“A brilliantly conceived, much needed manifesto!

Informed by the latest

theory concepts and solidly grounded in practical experience, this book
provides a vivid account of the problematic situation in 21st-century
America and its institutions of governance – and Farmer, an ex-public
administrator and eminent scholar, knows what to do about it. The book is
relevant to both the public administration community (currently under
attack as the ‘deep state’) as well as concerned citizens.”
— Orion White, Professor Emeritus, Virginia Tech University
“Efficiency requires consistent patterns; effectiveness requires breaking
patterns; Farmer critiques American governance and lays out a significant
role for P.A. in rebuilding the system. Wisdom on reforming US govern-
ance from a former practitioner whom many scholars regard as the leading
contemporary theorist in P.A.”
— Bob Cunningham, Professor Emeritus of Political Science,
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Beyond Public Administration

How can public administration (P.A.) nudge government to govern funda-

mentally better in terms of policy? How critical is P.A. contemplation and
nudges – prods, shoves or hammer blows – to government-in-context?
In this book, David John Farmer argues that government-in-context refers
to government-in-totality, to what governs even if not called government and
to what constrains government action. Constricting contextual features are
infiltration, exfiltration and post-truth, raising questions relating to democ-
racy. Infiltration into government is the action of gaining access that benefits
big corporations, their owners and billionaires; findings are that it also mal-
nudges government action through such elements as big money, lobbying,
tax breaks and embrace of the free market. Reacting to factors like growing
income inequality, what is explained as exfiltration occurs for middle- and
lower-income people. Post-truth is noted as the Oxford Dictionary’s word of
the year for 2016, describing people concerned less with truths than with
opinions. The book analyzes three practical “hammer blow” and 18 “shove”
nudges to contradict the mal-nudges.
Beyond Public Administration will be of interest to P.A. scholars and
graduate students, more specifically those interested in critical, normative,
or interpretive scholarship focused on various aspects of P.A. theory, govern-
ance, and practical management.

David John Farmer is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Public Affairs at

the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia
Commonwealth University (VCU). Prior to joining VCU in 1980, Dr. Farmer
served as a budget analyst, an administrative analyst and an economist. He
also served as director of operations management, special assistant to the
New York City police commissioner and as a division director for the
National Institute of Justice in the U.S. Department of Justice. Farmer has
authored six books and 85 refereed articles and book chapters, and served as
a member of four editorial boards.
Beyond Public Administration
Contemplating and Nudging
Government-in-Context

David John Farmer

First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of David John Farmer to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-19148-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-20073-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
This book is dedicated to Dr. Rosemary L. Farmer, with much
love and gratitude.
Contents

Preface x

1 Introduction 1

2 Public Administration in Governmentality: A Bigger Helper 16

3 Contemplation and Beyond: The Bigger Picture 27

4 Context: Infiltration 42

5 Context: Exfiltration 53

6 Context: Post-Truth 66

7 Government-in-Context: Practical Nudges 76

8 Epilogue 103

Index 112
Preface

This book asks the reader to contemplate how public administration (P.A.)
or other disciplines could help government to govern fundamentally better
in terms of policy. To begin, let’s recognize (starting in Chapter 1) that
deeply reflective contemplation requires the scope of government as includ-
ing not only the public sector but also the impacting context of significant
parts of the private sector. All governments (as discussed in Chapter 2) are
socially constructed. Contemplating and nudging require (see Chapters 1
and 3) a helpful sense of how understanding is related to traditional and
post-traditional thinking, to management insights and to work and other
identities – and this is especially important for those who have hitherto seen
P.A. and government in narrow terms.
The powerfully constricting contextual features are infiltration, exfiltra-
tion, and post-truth – introduced in Chapter 1 and discussed in more detail
in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Infiltration means entering or gaining access to an
organization or place surreptitiously – in medicine, for instance, there is the
spread of a tumor, cells, etc. into a tissue or organ. Infiltration into
government is the action that includes entering or gaining access by big
money, big corporations and billionaires. The other two contextual features
also impact significantly and they also undermine democratic governing;
they are explained and analyzed in Chapters 1, 5 and 6.
We can open a new horizon in governing. Government-in-context,
meaning government-in-totality, is useful for contemplation and for
nudging. Nudge is a term associated with the prods used in Behavioral
Economics. A nudge used in this book can be a prod, a shove, or
a hammer blow. For P.A. to assume a leadership role in re-shaping the
context of infiltration, exfiltration and post-truth, a practical plan of four
tentative stages is described in Chapter 1. This includes a phased
approach toward utilization of specialists in Public Policy and then
Economics and Political Science – and even later some politicians.
Practical plans are also examined in Chapter 7 – to impact the mal-
trinity of infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth – in terms of 18 sets of
aims or nudges. (Dear reader, the Epilogue in Chapter 8 includes
a request that you choose your favorite four sets of aims for nudges,
 Preface xi
and mail them to a politician of your choice.) P.A. thinkers should not
limit themselves only to topics within traditional disciplinary boundary
lines: it is practical for P.A. to offer leadership in fundamentally upgrad-
ing government-in-context in terms of policy. This book is intended to
assist P.A. thinkers and others to accomplish this challenging and
important task.
1 Introduction

This book begins by asking an important question. What should public

administration (P.A.) do to provide leadership in helping government to
govern fundamentally better in terms of policy? Borrowing Woodrow
Wilson’s words from the first paragraph of his essay The Study of
Administration (Wilson, 1887), it can discover and help to shape “what
government can properly and successfully do.” Herbert Simon might be
as good an example for such P.A. leadership. He was a distinguished
theorist of administrative behavior. Later, he won the 1978 Nobel Prize
in Economics, and he contributed to Behavioral Economics. Going
beyond P.A. disciplinary limits is not inevitably foreign to those who
value the importance of bureaucratic behavior.
Four tentative P.A. leadership stages (or steps) are proposed and
described. The first stage is to contemplate and nudge (at conferences
and in writings) on the nature, advantages and disadvantages of a “better
marriage” of content and context within the concept of government-in-
context. The second is to establish full-time P.A. government-in-context
specialists, and to develop alliances with employees in other disciplines
including Public Policy and then Economics and Political Science. The
third would be macro government-in-context specialists (from P.A. and
other disciplines), plus some elected officials. The fourth stage is to
establish an Interdisciplinary (or Epistemic Pluralist) Team to Enhance
Democracy – setting up the team at the university (maybe also at the
governmental) level.
What is the meaning and nature of government-in-context? What is
the nature and meaning of nudging and of nudging government-in-
context? How should we understand the four-stage practical plan to
facilitate and steer P.A. leadership toward fundamental upgrading of
government-in-context? Addressing these questions, this introductory
chapter begins the explanations of what it means to say that govern-
ment-in-context can be used both as a nudge and as a concept that can
be contemplated to facilitate greater understanding. Later chapters carry
these concepts forward and focus on others. For instance, the second
chapter shows that government is a social construction – illustrating this
2 Introduction
by contrasting Ayn Rand’s analysis of minimal government and Michel
Foucault’s analysis of governmentality as what he called the “conduct of
conduct.” The third chapter focuses mainly on the meaning of contem-
plation of government-in-context. It continues the claim that nudges to
help government-in-context should be preceded by appropriate contem-
plation and recognition of the significance of post-traditional thinking
and of practical insights – and of the limits of our own work and
disciplinary limitations.

The Nature and Meaning of Government-in-Context

What does government-in-context mean? Government-in-context refers to
government-in-totality, to what governs even if it is not called government
and to what constrains and controls significant government action. Gov-
ernment-in-context is a term that can be used as a nudge. But just as
important, it can be viewed as a concept developed to facilitate greater
understanding.
To think about the nature and meaning of government-in-context, let’s
reflect about the meaning of government – and then about the meaning of
governmental contexts.

Reflecting about the Meaning of Government

What is a government? Consider that governments and governments-in-
context are socially constructed – as will be asserted in Chapter 2.
Consider what the philosopher Wittgenstein (1956, p. 9) meant when he
wrote that the limits of our language mean the limits of our world. He
could have added that our language limits refer to government-in-
context; it also limits our understanding of government, of governmen-
tality. If writing now, he could have added also that our language limits
are shaped not only by what we learn in school but also by the limits of
my TV, my movies, my newspaper, my radio, my cell phone, my big data,
my Facebook, my tweeting, my cinema, my internet.
For contemplative and practical analyses, it is not at all unusual
for “real” words (like “the people,” “market economy” “the world”
and “time”) to be examined, while their meanings might seem falsely
to be overwhelmingly obvious. The book What is a People? (Badiou
& Butler, 2015, p. 107) points out that collectivities like “the
people” – with a complex aura of meanings – have a significance
not shared by other collectivities. Herbert Simon asked – as late as
1991 – how surprised a visitor from Mars would be if he were told
that this world has market economies, with market transactions.
Simon thought that – and he explained why – the Martian would
believe that “organizational economy” would be a more appropriate
term, and it would have significant implications (along with his
 Introduction 3
concepts of bounded rationality and satisficing). One of the points
he makes is that,

Large organizations, especially governmental ones, are often carica-

tured as ‘bureaucracies,’ but they are often highly effective systems,
despite the fact that the profit motive can penetrate these vast
structures only by indirect means. The theory of organizations calls
for re-examining some of the classical questions of political
economy.
(Simon, 1991, p. 43)

Physics and other disciplines have also exploded the meaning of terms.
Recall how Albert Einstein revolutionized the description of time, for
instance, in his theorizing about special relativity (1907) and general
relativity (1915). Time is not what the dictionary proclaimed. Spacetime
moves mass, and mass curves spacetime. He described time in relation-
ship to space and gravity, his mathematical description being preceded
by his contemplation starting as a teenager. For Isaac Newton, time and
space had been absolute; for Einstein, time was relative. Time dilations
occur, as clocks on an airplane or on a mountain are slightly slower than
those on the ground. Even more staggering is the Twin Paradox. Imagine
that there are 25-year-old twins, Derek and Gordon. On their 25th
birthday, Derek takes off on a spaceship into space, travelling at almost
the speed of light. He returns to Earth after five years of space travelling,
when he is 30 years old. He finds out that Gordon, who stayed on Earth,
is 100 years old.
Described in such terms as the Twin Paradox, the Einsteinian view
of time suggests that our understanding of the world goes beyond
misleading “common” sense. This is often underscored in physics as
well as in philosophy – and in other disciplines. As 1965 Nobel Prize
winner Richard Feynman observed, “The theory of quantum electro-
dynamics describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of
common sense . . . I hope you can accept Nature as She is – absurd”
(Richard Feynman, 1985, p. 10). Einstein’s view of time and of the
twins Derek and Gordon also seem at first sight as absurd from
a “common sense” viewpoint.
Dear reader, do you see the similarity between questioning our
understandings of time and of government? Isn’t time (apparently)
obvious and commonsensical? Look at your watch, glance at the
nearest clock, check the time on your cell phone; we expect that all
three will give you the same number. Any teenager or old person
believes that there are 24 hours in a day: there is no point – except for
people like physicist Einstein and philosopher Aristotle – in asking
whether “now” is real. Isn’t government (apparently) obvious and
4 Introduction
commonsensical? Look at city hall out of your window, see the White
House on your television; there is no point in asking whether there is
a real government – and that nothing un-governmental governs? But,
why would it be really inappropriate to ask whether non-governmental
contexts are being added (or left out) – and whether the democracy is
real or constrained?

