why? Because in all cases it ran against the grain. Worse, it highlighted the ways that money, prestige, and position were flowing almost exclusively to grifters whose work pushed strongly in whatever misguided direction appeared most lucrative at the moment.
And I must note, I am hardly alone. America’s intellectual terrain is strewn with people like me, possessing impressive credentials, sterling track records, and frustrating careers. Some directed their efforts elsewhere and became rich. Some found ways to keep the bills paid without ever breaking through to the next level of either influence or wealth. Some struggled, floundered, and found solace in unhealthy addictions. Most of us have plenty of work in the public domain where it can be found easily—if anyone would just look at it.
If America is really committed to reform, our leadership needs to find and elevate such people while sidelining nearly all who have climbed to positions of prestige within the systems we now seek to redirect.
I’m pleased to report that the Trump transition is making some important steps in the right direction. I had the privilege of meeting and chatting with Jay Bhattachrya (soon to run NIH) at our symposium last June. Harmeet Dhillon (soon to run Civil Rights at DoJ) has been a personal friend for nearly twenty years. I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with Sebastian Gorka (soon to be counterterrorism director) a few times over the past eight years. And I know a handful of others who’ve been rotated from various parts of the periphery into positions of lower visibility but genuine influence.
While these folks may have enjoyed higher profiles and greater impacts in their careers than I have in mine, they are hardly the designated luminaries whose beliefs have guided the professional communities from which they’ve emerged. And that’s a pity, because their ideas, proposals, values, and ethics are far superior to those whose influence has heretofore dominated. Time to turn that around!
The problem is that far too many of the grifters remain. And they will remain, as long as we stay focused on symptoms rather than diseases. If we really want to fix our systems, we’re going to have to redo years of misdirected incentives and misguided promotions. Nearly all of the people who’ve navigated the bureaucracy most successfully need to be fired. Those who’ve done excellent work while shorn of influence need to be promoted. Those who were shunted to the periphery because of their commitment to mission and independent thought need to be found and recruited.
The failure to move in such directions was among my biggest critiques of the first Trump Administration. My belief in the likelihood of a repeated failure was among my greatest concerns for a second Trump Administration. I’m thrilled to see significant movement in the right direction. I hope that it continues. And I hope that I can find a way to be part of it.
If you’ve read this far, kudos to you—and thanks for sticking around.
Have a very Merry Christmas,
a Chag Chanukah Sameach,
a Happy New Year,
and whatever else may float your boat.
For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com
To learn more about America’s Spiritual Crisis and the new religion of Wokeism, see: American Spirit or Great Awokening? The Battle to Restore or Destroy Our Nation (Academica Press, 2024).
To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).
To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.
To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.
Excellent article! Thanks 👍