Reflecting about the Meaning of Governmental Context

What does a governmental context mean? Infiltration, exfiltration, and
post-truth, explained in Chapters 4, 5, and 6, are parts of the context
of our government. Infiltration is the action of entering or gaining
access to an organization or place surreptitiously. Such infiltration,
using other words such as masters of the government, has been
described by practitioners and others. For example, President Wilson
wrote that the

masters of the government of the United States are the combined

capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. It is written over
every intimate page of the record of Congress, it is written all
through the history of conferences at the White House . . .
(Woodrow Wilson, 1913, p. 48)

Infiltration of government refers to the bringing in of big money and

corporate activity that not only controls government policies and actions
but also enriches the rich. The infiltration, as will be discussed later, is
also now aided by free market theorizing and beliefs. Chapter 4 also
explains defects that include the undermining of democratic government
(e.g., control of the political output and inputs by business money and
distorted rules and practices, ranging from gerrymandering to lobbying
and buying and controlling, etc.). It will also include such devastating
power infiltration into governmentality as was created by Citizens
United. It also extends to unhelpful political rules, like allowing elected
officials to retire to lobbying jobs. The defects also are of an economic/
business character that makes the rich richer through tax and other
“reforms.”
Exfiltration refers to removing something or someone from
a situation. Exfiltration of government refers to the diminishing condi-
tion of middle-income and lower-income people – the relative decline of
real income since the 1980s, the tendency toward a two-tier economy, the
meaning of poverty and the meaning of cultural inequality. This leaves
the increasingly poor much poorer than they need be. It also extends to
non-activities like not developing adequate health insurance (including
pharmaceutical coverage).
 Introduction 5
Post-truth is noted as the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for
2016. It describes people as concerned less with truths than with opi-
nions, and it considers such opinions as appealing to our emotions,
prejudices and personal beliefs. There is a neuroscience literature, not
surprisingly, on decision-making and the brain. Certainty and similar
states of “knowing what we know” arise out of involuntary brain
mechanisms, functioning independently of reason. Certainty is biologi-
cally problematic. Post-truth includes a culture where opinion is more
significant than truth, and where talking points and emotions are
dominant. So much for your (and my) more than a hundred billion
brain cells.
Practical plans are suggested for P.A. leadership to assist in impact-
ing the mal-trinity of infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth. These
are in terms of 18 sets of aims or nudges, and they are explained in
Chapter 7. Such plans for resolving sets of policy nudges offered in
this book are open to some re-drafting and re-re-drafting. The land-
scape is subject to political storms and moves, and excellent argu-
ments sometimes can be less “important” (“less sellable”) on some
dates because of political considerations. Meanwhile, only six exam-
ples of the 18 sets of aims or nudges are noted here: the rest are in
the later chapter. Re infiltration, two examples are Resolve lobbying
and election money nudges; and Resolve income tax and subsidies
nudges. Re exfiltration, two examples are Resolve the living wage, as
well as minimum wage, nudges; and Explore the future of BNR:
biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics – in a future when robots
are expected to become more intelligent than humans. Re post-truth,
two examples are Correct post-truth economics nudges; and Correct
post-truth about democracy nudges.

Nature and Meaning of Nudging Government-in-Context

What is the nature and meaning of nudging? Nudging – a mild pressure
or prod toward a choice – is indeed a term now associated with Nobel
Prize winner Richard Thaler and Behavioral Economics. Thaler and
Sunstein (2009) wrote about nudging under the subtitle Improving Deci-
sions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. For them, a nudge is any
aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in
a predictable way. Nudge understandings have also been researched by
some in political science, psychology, and behavioral science; they are
also available under such headings as framing, social engineering, outline
of thoughts, media manipulation, half-truths, appeals to emotions, cog-
nitive biases, etc.
To think about the nature and meaning of nudging government-in-
context, let’s reflect about the meaning of nudging – and then let’s reflect
on the nature of nudging about government-in-context.
6 Introduction
Reflecting about the Meaning of Nudging
It was appropriate in the Preface to begin with Richard Thaler and
Behavioral Economics. And I recommend that you make use of the nudging
with some of the understandings that Thaler and others have developed.
But that doesn’t mean that the reader should necessarily buy into all that is
written – or fail to develop your own supplementary ideas. This is an
opportunity for P.A. to achieve the government-in-context results it should
want. To help, let us discuss additional thoughts about the usage of
nudging. First, let’s reflect on the extensive uses that humans make of
nudging, e.g., making friends, calming enemies and bosses, encouraging
subordinates to do this or that, making children behave. Second, it is
explained that – consistent with the contrast explained later between truth
and post-truth – there is a difference between the languages of contempla-
tion and of politics. Let’s reflect about the advantages and disadvantages of
reducing the problems of government-in-context to a re-description of part
of the context (e.g., calling the economy democratic socialism, progressive
capitalism, etc.), including the fact that such re-description is (to put it
mildly) unlikely to succeed in the middle-run or the long-run.
Practical use of nudges have been made by several governments,
including the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) chaired by
the White House (2015–2017) and by the Behavioral Insights Team
(known unofficially in the U.K. as the Nudge Unit) set up in 2010 until
its ownership was split in 2013 between the U.K. government and
a charity Nesta. The aim of SBST was to utilize insights from social
and behavioral science for governmental policy.
Further significant use of nudging is also made by the private corpo-
rate sector. Silicon Valley was a significant forerunner in the use of
nudges in dealing with employees. And there has been, of course,
substantial use in influencing customers – as well as influencing politi-
cians. And use of nudging is clearly widespread for impacting media,
advertising, the internet, etc.
Humans have always made extensive use of nudges, typically without
use of the title, to get others to think or to do this or that. The usage can
be conscious or unconscious. Think of the ways during the past week
that you chose to say or to act in order to influence someone else to say
or act in the way you want. Have you ever wanted a parent or a boss or
a date to think well of you; have you ever wanted a police officer not to
give you a ticket; have you ever wanted your professor (or your students)
to think well of you; and are there not zillions of other examples?
Groups of humans make extensive use of nudges; for example, countries
use flags to nudge loyalty; they plant stories and even lies on television,
in newspapers and on social media; they have their military dress in
good-looking uniforms; and so on. Even animals can use nudges to
influence others.
 Introduction 7
One nudge on which Richard Thaler worked was a variant of the Save
More Tomorrow Plan, encouraging saving a part of future salary
increases to augment employee retirement savings. Another example is
having an organ donation “opt out” option, rather than an “opt in”
option, on a driver’s license application, when donor organs become
more available because applicants do not bother to check “out.” At first
sight, that seems to present no problem. But whether that achieved what
Thaler wanted – libertarian paternalism – is another issue. He thought
that it is legitimate and possible for all institutions to nudge behavior
while also respecting complete freedom of choice, as long as the influ-
enced decision-making makes lives longer, better and healthier. I doubt
that it is possible to respect freedom of choice if I am appealing directly
to a person’s unconscious. Wouldn’t it be better morally to be open
about nudging?

Reflecting on the Nature of Nudging Government-in-Context

It is recommended that the leadership of this project should insist that
contemplation precede all nudging, and choice of the nudge should be
treated democratically and publicized fully. The choice of nudge should
not be characterized as limited to what Thaler and Sunstein (2009, p. 4)
claim is a mild poke or a prod toward a choice, such as “to push mildly
or poke gently in the ribs, especially with the elbow.” Why cannot the
nudges include a “shove” or a “hammer blow?” (In rail terminology,
a hammer blow is a vertical force that adds to and subtracts from the
train’s weight on a wheel and that can damage the train; in the martial
arts, it is a slower and more powerful stroke made by two interlocked
hands that can damage a person’s head.)
The macro-nudges of infiltration, exfiltration and post-truth, at least
at first sight, seem to be hammer blows. But the difference here is that
Thaler and Sustein are writing about what they consider positive or bon-
nudges, whereas the P.A. thinker trying to help government-in-context is
dealing with mal-nudges at least at that level – a nudge going in
a different direction. Yet the P.A. thinker is also trying to use the 18
micro-nudges to release government from the hammer blows – from an
upscale hurricane. For example, the thinker might propose a set of
micro-nudges like Resolve corporate welfare and Eisenhower’s military-
industrial complex nudges – along with others – to counter the hammer
blow of infiltration. Much seems to depend on choice of targets. Reader,
do you think that it would be necessary to respect or describe freedom of
choice for the mal-authors of infiltration?
There are pro and con versions to the reliance on nudges and
Behavioral Economics. On the pro side, it is a hopeful approach to the
difficulties of government-in-context, especially if it is the case that post-
truth rules the “average Joe (and Jane).” On the con-side, economics
8 Introduction
practitioners – like most practitioners in any other discipline – do have
an interest in the fortunes of their discipline. They cannot expect that
libertarian paternalism is a convincing argument, however. But others
will build on this, even suggesting that capitalism, supported by happy
adjectives, will sound cool to voters (and to all of us suffering from post-
truth).
The myth(s) that government is fundamentally inefficient and that
business is fundamentally efficient have a multitude of roots. It is true
that, to the extent that efficiency means making a profit, business is
concerned with efficiency – and that makes sense to us if we want more
money – and even the poor want more money. It makes sense in political
language (much more than contemplating language). We will start in
Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 commenting on ideas that nourish the relevant
roots of anti-government and pro-business emotions – including the
various economics schools, big business, the super-rich and most of us
engulfed in post-truth. But there are other important roots like the
horrors of the Cold War, and the horrors of many political money-
making practitioner behaviors and disagreements. It is odd then to
notice (as quoted earlier) a Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Herbert
Simon, refer to “large organizations, especially governmental ones” as
“often highly effective systems.”
Even if the myths are correct, the truth is that government has the
goal of achieving socially valuable results. When I worked for the City of
New York and later the United States Government, I remember partici-
pating in aiming to achieve socially valuable results. But I don’t remem-
ber ever having had a conversation about making a profit. Did I miss
that memo?
Recall the 1976 Nobel Prize-winning Milton Friedman (September 13,
1970) writing in The New York Times Magazine that – in his conclusion
summarized in the article’s title – The Social Responsibility of Business is
to Increase its Profits. He opposes the view that business is not con-
cerned only with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends.
In a free enterprise system, Friedman claims that the corporate executive
has direct responsibility to his owners. So, if the executive spent money
on general social interest, he would be spending his owners’ money.
Friedman concludes his book Capitalism and Freedom (1962, p. 84) by
calling social responsibility a fundamentally subversive doctrine in a free
society. “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to
use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits
as long as it stays within the rules of the game . . .”
Is political language more reliable than contemplative language? Is
reducing the problems of government-in-context to a re-description of
the part of the context (e.g., calling the economy democratic socialism,
progressive capitalism, etc.) really helpful? Or, doesn’t it fail to acknowl-
edge the real problems we need to correct?
 Introduction 9
Nudges about government-in-context indeed should be preceded by
contemplation. Contemplation is a demanding activity, and it should
begin with contemplating contemplation. It should start with philoso-
phical contemplation and with Ancient Greece, but it should not end
with them. For helping government-in-context, decidedly it should
encourage both post-traditional and relevant practical management
insights about governmental experiences. It also should recognize the
relevance of work and other identities. Both nudges and contemplation
require preparation by the person who nudges and the thinker who
contemplates – and going beyond.
No one from public administration who starts with small (or even no)
knowledge of the post-traditional or government-in-context is forbidden
the opportunity to contemplate – but hopefully that contemplation
includes understanding of their own identities and of seeking insights
from other disciplines. No one whose specialty is in another discipline
(such as biologist, theoretical physicist, poet, novelist, neuroscientist) –
or in no discipline whatsoever – is forbidden. Why should s/he be
forbidden? Nobody owns contemplating, not even a skilled philosophical
contemplator like Socrates.

Tentative Stages for P.A. Leadership

A four-stage plan is proposed for P.A. leadership in upgrading govern-
ment-in-context, as indicated earlier. (Dear reader, this is intended as
a tentative plan, and it may – or may not – be suited for your locale.
And, for instance, you can always amend the last stage, in view of your
experience with the first three stages. The plan is not written in stone.)

First Stage
An individual public administration (P.A.) approach (let me repeat) can
be explained as a First Stage Individual Plan. It recommends focusing
on contemplation and nudging (at conferences and in writings) on the
nature, advantages and disadvantages of a “better marriage” of content
and context within the notion of government-in-context – teaching how
to contemplate and emphasizing the defects of infiltration, exfiltration
and post-truth. The defects would include the undermining of demo-
cratic government (e.g., control of the political output and inputs by
business money and distorted rules and practices, ranging from gerry-
mandering to lobbying and buying and controlling, etc.). It also extends
to unhelpful political rules, like allowing elected officials to retire to
lobbying jobs. The defects also are of an economic/business character,
like generating a tendency toward the two-tier economy, that makes the
rich richer through tax and other “reforms” while leaving the increas-
ingly poor much poorer than they should be. Etcetera!
10 Introduction
All shapes and sizes of P.A. thinkers should be welcomed to join the
first stage. However, post-traditional P.A. thinkers would have some
advantages, including their approaches to imaginization, postmodernism,
epistemic pluralism, and post traditional governance and bureaucracy.
Both traditional and post-traditional should aim to go beyond the post-
traditional in terms of upgrading government policy.
Consider two examples. First, what is the nature and relevance of
imaginization? It is creative rationality: it includes, but goes beyond, the
merely rational. Let’s suggest its nature and relevance in a further two
examples. First, was the 9/11 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
on the United States right or wrong when it wrote for institutionalizing
imagination – “routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the imagination” (9/11
Commission, p. 344)? In its view, imagination is more than merely
connecting the dots. Second, turn to cope with kinds of imaginization.
For one feature, recognize that the effects of the imagination have never
been confined merely to literature. Here is an example of an imaginative
metaphor widely used. “A central metaphor in economic thinking is that
of the invisible hand, just as for much of modernist science it was the
metaphor of the universe as a machine” (Farmer, 1995, p. 163). For
another feature, imagine that two levels of creativity can be distinguished
in creativity studies in neuroscience and elsewhere (Farmer, 2010, p. 211).
Extraordinary creativity is one level of imaginative activity required for
paradigm shifting. Ordinary creativity is a lower level described as
imaginative activity required for resolving problematic puzzles within an
orthodox framework.
Second, what is the nature and utility of Post-traditional Governance?
Post-traditional governance and bureaucracy can be explained for
P.A. action as thinking as play, justice as seeking, and practice as art.
Post-traditional thinking as play involves fresh awareness of what is
critical – and that can change over time (as this book recognizes). Post-
traditional justice as seeking involves a shift in citizen-citizen relations
away from the hierarchical, the closed, and the semi-closed. “In govern-
ment, a parallel shift would move away from primary reliance on a top-
down relationship from political leaders to citizens” (Farmer, 2005, pp.
xii–xiii). Post-traditional practice as art aims to turn artistry toward the
truly human. “By truly human, I mean where each and every individual
is treated in her fullest human dimensions (psycho, social, bio, spiritual,
and other dimensions) – and treated as if each person were an artist in
the conduct of her own life” (Farmer, 2005, p. xiv).
The point of such recommendations is fresh consciousness. (And, dear
reader, I suggest that you reflect about government-in-context, as you
read this paragraph.) But most of us share identities that are ingrained
and taught to believe that governance is essentially mechanical and that
science is essentially non-poetic. It is hard to be open to the thought that
a good escape out of governance and bureaucratic doldrums could be
 Introduction 11
the poetry of prescriptions like thinking as play. I do love science and its
enlightenment, properly understood. But I do not reject poetic contem-
plation – where poetry is seen, in political philosopher Michael Oak-
shott’s words, as “a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life,
a wild flower planted among our wheat” (Oakshott, 1962). I sympathize
with Leo Strauss’ claim that “I don’t question that social science
analyses are important, but still, if you want a broad view and a long
view, you read a novel rather than a social science” (Strauss, 2001, pp.
6–7). Dear reader, maybe it would help to consider a distinguished
theoretical physicist writing his book Reality Is Not What It Seems:
The Journey To Quantum Gravity (Rovelli, 2017). Referring to the
quantum fields that make up atoms, light and the full contents of the
universe, Carlo Rovelli urges that our “culture is so foolish to keep
urging science and poetry separated – two tools to open our eyes to the
complexity and beauty of the world” (Rovelli, 2017, p. 105). It is possible
to justify a call – as a supplement to what can be known scientifically –
for a parallel marriage of Governance and Poetry, or P.A. and Poetry.

Second Stage
Full-time P.A. macro government-in-context specialists can be estab-
lished, and alliances developed with employees in other disciplines
including Public Policy and then Economics and Political Science. That
is, some P.A. graduates would specialize full-time in the issues of
government-in-context, and this could start soon. They would focus on
contemplation and emphasizing defects of infiltration, exfiltration and
post-truth. They would also work on contributing to the development of
economic theory on the lines recommended by, for example and as
explained later, Piketty and Chang. They would also focus on additional
elements in the governmental context, e.g., against this or that segment
of an aim.
The barrier that can exist between theory and practice has disadvan-
tages, and the P.A. leadership in Stage 2 should be more open to macro
practitioner insights than it often is. It should also be more open to the
relevance of nudging identities – as the latter is indeed especially impor-
tant for those who have hitherto seen P.A. and government in narrow
terms.
Turn to Chapter 3 for the nature and utility of postmodernism,
including such items as deconstruction and alterity. These stages
should be open to all points of view. (Some readers may prefer
substituting poststructuralism for postmodernism. In poststructural-
ism, destabilization of meaning, language, social institutions and the
self is sought – and you may note Chapter 2 with Foucault and his
comments on governmentality).
12 Introduction
Third Stage
Macro government-in-context specialists (from P.A. and from other
disciplines), plus some elected officials, can be established as a team.
This could start in the next few years. Again, the focus would be on
exfiltration, infiltration and post-truth. They would have responsibilities
very similar to the macro full-time-specialists and active pro-government
-in-context alliances. However, there would be greater attention to future
government-in-context, including robotics – paying attention to more
and to all the contexts of government. Such procedural approaches
might also include – strange or weird as they might sound – inducing
philanthropists to invest money in persuading politicians to support such
a team effort, or getting the government to hire this or that public
employee in influential policy-making positions, working on influential
politicians or agencies, etc.

Fourth Stage
The fourth stage is to establish an Interdisciplinary (or Epistemic Plur-
alist) Team to Enhance Democracy – setting up the team at the uni-
versity (maybe also at the governmental) level. This would be different
from the previous stage, but it would overlap. It would develop longer-
term theoretical and public policy issues, especially researching usage of
computer processing of interdisciplinarity or epistemic pluralism. This
would set up in the university, a department to focus on epistemic
pluralism related to democratic government-in-context.
Epistemic Pluralism means analyzing a hypothesis or issue from any
discipline through any number of other disciplines: it is a kind of
deterritorialization. For example, a P.A. hypothesis could be studied
through eleven perspectives – traditional P.A., business administration,
economics, political science, critical theory, poststructuralism, the psy-
choanalytic, neuroscience, feminism, ethics, and a data perspective
(Farmer, 2010). Epistemic pluralism contrasts, as in most traditional
P.A. approaches, with studying issues through one or another disciplin-
ary cul-de-sac. Such an approach (as just mentioned) can be used for any
other subject. One can use many lenses – or, at a cost in terms of results,
as few lenses as the thinker chooses. The claim is that no subject is
connected enough if it is independent of epistemic pluralism, e.g., neither
political science, nor public policy, nor economics, nor public adminis-
tration, nor any other subject. It might be helpful – or not – for the
reader interested in epistemic pluralism to reflect on the contrast
between the arborescent and the rhizomatic views of knowledge. In the
Western tradition, knowledge is unfortunately conceptualized in the
form of a tree – divided in a hierarchical fashion into branches and sub-
branches. Deleuze and Guattari (1977), postmodernists, contrasted this
 Introduction 13
with the rhizome model. A rhizome is a root-like and typically horizon-
tal plant that grows for a long distance under the ground and sends out
roots and stems below and above. It produces multiplicities of
differences.
There is a tension between the tug of hyper-specialization and the pull
of epistemic pluralism. The future depends on a bigger pull toward
epistemic pluralism. Understanding of government-in-context can be
facilitated by epistemic pluralism; it is impeded by hyper-specialization.
Listen to the biologist Edward O. Wilson (2014, pp. 40–41) on this
claim and one problem he believes that it causes. He argues that Western
academic life is ruled by hard-core specialists. He gives as an example
Harvard University where he taught, and he asserts that the dominant
criterion in Harvard’s selection of new faculty was preeminence or
promise of preeminence in a specialty. The problem, as he saw it, was
that the

early stages of a creative thought, do not arise from the jigsaw

puzzles of specialization. The most successful scientist thinks like
a poet – wide-ranging and sometimes fantastical – and works like
a bookkeeper. It is the latter role that the world sees.

Disciplinary identities, to the extent of the exclusion of other disciplines, is

a problem. And Wilson does not exempt hard sciences like his own. He
argues that “there was no time to think of unification” and post-
Enlightenment “scientific disciplines were divided into specialties at a near-
bacterial rate – fast then faster and then even faster” (Wilson, 2014, p. 39).
Rather than unification, it might be that all – or some or more – scientific
or theoretical disciplines could recognize more readily that they should
utilize epistemic pluralism to interconnect. That would be a mild and “more
practical” form of what can be considered a grand alternative like unifica-
tion. The significant utility of epistemic pluralism for upgrading govern-
ment-in-context will be explained in some of the following chapters. For
instance, Chapter 3 starts with the contemplation of economics.
P.A. thinkers should not limit themselves only to topics within tradi-
tional disciplinary boundary lines. It is practical for P.A. to offer leadership
in fundamentally upgrading government-in-context in terms not only of
administration but also of increasing assistance with policy. These stages
are intended to help nudge the development of that capability.

Summary
This chapter contends that public administration (P.A.) can, and should,
provide leadership in fundamentally helping government-in-context to
govern better in terms of policy. Government-in-context is a term for
14 Introduction
nudging and for facilitating greater understanding for upgrading governing.
The chapter discusses the nature and meaning of government-in-context.
The second section introduces nudging, discussing its nature and meaning.
It claims that nudging should be preceded by contemplation – and by
understanding of the post-traditional and relevant practitioner and other
identities. It explains the usage of nudging; the poverty of reliance on
libertarian paternalism, and the pro and con to reliance on nudges and
Behavioral Economics. It recommends that nudges include not only pokes,
but also shoves and hammer blows. The third section explains a tentative
four-stage plan for P.A. leadership attention to government-in-context. The
first stage is to contemplate and nudge (at conferences and in writings) on
the nature, advantages and disadvantages of a “better marriage” of content
and context within the concept of government-in-context. The second is to
establish full-time P.A. government-in-context specialists, and to develop
alliances with employees in other disciplines including Public Policy and
then Economics and Political Science. The third would be macro govern-
ment-in-context specialists (from P.A. and other disciplines), plus some
elected officials. The fourth step is to establish an Interdisciplinary (or
Epistemic Pluralist) Team to Enhance Democracy – setting up the team at
the university (maybe also at the governmental) level. The chapter con-
cludes by claiming that it is practical for P.A. to assume a leadership role in
fundamentally re-shaping government-in-context in terms of policy.

References
9/11 Commission. (2004). Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks upon the United States. New York: W.W. Norton.
Badiou, A. & J. Butler (2015). What is a People? New York: Columbia University
Press.
Deleuze, G. & F. Guattari (1977). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen Laner. New York: Viking Press.
Farmer, D.J. (1995). The Langauge of Public Administration: Bureaucracy,
Modernity, and Postmodernity. Tuscaloosa, AL and London: The Univer-
sity of Alabama Press.
Farmer, D.J. (2005). To Kill the King: Post-Traditional Governance and Bureau-
cracy. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Farmer, D.J. (2010). Public Administration in Perspective: Theory and Practice
through Multiple Lenses. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Feynman, R. (1985). QED: The Strange Theory and Light and Matter. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Oakshott, M. (1962). The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind.
London: Methuen.
Rovelli, C. (2017). Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Reality.
New York: Riverhead Books.
Simon, H. (1991). Organizations and Markets. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5 (2):
25–44.
 Introduction 15
Strauss, L. (2001). On Plato’s Symposium. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Thaler, R. & C. Sunstein (2009). Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth
and Happiness. New York: Penguin.
Wilson, E.O. (2014). The Meaning of Human Existence. New York: W.W. Norton.
Wilson, W. (1887). The Study of Administration. Political Science Quarterly, 2 (2):
197–222. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
Wilson, W. (1913/1961). The New Freedom. New York: Doubleday.
Wittgenstein, L. (1956). Philosophical Investigation. Trans G.E.M. Anscombe.
New York: Macmillan.
2 Public Administration in
Governmentality
A Bigger Helper

Public administration (P.A.) should play a bigger part in helping to under-

stand the meaning of government-in-context, of governmentality. Chapters
2 to 7 constitute steps to encourage P.A. thinkers how to prepare for stage
one of being bigger helpers. A later stage two would be to create govern-
ment-in-context as a theoretical specialty within P.A., leaving provision of
traditional P.A. services – with significant separation of administrative from
public policy considerations – to the remainder of P.A. theorists. But it may
well be that another discipline would wish to adopt such a theoretical
specialty concerned with government-in-context, e.g., Political Science; or
both P.A. and Political Science could do it together (or even, if passions
dictate, separately). To help government-in-context to govern fundamen-
tally better in terms of policy, the P.A. leadership can be a bigger helper if it
can recognize that government is a social construction.
Government – like government-in-context – is indeed a social con-
struction. The construction typically includes this or that much of the
political, the public policy and the public administrative. But it excludes
(or includes) this or that much of other such elements as economic
policies and practices (and economic studies and opinions), and business
administration policies and practices (and business studies and opinions)
and the public (and their opinions) – that either significantly shape
governing or govern directly. A basic reason for adjusting any social
construction, such as government-in-context, is that it can have greater –
or lesser – utility than alternatives.
There is no version of government (not even Zeus’ government) that is
not a social construction. This is illustrated by the contradiction between
the analysis of government from Ayn Rand and of the analysis of
governmentality from Michel Foucault – and, if you wish, you can call
that contradiction an unintended nudge that is a shove. The first
intended nudge, from Ayn Rand, is toward minimal government.
The second contradictory intended nudge from Michel Foucault is in
an opposite direction – toward governmentality, as he defines it. In
reflecting on such analyses, the reader is reminded of the utility of both
post-traditional thinking and of government management experience.
 Public Administration in Governmentality 17
This chapter turns to encourage the readers to reflect on meanings and
the meaning of meanings.

Nudging: Minimal Government

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) argued for the social construction of minimal
government; and anything bigger than the minimum is what she called
Big Government. Rand had strong positive views about the American
Business Model (ABM), which also advocated for the minimal state.
And she argued for minimal government – and for the other features of
the ABM – in terms of her philosophy and her fictional writing. Her best
books were The Fountainhead (1943) with its hero Howard Roark and
Atlas Shrugged (1957) with its hero John Galt. She was born in
St. Petersburg, Russia, (and had witnessed her father’s pharmacy being
confiscated as a result of the revolution) and moved to the United States
at age 21. As Galt makes clear in Atlas Shrugged,

the only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights,

which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper
government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-
defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who
start the use of force.
(Rand, 1957, p. 231)

Certainly, others had also embraced the idea of the minimal state –
sometimes called “a night-watchman state” (e.g. Robert Nozick, 1974).
Many others argued – and still argue – for her pro-business philosophy
and for the ABM. So did the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton
Friedman from the Chicago School of Economics. Rand’s philosophy
was also explained by groups like the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in
Irvine, California. Both her ideas and her life are included in movies
and on the internet.
How minimal is Rand’s minimal government? Very minimal indeed! Here
are some examples, some of which may surprise you. The one that
astonishes me (see the following list) is that all roads were to be privatized.

• The “only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights,

which means: to protect him from physical violence” (Rand, 1957,
p. 231). (Notice the word “only.” And ask yourself why it should be
unacceptable for cops to police internet systems.)
• Proper government is only a policeman (and the army and the
courts), acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may
resort to force only against those who start the use of force. (Again,
see the word “only.”)
18 Public Administration in Governmentality
• In “a fully free society, taxation – or, to be exact, payment for
governmental services – would be voluntary” (Rand, 1964, p. 116).
(Notice the idea of “voluntary taxation.”)
• Many governmental functions should be privatized. Rand thought it
was inappropriate (for example) to require inoculations against dis-
ease, and that government has no right to license physicians and
dentists.
• It is inappropriate for a government to control air and water pollu-
tion for the sake of public health, adding that “government’s only
proper role is protecting individual rights” (Mayhew, 2005, p. 8).
• It is improper for a government to have building codes, especially as
such codes “arbitrarily impose certain rules or decisions on men
involved in the building industry” (Mayhew, 2005, p. 12).
• Rand also wanted to privatize the roads, allowing people to buy any
and all roads – including, say, heavily travelled roads like Broadway
in New York City.
• She offers the view that economics is a discipline that appropriately
can completely avoid considerations of coercive power. (Notice no
mention of “monopolies” and “oligopolies.”)

Ayn Rand claimed to base her notions of government on her philosophy,

which she named Objectivism. She summarized Objectivism in terms of
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. It is objective reality for
metaphysics, reason for epistemology, self-interest for ethics, and capital-
ism for politics. Ayn Rand gave this summary in 1962, standing on one
leg (as requested by a questioner at a sales conference at Random
House). In the movie The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999), actress Helen
Mirren as Ayn Rand is shown – standing on one leg – offering the same
summary. Dear reader, I encourage you not to read this paragraph on
one leg; this paragraph’s third sentence – especially claiming self-interest
for ethics and capitalism for politics – might otherwise prompt you to
fall over. Ayn Rand explains (strangely) that the only philosophers who
have identified important philosophical truths are “Aristotle, Aquinas,
and Ayn Rand” (Mayhew, 2005, pp. 148–149). And even Aquinas (also
Aristotle) got it wrong, in her view, in not being atheist.
Contemplate some of Rand’s arguments, because such contemplation
can give a picture of what underlies her views on minimal government.
Rand’s epistemology (summarized as reason) advances claims that are
difficult to maintain, such as that about rationality. (Let’s leave aside
another dubious claim – that knowledge is ultimately based on sense
perception.) Rand’s objectivist philosophy celebrates what she considers
rationality. She has Galt exclaim that “happiness is possible only to
a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks
nothing but rational values, his joy is nothing but rational actions.”
(Rand, 1957, pp. 162–163). She would not accept the view from
 Public Administration in Governmentality 19
psychoanalysis or from neuroscience that our decisions, actions and
behaviors result, at least in part, from the unconscious. Nor would she
accept such views from neuroscience, for instance, that individuals are
primarily not rational people with emotions; they are primarily emo-
tional people, with some rationality (e.g., see Eagleman, 2011). She
accepts the emphasis in neoclassical economic theory that makes the
assumption of economic man – that he is utterly self-interested and
utterly rational.
Let us turn to Ayn Rand’s ethics (summarized as self-interest) – and
her emphatic ethical egoism that claims that the highest moral pur-
pose of an individual’s life is pursuit of that individual’s own rational
self-interest and own happiness and that opposes altruism. Neither
Howard Roark nor John Galt would do anything but primarily for
themselves. So, Roark of Fountainhead explains that the “first right on
earth is the right of the ego… His moral obligation is to do what he
wishes, provided it does not depend primarily upon other men”
(Rand, 1943, p. 96).
By contrast, she characterizes altruism as “an unspeakable evil”
(Rand, 1961, p. 111). Every person must exist for his own sake, and
“objectivist morality would consider (helping others) enormously
immoral” (Rand, 1961, p. 119).
For Rand’s politics (summarized as capitalism), let’s turn to the
distinguished economist/business thinker John Kay – and so to this con-
argument from three perspectives – politics, economics, and psychology.
John Kay explains the ABM (American Business Model) in his The
Truth about Markets (2003). He writes, as does Rand, that the claims
about the ABM are indeed of four kinds. The first is that “self-interest
rules – self-regarding materialism governs our economic lives” (Kay,
2003, p. 44). The second is market fundamentalism – markets “should
operate freely, and attempts to regulate them by social or political action
are almost always undesirable” (Kay, 2003, p. 44). The third is the
minimal state – the economic role of government should not extend
much beyond the enforcement of contracts and private property rights.
Government should not itself provide goods and services, or own pro-
ductive assets. The fourth and last claim is “low taxation – while
taxation is necessary to finance these basic functions of the minimal
state, tax rates should be as low as possible and the tax system should
not seek to bring about redistribution of income and wealth” (Kay, 2003,
p. 44). Rand would have endorsed all four of Kay’s characterizations of the
ABM. He and Rand agree in describing the ABM as consisting of these
four components. But they differ in their evaluative descriptions of the
utility of the ABM. Rand and her followers describe the ABM as part of
objectivist philosophy and a guide to life. On the contrary, Kay explains
what he describes as “the blind faith” (Kay, 2010, p. 44) that now
constructs the ABM. As he writes,
20 Public Administration in Governmentality
In the century before the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialism defined
the language of political economy. Not just for its supporters, but
also for its opponents. Today, the situation is reversed: the vocabu-
lary of the political right frames the terms of the economic debate.
Globalization and privatization have displaced capital and class as
terms of discourse . . . The model fulfils the same psychological need
for simple, universal explanations once met by Marxism.
(2010, p. 44)

Dear reader, let me repeat that Ayn Rand’s minimal government-in-context

is one view of how government should be socially constructed.

Nudging: Governmentality
When he developed his social construction of governmentality, Michel Fou-
cault (1926–1984) understood government as significantly larger than Ayn
Rand’s minimal government. To repeat, both Foucault’s and Rand’s ideas of
government were not “natural” entities; they were social constructions.
Michel Foucault understands governmentality as related to power, think-
ing not only of top-down state power and conduct but also as the conduct
of power in underlying relationships. He sets out to explain what he called
“the conduct of conduct” – identifying the meanings and determinants of
state conduct in terms of activities and relationships that shape other basic
“governing” conduct. He employed not only a political definition of
governing used today but also a broader definition used until the eighteenth
century – including conduct techniques or patterns like self-control, man-
agement of the household, directing the soul, etc. For him, governmentality
developed as governing relations between self and self, self and family, and
relations with others, and then the governing by the state. Referring to self
and self, he defined technologies of the self as techniques that allowed
control over one’s own body, mind, soul and lifestyle.
Foucault does not think of power only in terms of hierarchical state
power; it also includes forms of social control in disciplinary institutions
(e.g., schools and hospitals and psychiatric institutions). Foucault also
writes about the discourse of history, which historians usually conceptualize
as a continuous line (or arrow, if you like). For instance, he thinks of
European history as separate events, e.g., the Renaissance (1450–1620), the
classical age (age of reason), the nineteenth century (age of positivism), and
the future period of which the twentieth is a beginning.
Governmentality, for Foucault, meant what is needed to maintain
a well-ordered and happy society, including the buying and selling of
goods – “economy at the level of the entire state . . . the wealth and
behavior of each and all, a form of surveillance and control as attentive
as that of the head of a family over his household and his goods”
(Burchall, Gordon, & Miller, 1991, p. 102). It included what he called
 Public Administration in Governmentality 21
a complex of “saviors” and evolving from the medieval to the modern
administrative state with complex bureaucracies. These 1978 thoughts
were first published in Naissance de la Biopolitique: Course au College de
France. His definition of governmentality included the ensemble formed
by institutions, procedures, analyses, reflections and tactics which con-
tained political economy as a principal form of knowledge. Its apparatuses
of security included its techniques to provide society with a feeling of
economic, political and cultural well-being. Foucault’s governmentality
may be described – to repeat with slight differences from what has been
noted – as the governmental process aiming for a happy and stable society,
means to those ends (apparatuses of security) and with a particular type of
knowledge (“political economy”) that evolved from the medieval state of
justice to the modern administrative state. His notion of governmentality
became known to the English-speaking world through The Foucault
Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Burchall, Gordon, & Miller, 1991).
Others have developed Foucault’s thoughts even more in later years. This
can be understood as including the techniques and strategies by which
governments try to produce citizens best suited to fulfill government
policies, governmental rationality and the art of government, etc.
Foucault’s notion of governmentality has what appears to be (a) attrac-
tions for some, (b) difficulties for some, and (c) various levels of obscurity
for many. It may be attractive that Foucault does not isolate the field of
politics from significant governance of the political economy. Viewing the
economy as a self-operating system on the lines of Ayn Rand and of the
“free market,” separate from the art of government, would be unattractive
for Foucault. It would be unattractive for post-traditional public adminis-
trationists, familiar with poststructuralism and imaginization; Foucault was
a post-structuralist (as well as a postmodernist – and earlier a structuralist)
and his imaginization was substantial.
Let’s step to one side in this paragraph to sketch poststructuralism
and to remind ourselves that there are different levels of imaginization.
Poststructuralism invites you (and me) to understand (interpret) the
meaning of situations (texts). By implication, this is what Foucault was
doing, what P.A. theory and all of us should do – but this does not mean
that all of us (not even Foucault) will get it completely right, or even
completely wrong. Also, by implication as a poststructuralist, Foucault
accepts that truth cannot avoid play. In Derrida’s words, Foucault would
recognize another interpretation of interpretation – and this is truth that

is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms play and tries to

pass beyond man and humanism, the name of man being the
name of that being who . . . throughout his entire history . . . has
dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin
and the end of play.
(Derrida, 1978, p. 17)
22 Public Administration in Governmentality
Let’s return to item (b) – to Foucault’s notion of governmentality and
“difficulties for some.” Foucault’s conclusion – that economy appears
under the governmentality heading – would be a difficulty for followers
of the Chicago School of Economics. It surely would be another diffi-
culty that Foucault seems to limit his analysis to one discipline –
political philosophy.
Let’s return to item (c) – which was “about levels of obscurity for
many.” We should be careful about claiming with certainty to know the
Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth about government-
in-context, about governmentality, about imaginization, about post-
traditional public administration. Foucault would surely agree. Foucault
(1972, p. 131) claimed truth isn’t

outside power, or lacking in power… truth isn’t the reward of free

spirits . . . Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue
of multiple forms of constraint, and it induces regular effects of
power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of
truth: that is the types of discourse which it accepts and makes
function as true . . .

Sometimes, we sense that we are encouraged (more of this in Chapter 8

when we re-mention President Wilson) to believe much that is mythical.
Often, we find that we were brought up in a context that insists,
incorrectly, that truth is straightforward.

Nudging: Meaning
Reader, having finished the sections on Rand and Foucault, you and
I need to relax. Let’s begin working toward being a Bigger Helper, going
at whatever speed suits with your plans for today, by beginning limited
reflection on the meaning of meaning.
What does it mean to want meaning? Karl Smith (2010) and others
have written of a transition in philosophy in the twentieth century from
a focus on knowledge to a focus on meaning, with the meaning of
meaning as a central problematic. What is the meaning of meaning?
Should we speculate what Ayn Rand and Michel Foucault might
think, from their graves, about meaning? Should we think more
about the meanings of minimal government and governmentality?
Yes, dear reader, let’s relax in contemplation; but shouldn’t we play
with our thoughts not only about knowledge but also about mean-
ings (and the meanings of meanings) within government-in-context?
And I will add some quotes from the literature – to nudge your
reflections.
 Public Administration in Governmentality 23
What Should Be the Goal (The Meaning) of Business?
Money? Should making money be the sole goal of business? Or, should
it be everybody getting a good life? And, what is the meaning of
business? What is the meaning of capitalism? Provocative nudges are
available in the literature. Skidelsky and Skidelsky (2012, p. 3), for
example, describe capitalism as

a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it has made possible vast

improvements in material conditions. On the other hand, it has
exalted some of the most reviled human characteristics, such as
greed, envy and avarice. Our call is to chain up the monster again
by recalling what the greatest thinkers of all times and all civiliza-
tions have meant by the “good life” . . .

Barber is another example, writing that

once upon a time, capitalism was allied with virtues that also
contributed at least marginally to democracy, responsibility and
citizenship. Today it is allied with vices which – although they
serve consumerism – undermine democracy, responsibility and
citizenship. The question then is whether not just democracy but
capitalism itself can survive the infantilist ethos upon which it has
come to depend . . . Infantilization is . . . a potent metaphor that
points on the one hand to the dumbing down of goods and
shoppers in a postmodern global economy that seems to produce
more goods than people need; and that points on the other hand,
to the targeting of children as consumers in a market where there
are never enough shoppers.
(Barber, 2007, pp. 4–5)

Such views may (or may not) nudge us not to question business in
dichotomous terms – either completely bad or completely good.

What Should Be the Goal (The Meaning) of Economics?

Is it about money or people? Some guys making lots and lots of money,
some guys making living wages, and others making next to nothing?
Should the economy be independent of government? Kotz argues, for
instance, that “critical to each social structure of accumulation is the role
of the state in relation to the economy” (Kotz, 2015, p. 4.) Yes, but isn’t
the role of the economy to the state also important? It also raises the
question whether the relationship of government and business can be
24 Public Administration in Governmentality
adequately analyzed without analysis of various understandings of the
meanings of life. Gabriel (2015, p. 1), for instance, writes that

Life, the universe, and everything else . . . presumably everyone has

asked themselves what it all means. Where do we find ourselves? Are
we only an aggregation of elementary particles in a gigantic world
receptacle? Or do our thoughts, wishes, and hopes have a distinct
reality – and, if so, what? How can we understand our existence and
even existence in general? How far does our knowledge extend?

Gabriel seems to be nudging us – successfully or not – toward involving

philosophy in our contemplation about economics.

What Should Be the Goal (The Meaning) of the Rat Race?

Each of us making money? Each person having a good life? What is
a good life? People making their boss richer? Why do rats have to race?
Jose Bove and Francois Dufour (2000) opposed the idea that the world
should be reduced to a market, and they did so in their book Le Monde
N’est Pas Une Marchandise: Des Paysans Contre La Malbouffe. Bove led
protests in France. For instance, there was a protest that included
throwing hamburgers at, and wrecking, a McDonald’s restaurant in
southern France.

Bove and nine farmworker colleagues are charged with breaking into
a work site at Millau last August and taking apart a McDonald’s
restaurant that was under construction. Their action was directed at
what they see as the damage to the rural economy represented by
the fast-food culture, not to mention the offense to French culinary
traditions.
(Agence France-Press, 2000)

The point about the culinary tradition, of course, had popular appeal.

What Should Be the Goal (The Meaning) of Democracy?

How difficult is it to maintain a meaningful democracy? Korten (1995,
p. 310) argues that “So long as winning an election is excessively
expensive and the only sources of adequate funding are powerful finan-
cial interests, policy will favor financial interests over the public inter-
ests.” Is the aim (the test) of democracy that everybody should get a vote
every two (or four) years? Should the goal be for government to do
whatever the people want done? Should the goal be for everyone to do
 Public Administration in Governmentality 25
what each individual wants to do? Should the goal be for everyone to be
nice to one another? “The inherent features of democracy are, even
today, not completely agreed upon by the experts” (Baradat, 2009).
What is the meaning of a meaning of democracy?

What Should Be the Goal (The Meaning) of Government-In-Context?

Do we have enough information from academic disciplines to help
society? I think so. But Backhouse is right that “It can also be argued
that economists pay comparatively little attention to the adverse
effects of an unequal income distribution” (Backhouse, 2010, p. 48).
But should citizens obtain all their information about economics from
economics? Should the goal of government-in-context be whatever the
majority thinks should be the goal? Should it be a goal or more than
one goal? “We are obsessed with ourselves. We study our history, our
psychology, our philosophy, our gods.” (Rovelli, 2014, p. 5). Should we
know more about other cultures? Should the goal change with
circumstances?
What else should be thought and said about the meanings of business,
of economics, of the rat race, of democracy – and of government-in-
context?

Summary
Government – like government-in-context – is a social construction, and
P.A. should be a bigger helper in facilitating understanding of such
meanings. What can be interpreted as conflicting nudges are explored
from Ayn Rand and Michel Foucault, and a third nudge is about
meanings. The first intended nudge, from Ayn Rand, is toward mini-
mal government. This includes the relevance of her views on meta-
physics, epistemology, ethics (which she summarized as self-interest)
and politics (summarized as capitalism). The second contradictory
intended nudge from Michel Foucault is in an opposite direction –
toward governmentality. Michel Foucault understands governmental-
ity as related to power, thinking not only of top-down state power. He
explains what he called “the conduct of conduct.” Foucault’s govern-
mentality developed as governing relationships between self and self,
self and family, and relations with others – understanding technologies
of the self as techniques that allowed control over one’s own body,
mind, soul and lifestyle. The chapter turns to the large literature
reflecting on meanings and the meaning of meanings – referring to
business, economics, democracy and government-in-context. Indeed,
there is no version of government (not even Zeus’) that is not a social
construction.
26 Public Administration in Governmentality
References
Backhouse, R.E. (2010). The Puzzle of Modern Economics: Science or Ideology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baradat, L.P. (2009). Political Ideologies: Their Origins and Impact. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson Prentice-Hall.
Barber, B.R. (2007). Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantalize
Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. New York: W.W. Norton.
Bove, J. & F. Dufour (2000). Le Monde N’est Pas Une Marchandise: Des Paysans
Contre La Malbouffe. Paris: Editions La Decouverte.
Burchall, G., C. Gordon, & P. Miller (1991). The Foucault Effect: Studies in
Governmentality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and Difference. Trans. A. Bass. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. New York: Vintage.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Pantheon.
Gabriel, M. (2015). Why the World Does Not Exist. Trans. G. Moss. Cambridge
and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Kay, J. (2003). The Truth about Markets. New York: Penguin.
Kay, J. (2010). Obliquity. New York: Penguin.
Korten, D.C. (1995). When Corporations Rule the World. West Hartford, CT:
Kumarian Press.
Kotz, D.M. (2015). The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Mayhew, R. (2005). Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q and A. New York:
Penguin.
Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Rand, A. (1943). The Fountainhead. Indianapolis, IN: Bobs Merrill.
Rand, A. (1957). Atlas Shrugged. New York: Penguin Random House.
Rand, A. (1961). For the New Intellectual. New York: Random.
Rand, A. (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York:
Signet.
Rovelli, C. (2014). Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity.
New York: Riverhead Books.
Skidelsky, R. & E. Skidelsky (2012). How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life.
New York: Other Press.
Smith, K.E. (2010). Meaning, Subjectivity, Society: Making Sense of Modernity.
Brill: ProQuest Ebook Central.
3 Contemplation and Beyond
The Bigger Picture

What is contemplation? How should contemplation of the theoretical

and the practical be deepened? How can the contemplator know how
(and by what combination) s/he is nudged by the theoretical and the
practical? Is recognition of identity significant for a bigger picture of
understanding of nudges and government-in-context? Should nudges be
contemplated?
This chapter will reflect on these five questions – following a preface
about the 10 branches of economics and as a preliminary to considering
in even more depth (in Chapters 4 to 8) practical plans for government-
in-context. The first reflection recognizes and discusses three different
accounts of contemplation – including the Socratic Method. The second
reflection comments on the desirability of all relevant brands of theoriz-
ing and of deterritorialization, noting their relevance to economics and
to traditional and post-traditional thinking. It also addresses the signifi-
cance of practical insights from practitioners who are often overlooked
by theorists. The third suggests that it is difficult to recognize the
combination between theoretical and practical; but it is easy to acknowl-
edge that the contemplator should recognize both. The fourth reflection
discusses and illustrates the importance of identity for realizing a bigger
picture of nudges and government-in-context. It also stresses the short-
comings of assertive identity that every discipline tends to exhibit –
including philosophy (despite its dedication to wisdom), public adminis-
tration (despite its dedication to practicality), and economics (despite its
dedication). The fifth speaks about how nudges should be nudged,
hoping that nudges can be used honestly and openly.

Preface
Dear reader, here are three questions in a preface that I wonder if you
are thinking about:

1) Are there different schools of economics, some saying different things

about government?Yes, there are some 10 or so different branches of
28 Contemplation and Beyond
economics that we should discuss later. Two best known are parts of
the Neoclassical School, which have conflicting views of the free
market – with different implications for government. The Freshwater
School (nicknamed after Lake Michigan and the University of
Chicago) maintains that the economy needs a free market. The
Saltwater School (not being near a freshwater lake) includes Paul
Samuelson who won the Nobel Prize in 1970. He also authored
a textbook (Economics, first published in 1948 and last published in
2010). In a chapter titled “The Modern Mixed Economy” (Samuel-
son & Nordhaus, 2010, pp. 25–44), the authors proclaim “the value
of the mixed economy – an economy that combines the tough
discipline of the market with fair-minded governmental oversights
. . . The follies of the left and the right both mandate centrism”
(Samuelson & Nordhaus, 2010, p. xvi).
2) Do all economists agree that economics is about markets at the center
of the stage and about purely rational market choices? No, recall
Herbert Simon (1991, pp. 23–24), recommending “organizational
economics” in place of market economics. Recall also his notions of
“bounded rationality” and “satisficing” (pro-behavioral – anti-
neoclassical economics). Bounded rationality recognizes that we
have limited capability to make rational decisions; we therefore may
look for “good enough” solutions rather than the best. He contra-
dicts the Neoclassical School, which assumes that we have unlimited
rational capability – Olympian rationality.
3) Nudge? Which is right about the rationality of the person– neoclassi-
cal or Behavioral Economics?

What Is Contemplation?
Let’s re-start first with philosophical contemplation. What is it? I want to
suggest three alternatives, including the one I used when doing my Ph.
D. in Philosophy at the University of Virginia. But there are more.
I preferred the option of doing philosophy by thinking and re-thinking,
writing and re-writing, talking and re-talking, etcetera. That was the same
I used for my Ph.D. in Economics, although there are differences such as
that economics dissertations prize use of mathematics.
Philosophical contemplation aims to contribute to deeper understand-
ings about meanings – also, especially dramatically in earlier centuries,
about facts, claims, sub-texts and sub-sub-texts. In philosophy, contem-
plation is mainly concerned with broader life-issues about, say, episte-
mology, axiology, and metaphysics. Epistemology contemplates the
origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. For instance,
what are knowledge, truth, and logic? Axiology contemplates value
theory and ethics – value theory relating to how to live better (best).
 Contemplation and Beyond 29
For instance, Aristotle points to happiness, properly understood;
Nietzsche argues against. Metaphysics concerns the fundamental nature
of reality – including such items as theism and materialism. In Creel’s
terms (2001, pp. 53–68), what philosophers do in each area includes
expositing, analyzing, synthesizing, describing, speculating, prescribing,
and criticizing.
Dear reader, this is a lot to grasp (don’t worry) if this is your first
encounter – or if you have only experienced a “narrower” version of
philosophy, and that is political philosophy – a part also of political
theory. As you would expect, it concerns topics that relate to government
such as justice, liberty, and law. For 10 years every semester, when
Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, I used to
enjoy teaching Political Science courses in even narrower versions –
Ancient, Medieval, and Modern political philosophy. When teaching
Plato’s Republic, it did not “feel” narrower. In fact, the story (it is in
Book VII, starting at line 514) of the prisoners in the cave – where they
have spent their lives tied up, seeing, and believing the reality of images
on the wall – speaks to a fundamental political problem not stressed and
that is the need for more people to know more about what is funda-
mental. Yes, it is good to start with the Ancient Greeks and philosophy;
but, despite my admiration for them, I repeat that it need not be always
good to end with them.
Contemplation may be described in terms of “deep thinking.” How-
ever, others may prefer different words equivalent to deep thinking –
such as profound thought, reflection, close study, reflectiveness, musing,
and cogitating, etc. The Oxford English Dictionary gives nine descrip-
tions for contemplation, e.g., the act of beholding, or looking at with
attention and thought; with reference to a particular object, continued
thinking, meditation, musing; a meditation expressed in writing; religious
musing, devout meditation. There are other related words, e.g. to under-
stand, to cogitate, and to ponder.
There are also differing prescriptions in philosophizing starting with the
Ancient Greeks. Plato, for example, focuses on contemplation requiring
eventual ascent to the Form of the Good: Aristotle identifies eudaimonia
(well-being) with intellectual contemplation, and he does not endorse the
Form of the Good. (Dear reader, does this remind you of the difference
often experienced in modern politics between the language about truth in
governance v. the chat that pays off to politicians but that avoids resolving
issues in the language of truth?) There are also disagreements in other
disciplines, e.g., between schools of psychotherapy (Freud and Jung had
opposing views on the latter’s attraction not only to the unconscious but
also to religious beliefs, including – say – Tantric Buddhism).
There are indeed different kinds of deep thinking. Claims Lahav (2018, p. 1),
“We practice philosophical contemplation because we yearn to connect with
a source of wisdom and understanding that is greater and deeper than our
30 Contemplation and Beyond
usual thinking patterns . . .” He explains that we must develop an inner
attitude that is attentive and open. By what appears to be a contrast, there is
philosophical contemplation that consists of “doing philosophy.” Writing for
students of philosophy, Soccio (1992, p. 37) describes critical thinking in such
terms as rational assessment of claims; logical reasoning; objective and
sustained argument for claims; etc. For another publication, see Wilson
(2017) on Critical Thinking.
Consider first an example of what can be called the indirect benefit
approach – contemplating but not by simply “doing” philosophy. Such
philosophical contemplation can be described in terms of three steps –
pre-contemplation, contemplation, and post-contemplation. For pre-
contemplation (step 1), it is desirable to center yourself and free yourself
from everyday thoughts and worries. For this, one option of seventy-five
meditations is what Sockolov (2018, pp. 3–4) calls “finding the breath.”
He discusses this by describing mindfulness and meditation exercises. In
turn, do the following – sit or lie comfortably; close your eyes; relax
muscles in your abdomen; expand your chest and lungs; feel the breath
in your nostrils; and so on. From the perspective of contemplation,
a point is to unwind from the day’s ups and downs and from the rush
of thoughts-about-next-to-nothing – and to permit focus on reflecting on
fundamental life issues from what some call “our inner depth.”
For contemplation (step 2), the “silent lesson” has been described as
an important procedure for philosophical text contemplation – adapted
from Lectio Divina, a product of monks in medieval times. Silently
reading a short philosophical text (about one or two pages) we can (by
ourselves or in a group) “listen inwardly to the understandings that rise
in us in response . . . (We) may experience the text speaking to us and
‘teaching’ us new insights” (Lahav, 2018, p. 47). Lahav describes its five
procedures: starting with a preliminary reading to understand literal
meaning; read it again silently, and “let the text speak in you;” make
note of any idea that just surfaces to you; contemplate a selected
sentence and decipher it “as a candy that you savor in your mouth
without trying to crack it with your teeth;” consolidate the noted ideas,
and let the ideas do most of the work. For contemplation (step 3), exit
slowly by letting your attention dissolve.
If a child is being taught how to multiply 2 x 2 = 4, would it be
rational to say that the numbers talk to him – as opposed to appear to
talk? When I read that the monks adopted the Lectio Divina, I can
imagine that I know that they would be comfortable not to offer pro and
con-arguments about the truth of what the holy writer wrote. I can also
imagine that it would be pleasing to do another of the options – what
Lahav (pp. 56–57) calls calligraphic contemplation, picking out lines and
writing them in precise and beautiful letters, using a calligraphic pen: yet
I could imagine that I would prefer writing on my computer. But the
difference between focusing on doing philosophy and preparing to do
 Contemplation and Beyond 31
philosophy might not be as substantial as I have indicated in distinguish-
ing between direct and indirect. Speaking to students, Soccio reminds
them “Don’t be surprised if your first reading of a philosophical text
confuses you . . . I find that I must read most philosophical arguments at
least twice . . . before I really begin to understand them . . .” (Soccio,
1992, p. 32). That seems a trifle overlapping of the direct, with the
indirect, model – as it were, for the reader expecting to hear the voice
from the within.
Creel describes “thinking philosophically” – a term that is equivalent
to deep thinking. He writes about “doing philosophy rather than looking
at it from the outside” Creel (2001, pp. 93–333). He offers an exciting
explanation of the vast scope of doing philosophy. He teaches philoso-
phy by going into philosophy in three ways – by focusing on the Greeks,
by surveying the history of philosophy, and by a problems approach that
identifies and explains philosophical problems – such as those about
God, truth, ethics, etc. The Socratic Method also “does philosophy” by
showing Socrates as “the gadfly of Athens,” engaging in friendly back-
and-forth counter-questions about another person’s philosophical claims,
and ending with Socrates asking the person publicly to acknowledge
error. It was a kind of rational/educative dialogue.
I preferred the option of doing philosophy, as mentioned at the beginning
of this section, by thinking and re-thinking, writing and re-writing, talking
and re-talking when I wrote about philosophical texts and issues – especially
about meanings, pro-arguments and con-arguments. For myself, I “did”
philosophy – and I contemplated philosophy – when I wrote papers during
philosophy courses (Soccio would have approved of that) and when I wrote
my doctoral dissertation. The dissertation was titled “Time and McTag-
gart’s Paradox.” It focused on insights and pro and con arguments about
philosopher John McTaggart’s paradox about the nature of time, first
published in 1908 and later in his Nature of Existence (McTaggart, 1927,
pp. 9–31). And preparing the dissertation included four semesters of weekly
discussions about my thinking and re-writings with my mentor. “You and
I seem to live in time. How shall we understand this ‘being in time?’ What is
the nature of time?” (Farmer, 1990, p. 2). This was my contemplative
thinking and re-thinking, writing and re-writing, talking and re-talking aim.
McTaggart held that time is unreal, as he analyzed two accounts of time.
There was the A-theory, the ordinary position that time is tensed (from past
to present to future) and there was the B-theory – the tenseless view in the
words attributed (to Einstein and others, as you may recall from Chapter 1)
that the idea of the ‘now’ and the distinctions between past and present and
future are illusory.
Philosophy does have the capability of upgrading commonsense mis-
understandings, even if some non-philosophers mistakenly view it as
abstract and impractical chat. For most who have studied it seriously,
the great philosophers appear significantly wise. For myself, I recall the
32 Contemplation and Beyond
thrill, the delight, of reading Aristotle writing in Physica on time – and
how could he, over 2,340 years ago, have anticipated the issue McTag-
gart and others described as the A-and B-theories of time?

First, does it belong to the class of things that exist or to things that
do not exist. Then secondly, what is its nature?… Again, the ‘now’
which seems to bound the past and the future – does it always
remain one and the same or is it always other and other. It is hard
to say.
(Aristotle, Physica, Book 4, 218)

In my mind, I always link together Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – teaching

in that order. I recall the anguish and sorrow when sitting on the stones at
the location in Athens in the Agora (Greek for “open place of assembly”)
where Socrates was imprisoned and required to kill himself – hearing our
guide from Georgetown University reading Plato’s story at the end of the
Phaedo. We may “fairly say” that the dying Socrates was “the wisest and
most upright man” (Plato, Phaedo, 118). But is it the case that philosophical
contemplation has no equal, no need for help? No, not at all! As one con
argument, recall the biological understandings available from neuroscience.
Neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen (2005) wrote about the beneficial biologi-
cal effects from meditation on gamma synchrony – with effects in the
frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of the brain. Other examples could
be added. There is data outside philosophy – even more, even more – for the
discipline of philosophy; there is data inside philosophy – even more, even
more – for other disciplines.
The critical point is that philosophical contemplation is not the only kind
of deep thinking. Contemplation can be found, in different doses and in
different kinds and directed toward different ends, in most academic
disciplines. No less than in philosophy, I contemplated when I took eco-
nomics courses and (as noted earlier) I thought and re-thought, wrote and re-
wrote, talked and re-talked my doctoral dissertation in Economics. But it
should not, even if it sometimes does, exclude the kind of deep thinking that
we associate with philosophy. Dear reader, haven’t you had similar experi-
ences when thinking and re-thinking, writing and re-writing papers in
public administration, or Political Science, or Public Policy, or Business
Administration or in this or that discipline?

Contemplation of the Theoretical and the Practical

How should contemplation of the theoretical, such as theory that rarely
is studied by non-specialists, be deepened? First, the full range of
theoretical approaches should be admitted by those leading the study of
government-in-context. To comment on P.A., for instance, both
 Contemplation and Beyond 33
traditional and post-traditional P.A. should be admitted. Second, the
advantages of deterritorialization (epistemic pluralism) should be
understood.
How should contemplation of the practical, such as insights from
policy and administrative management, be deepened? Practical insights
are valuable, but they are frequently distorted by the conditions of
practicality. Such insights should be understood in their context.

Theoretical: Traditional and Post-Traditional

Contemplation of government-in-context should include post-traditional
P.A. – just as it should include traditional P.A. Let’s focus on some of the
postmodern that this includes – imaginization, deconstruction, alterity,
and epistemic pluralism (or deterritorialization). One way that the post-
traditional should go beyond is to focus more on management insights in
terms not only of administration but also of policy. The post-traditional
does spend effort in trying to “contemplate” the traditional; but it should
also think more deeply about traditional practitioner insights.
You may also recall that imaginization and epistemic pluralism were
discussed in part in Chapter 1. They are important; let’s add more. For
imaginization, let me repeat the example given by ex-world-chess-champion
Gary Kasparov, explaining that, in a perfectly rational game that is chess,
excellent players have a name – “fantasy” – for the sort of imagination that
allows them to break out of usual patterns and startle opponents. The
example appeals to me because of my kid identity as a chess player. But
I don’t like Kasparov’s term (because it can lead to misunderstandings), and
I prefer “imaginization.” The result is more effective results than with the
merely rational. Writes Kasparov (2007, p. 62),

Fantasy isn’t something you can turn on with the flip of a switch.
The key is to indulge it as often as you can to encourage the habit,
to allow your unconventional side to flourish… It’s not about being
an inventor, with an occasional flash of creativity, but about being
innovative in your decision-making all the time.

On deconstruction, I agree that it is not an easy subject, and the

difficulty is reflected in Derrida’s comment that deconstruction is neither
a method nor an analysis nor a critique. But much indeed is to be
learned for Post-Traditional P.A. from Jacques Derrida about the decon-
struction of bureaucratic and other grand narratives and from Michel
Foucault about the significance of power. Grand narratives that could be
discussed are, for example, that efficiency should be the objective of P.
A. practice and (recalling that the objectives of government and business
are substantially different) that a model for effective government is
business (e.g., Farmer, 1995, p. 185). The postmodern situation is
34 Contemplation and Beyond
indeed where the real and appearance have imploded, where the
production has been replaced by the world of seduction, and where
public policy is subjected to politics run by money and by show. As
I have argued, “lying, manipulation, and covering up . . . are as much
part of bureaucratic management and leadership as they are part of
politics” (Farmer, 1995, p. 209). False appearances, for one thing,
ought to be deconstructed. As Derrida (1992) argued, “Deconstruc-
tion is justice.”
Turn to postmodern thinking on alterity. It suggests openness to the
other; preference for a diversity of texts and listening; opposition to
metanarratives and mystical foundations; and opposition to existing
institutions. Profound as these statements might be, the reader can see
why some whose identities favor rapid and easy solutions want to
avoid the trouble of contemplating some unsettling postmodern
claims. We can also see why some postmodern claims will also
encounter identity resistance from those who admire, say, unexamined
myths. We can also recognize that some claims may need later re-
examination – and even additions. Isn’t that normal in, say, philoso-
phy or science?

Deterritorialization
An epistemic pluralist approach should be pursued for government-in-
context and for each of the disciplines involved in the context – in the
general pattern of that (noted in Chapter 1) for public administration.
Again, my view is that it should be pursued for all the theoretical
disciplines. The choice of lenses could be modified from one discipline
to another, however.
Part of the governmental context is economic theory. Epistemic Plur-
alism could examine economics from, say, the lenses of each of the 10 or
so branches (or schools) of economics referenced (but where only one
was named) in this chapter’s preface – Classical, Neoclassical, Marxist,
Developmentalist, Austrian, Schumpeterian (and Neo-Schumpeterian),
Keynesian, Institutionalist, Behaviorist, and Neuroeconomics. Notice
a comment from Joseph Schumpeter, the principal figure in the Schum-
peterian branch. The

frontiers of the individual sciences . . . are incessantly shifting and

. . . there is no point in trying to define them either by subject or by
method. This applies particularly to economics, which is not
a science in the sense in which acoustics is one, but rather an
aggregation of ill-coordinated and overlapping fields of research in
the same sense as is medicine.
(Joseph Schumpeter, 1954, p. 10)
 Contemplation and Beyond 35
Would you expect that to be shared by all the other branches? Cer-
tainly not!
The lenses of epistemic pluralism could examine economic theory
through, say, thirteen perspectives – mainstream, political, economic his-
tory, post-structural, psychoanalytic, neuroscientific, critical theory, femin-
ist, new rhetoric, ethical, evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy of
science.
What kind of insights would you, dear reader, expect from such an
approach? Would you anticipate any of the following? Economics
from a psychoanalytical perspective could well ask questions like
“And can economic man be recognized as governed in part by his
own unconscious?” and “Can economic policy be also recognized as
including the working of the collective unconscious?” Economics
from a neuroscientific perspective could well raise questions like
“Shouldn’t Economics recognize our emerging neuro-society?” and
“Are economic assumptions shaped within the brain?” and “Can
neuroscience increase economic imagination?” Economics from
a feminist perspective could well pose questions like “Should eco-
nomics work against othering?” and “Should economic man be
promoted to economic person?” and “Is economics’ imagination
socially constructed?” Economics from a Philosophy of Science
perspective could well raise questions like “Should economics face
up to rhetoric and symbols?”.
And you could reflect on your philosophical contemplation utilizing
epistemic pluralism – using categories like methods for contemplating
the philosophical, methods for contemplating the practical, and mean-
ings about government-in-context, etc.

Practical: Interpreted in Context

How should contemplation of the practical be deepened? It is suggested
that it should be interpreted in Context. (Dear reader, what example
would you give from your own experiences? I am sorry that you cannot
tell me that story.) Let us take two other examples – related to my
experience (such as it was) in administration and policy and another
person’s experience in science.

First Example
Here are four of my published practical ideas, which could have started
because of work as a practitioner on four different days over some of my
years. They came from four essays written for a series called “Tales from
the Field” about my activities as a practitioner. The first two practical
ideas were explained in two essays titled Contemplating Cops: A Tale of
Identities. They started from my reflection on three jobs that I held,
36 Contemplation and Beyond
many years ago, as Special Assistant to the Police Commissioner within
the New York City Police Department (1971–1974), as Director of the
Police Division within the National Institute of Justice in the United
States Department of Justice (1974–1980), and as Professor and Chair of
the Department of Administration of Justice and Public Safety at
Virginia Commonwealth University (1982–1991).
The first set of practical ideas (i.e. in the Tales from the Field series)
all focused on police openness – including that cops should focus on
greater openness from the department to non-police skills (e.g., to re-
allocating resources among New York’s seventy-one precincts), that
police commanders should be more open to triggers and mechanisms
encouraging commanders to take more responsibility for their subordi-
nates’ activities, and that adjustments should be welcomed on the mean-
ing of the police badge. This need for openness

was (later) evidenced by the Mollen Commission (The City of

New York Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption
and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department), set up
by Mayor David N. Dinkins in June 1992. The New York Times . . .
saying that the NYPD ‘had failed at every point to uproot corrup-
tion and had instead tolerated a culture that fostered misconduct
and concealed lawlessness by police officers.’
(Farmer, 2017b, p. 155)

The second practical idea at the end of the second Tale of Identities
reads

To the extent that it is shut, should not the door be opened fully
between police (or criminal justice) studies, on the one hand, and
public administration, on the other? Cannot they learn from each
other? But, isn’t the extent to which police studies can learn from
public administration limited by the extent the door is closed
between public administration and public policy?
(Farmer, 2017b, p. 250)

The third and fourth practical ideas in Contemplating Bureaucracies

started from my reflection on jobs – both located in Chicago, Illinois –
that I held (1965–1971) as Management Consultant for Public Adminis-
tration Service (doing management consulting for several states and
some twenty cities throughout the United States) and Management
Consultant for The Jacobs Company (working for cities in the Model
Cities Program). I also worked for the Budget Bureau in Saskatchewan
(budget analyst and administrative analyst), three agencies in Ontario
(department of economics and development, civil service commission,
and treasury department), and for the Australian Federal Government.
 Contemplation and Beyond 37
The most significant recommendation in Tales from the Field 3 was the
utility of

stimulating the imagination by playing with thinking and practices

about governance and people in other cultures. But it is always
difficult to see the foreign because the misconceptions of the non-
foreign always intrude; and that is one reason why actual involve-
ment in the practice of foreign bureaucracy is always helpful.
(Farmer, 2017a, pp. 331–343)

The most significant recommendation in Tales from the Field 4 was that
“contemplating the post-traditional is what is recommended as a preface
for contemplating bureaucracies” (Farmer, 2018, p. 8) and now to add
government-in-context and governmentality.
No, these are not all the ideas I have ever had. Also, not all practical
(or impractical) ideas have come from being at work. There are many
other sources of ideas, e.g., even reading books, talking with friends,
even listening to a stranger on a bus. Here is a quote on an idea that
comes from life – and from agreeing with Police Commissioner Patrick
V. Murphy’s comment that the claim that police departments enforce all
laws equally is “nonsense and silly” (Murphy & Plate, 1977, p. 53). Such
inequality is more than a “mere” police or bureaucratic matter. Let me
give another example by referring to Governor L. Douglas Wilder, the
first African-American state governor in U.S. history, and learning from
his book Son of Virginia (Wilder, 2015) – the governor signing the book
and referring to me on the title page as his “colleague, friend, and
consultant.” I was shocked to read that Doug’s grandmother and grand-
father were slaves (I thought it would have been great-grandparents or
whatever); that information brought it for me to a direct human level . . .
I told Doug one day that I don’t know much about slavery but, if my
grandparents had been slaves, I would never, never have forgiven their
oppressors. He replied, “You know more (about it) than most people.”
(Farmer, 2017b, p. 249).

Second Example
Consider a fictitious astronomer arguing that there is no practical connec-
tion between Science and Philosophy. Astronomical Science can measure
that, beyond our own galaxy, there are 100 billion more galaxies in the
universe; and that, 13.2 billion years ago, the universe was of subatomic
size. Should or would this be of no emotional or intellectual interest to
a philosopher focusing on metaphysics – or to an astronomer sitting at a bar
one Friday evening? In the other direction, would a hard-core scientist have
no emotional or intellectual interest in philosophy of science (e.g., Boyd,
Gasper, & Trout, 1993, pp. 1–712) – including philosophy of physics (pp.
38 Contemplation and Beyond
463–544), philosophy of biology (pp. 545–604), and philosophy of psychol-
ogy (pp. 605–712)? Reader, how would you evaluate this “practical” idea?
Within disciplines like P.A., it can be suggested that there is too much
confinement to micro contemplation, and too little at the macro,
national and super-national levels. Findings can be offered that there
should be more contemplation about tales from the field and from the
future, rather than so many from history and even mythology. Within
disciplines like Economics, it can be suggested that there is data some-
times described (and misdescribed) as scientific. Also, some people, at
the risk of being called unpatriotic, claim that there is a mythical
celebration – especially in the United States and in Western Europe – of
capitalism as the most important system and defense against enemy
systems. In general, I don’t think that ideas should be segregated into
two domains – theoretical and practical.

Identity
Is recognition of identity significant for a bigger picture of understanding
government-in-context? Is my identity a kind of nudge to me? Is your
identity a kind of nudge to you?
All academic disciplines have identities, and so do you and I. Our own
identities shape our understandings and hopes for academic disciplines
and for their need to grow. Appiah reflects in The Lies that Bind about
the identities of country, class and culture, and such literature deepens
understanding of the effects and importance of identities.

In sum, identities come, first, with labels and ideas about why and to
whom they should be applied. Second, your identity shapes your
thoughts about how you should behave; and, third, it affects the way
other people treat you. Finally, all these dimensions of identity are
contestable… .
(Appiah, 2018, p. 12)

The cultural identities, as Appiah’s comment implies, have a significant

effect on our attitudes towards academic structure and needs. The
literature about our identities is significant and large, and it shows that
we are shaped more passively – than we might imagine – about what and
how we think.
Turn, for example. to the title of Charles Taylor’s significant work on
such topics. It is Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
(Taylor, 1989).

Again and again, in a host of different ways, the claim has been
made that this is an instrumental society, one in which, say,
a utilitarian outlook is entrenched in institutions of a commercial,
 Contemplation and Beyond 39
capitalist and finally a bureaucratic mode of existence, (and it) tends
to empty life of its richness, depth and or meaning.
(Taylor, 1989, p. 500)

Recall Max Weber’s notion of modern society as “an iron cage.”

You and I also have identities, as noted in the preface; and we are
inclined to bend our understandings accordingly. Movement toward the
philosophical, for example, will encounter the identity-related resistance
of those who dislike contemplating, of those who abhor what they
consider to be macro abstractions, and of those that want to be micro
nuts-and-bolts practical thinkers. But, dear reader, hopefully such macro
resistance can be reduced to some extent when sufferers recognize the
significance of our own identities’ impacts.

Should Nudges Be Contemplated?

Let’s return more directly to nudges in order to re-emphasize that
nudging should be subjected to contemplation.
Yet there are pro and con versions to the reliance on nudges and
Behavioral Economics and nudge technicians. On the pro side, it is
a hopeful approach to the difficulties of government-in-context. On the
con side, Behavioral Economics theorists and practitioners – like any
theorist and practitioner in any other discipline – do have an interest in the
fortunes of their discipline. They cannot expect that libertarian paternalism
is a convincing argument, however. But others will build on the politics
(rather than the truth) of situations, even suggesting that capitalism,
supported by happy adjectives, will sound cool to voters (and to all of us
suffering from post-truth). The response to understanding government-in-
context should not be confined to only a part of the context, e.g., from
a discipline which is limited (say) to studying economics.
Let’s not embrace any prods unless we are convinced that nudging is
completely ethical. Let’s not embrace prods for adult citizens unless we
can embrace prods, shoves and hammer blows.
Social engineering and many other aspects of nudging have been studied
in social disciplines, and by celebrated thinkers like Karl Popper (1971)
writing as political scientist. Arguably, social engineering has been well
recognized in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century –
also in authoritarian governments like the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Summary
This chapter discusses the nature and utility of contemplation and nudges.
Three different accounts of contemplation are noted – including the
Socratic Method. Relevant brands of theorizing and of deterritorialization,
noting their relevance to economics and to traditional and post-traditional
40 Contemplation and Beyond
thinking, are emphasized. Practical insights from practitioners, often over-
looked by theorists, should also be considered. The contemplator should
recognize both the theoretical and the practical. The importance of identity
also should be appreciated for realizing a bigger picture of nudges and
government-in-context. Recognition should also be given to the shortcom-
ings of assertive identity that every discipline tends to exhibit. The chapter
emphasizes that nudges themselves should be used only honestly and
openly. The nature and utility of “contemplation and beyond” should be
recognized in the seeking of better practical understandings of government-
in-context.

References
Andreasen, N. (2005). The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius. New York:
Dana Press.
Appiah, K.A. (2018). The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. New York: Norton
and Company.
Aristotle. Physics. (Book 4, Ch. 9, 217b 29-218a 31).
Boyd, I., P. Gasper, & J. D. Trout (1993). The Philosophy of Science. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Creel, R.E. (2001). Thinking Philosophically: An Introduction to Critical Reflection
and Rational Dialogue. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Derrida, J. (1992). Force of Law: The Mystical Foundations of Authority. In
Drucilla Cornell & Michel Rosenfeld (Eds), Deconstruction and the Possibility
of Justice, (pp. 3–67). New York: Routledge.
Farmer, D.J. (1990). The Nature of Time in Light of McTaggart’s Paradox.
Lanham, MD: Universty Press of America.
Farmer, D.J. (1995). The Language of Public Administration: Bureaucracy, Moder-
nity and Postmodernity. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Farmer, D.J. (2017a). Contemplating Bureaucracies: A Tale of Identities – Essay 3.
Administrative Theory and Praxis, 39 (4): 331–343.
Farmer, D.J. (2017b). Contemplating Cops: A Tale of Identities – Essay 2. Admin-
istrative Theory and Praxis, 39 (3): 240–251.
Farmer, D.J. (2017c). Contemplating Cops: A Tale of Identities – Essay 1. Admin-
istrative Theory and Praxis, 39 (2): 142–156.
Farmer, D.J. (2018). Contemplating Bureaucracies: A Tale of Identities – Essay 4.
Administrative Theory and Praxis, 40 (1): 83–95.
Lahav, R. (2018). Philosophical Contemplation: Theory and Techniques for the
Contemplator. Hardwick, VT: Loyev Books.
Kasparov, G. (2007). How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the
Board to the Boardroom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
McTaggart, J. (1921/1927). The Nature of Existence. Volumes 1 and 2. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, P.V. & T. Plate (1977). Commissioner: A View from the Top of American
Law Enforcement. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Plato. Republic. Book, Vol VII, 514.
Plato. Phaedo, 118.
 Contemplation and Beyond 41
Popper, K. (1971). The Open Society and Its Enemies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Samuelson, P. & W. Nordhaus. (2010). Economics (19th edn). New York: McGraw
Hill.
Schumpeter, J. (1954). The History of Economic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Simon, H. (1991). Organizations and Markets. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5
(2): 25–44.
Soccio, D.J. (1992). How to Get the Most Out of Philosophy. Boston, MA:
Wadsworth.
Sockolov, M. (2018). Practicing Mindfulness: 75 Essential Meditations. Emeryville,
CA: Althea Press.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilder, D.L. (2015). Son of America: A Life in America’s Political Arena. Guilford,
CT: Rowman and Littlefield.
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Decision Making and Problem Solving. Amazon Digital Services.
4 Context
Infiltration

Shouldn’t contemplation seek understanding of infiltration by big cor-

porations, their owners and billionaires? Yes, we should seek knowledge
and meaning of nudges (hammer blows, shoves, and prods) from – and
to – private corporate and big money power, a major element of
government’s context. Is the current primary de facto meaning of
government to use, and to support, the rich?
Understanding is needed about the infiltration of big business into
government – and into society. The financial/business nudge to cor-
porations is hugely positive for the rich – and believed, without
compelling justification, to be significantly beneficial by a number of
the non-rich. The range of nudges from big corporations and billio-
naires to government constrains governmental actions. These con-
straints operate through money, rewards, threats, punishment, and
support of this or that politician, or group or party, etc. These
constraints include controlling the shaping of governmental policies
(e.g., taxation laws), and controlling critical aspects of governmental
functioning (e.g., pro and con financing in elections, gerrymandering,
impacting the Supreme Court, lobbying as it has developed since the
1970s). And there are other critical aspects. Exploring knowledge and
meanings of the corporate and big money infiltration can be
attempted through epistemic pluralism. We can start with economics
and business. Other nudges about meanings also will be explored in
the following chapters, e.g., the suggestion that the infiltration threa-
tens democracy.

Nudging: Enriching the Rich

Let’s “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which
dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid
defiance to the laws of our country” (Thomas Jefferson, 1816).
The aristocracy of our monied corporations (to borrow the phrase from
President Jefferson, 1816, November 12) has, with ups and downs,
 Context: Infiltration 43
become richer; it is hugely rich; and, with ups and downs, it will get richer.
Income has jumped for the top 1 percent of the population in the United
States. From 1968 to 1978, the income of the top 1 percent grew by
8 percent. From 1986 to 1994, it was more than 12 percent. From 1995 to
2000, it was more than 14 percent. From 2003 to 2011, it was more than
16 percent. And onward and upward; e.g., see (Lindsey & Teles, 2017).
Global capitalism is considered problematic because there is little or no
global government (no global democracy) and no global citizenship. As
Kuttner (2018, p. xvi) argues, national regulatory authority is undermined.
There is no global financial supervisor, global tax collector, global anti-trust
authority, etc. And there are enough crooked governments – and (LOL)
enough tax havens – happy to help. Naomi Klein has written about the
spreading – by the Chicago School of Economics and others – of such
neoliberalism to a number of other countries (Klein, 2007).
Here are three rich statements about the rich. First, how many people
are at the top of the wealthy list, versus all of the rest of the people in the
world? In 2015, the world’s top 1 percent owned more wealth than all the
rest of the people on the planet. Just 62 people owned as much wealth as
the entire bottom half of humanity (Standing, 2016). Second, how much
is the difference between the CEO’s pay and that of an average worker?
There is a humongous gap – more than two hundred times greater. This
gap had grown substantially over the previous twenty-five years (Stiglitz,
2012, p. 21). Third, has a widening of the income gap continued for some
time? In the two decades before the turn of the century, income distribu-
tion has become more unequal in the United States and in other
countries like Great Britain and probably India and China (Kay, 2004).
Since 1977, the average real income of the top 1 percent of U.S. families
increased substantially, whereas that of the bottom 20 percent decreased
substantially (Korton, 1995, p. 109).

Nudging: Constraining Government

Corporations have been enthroned . . . An era of corruption in high
places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its
reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is
aggregated in a few hands… and the Republic is destroyed.
(Abraham Lincoln)

There is great pressure to enthrone corporations (President Lincoln, as

quoted by Korton, 1995, p. 58) and to shift government and the market
to corporate advantage and to avoid government oversight – to avoid
legislative and regulative supervision and to influence elections. There is
massive corporate lobbying. There is also dark money. There are details
like gerrymandering. There is influence on the selection of judges. There
is influence against policies, like – now – climate change and pollution
44 Context: Infiltration
and – in the past – the unhealthiness of tobacco. Corporate influence has
intruded into all elements of politics. Lincoln was not the only leader to
embrace such a view of enthroning corporations. For example, Teddy
Roosevelt later emphasized that

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible govern-

ment owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to
the people. To destroy this invincible government, to dissolve the
unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the
first task of the statesmanship of the day.
(Roosevelt, 1912)

This was during the Progressive era, described in the next paragraph.
There has been an oscillation over time between two types of
political economy – the unregulated and the partially regulated. One
is where the invisible hand of the free market was expected to replace
(as it were) the hand of government and unions. The other is where
unregulated is replaced by the partially regulated – or the mixed –
economy. It is not suggested, however, that the present is the first
period in U.S. economic history that embraced de-regulation: indeed,
there had been more than one. Some had at least “agreeable” names.
In the late nineteenth century (from the 1870s until about 1900), there
had been a period of unregulated capitalism that later came to be
called The Gilded Age – the name inspired by Mark Twain’s and
Warner’s novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) that described
some important social problems covered by a thin gold gilding. It has
also been called the Robber Baron period. Following a regulated
period from 1900 to 1916 (called the Progressive Era), another
unregulated or free-market period started in the early 1920s and that
was called The Roaring Twenties. The period from World War II until
the late 1970s was regulated.
The role of the government changed in the United States in the 1980s,
including de-regulation of basic industries, deregulation of the financial
sector, fewer anti-trust legal constraints, privatization of public func-
tions, abandonment of Keynesian-type governing policies – and huge tax
cuts for business and for the rich. Welfare states were cut back; labor
unions were marginalized. These changes spread to (and from) other
parts of the world. A basic idea was that government is basically
inefficient, and that for-profit enterprises are utterly efficient. Changes
were also made between the economy and private corporations. Working
wages and conditions were substantially set by market conditions, rather
than supplemented by agreement between corporations and unions. And
globalization, growing especially in and after the last decade of the
twentieth century, involved a significant growth in the movement of
capital, services, and money across national boundaries.
 Context: Infiltration 45
Lobbying has been a feature constraining American government
through most of its history. But lobbying experienced periods of
growth after the Civil War (after 1865), again in the 1980s, and again
in the 2010s. The post-civil war period of lobbying has been associated
with the locale of the Willard Hotel, a Washington D.C. hotel located
near the White House. That locale is associated with the frequent visits
of President Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) for his brandies and cigars.
While there, the President was petitioned in the lobby for this or that
favor – and he is said to have described the petitioners as “those
damned lobbyists.” (Dear reader, I enjoy this story, even if it is
doubted, because I used to enjoy visiting the Willard, when I worked
for the Department of Justice. But you may enjoy another story about
lobbying – about Sam Cutler Ward, King of the Lobby, 1814–1884. He
used what was called social lobbying – including wonderful dinners
(not just money) for the congressmen being lobbied.)
The volume of money jumped upward when corporate lobbying (a
reverse visible hand) exploded in the 1980s. By the 1990s, more than 500
companies maintained permanent offices in Washington, DC – employ-
ing 61,000 lobbyists (Loomis & Stremph, 2003). Lobbying, for example,
is done by lobbying firms, professionals, volunteers and others. It can
concentrate on legislatures and on other branches like the judicial (e.g.,
with amicus curiae briefs). The lobbying industry is shaped by
a revolving door approach, changing roles between legislators and
regulators – and government and non-governmental employees. Lobby-
ing appears to be big-time profitable. It plays a significant role not only
in the United States, but also, for example, in the United Kingdom,
France, and Australia.
From 2010 came the most recent growth in the power of corporate
lobbying in the United States. It was the case of Citizens United
(January 21, 2010) when the United States Supreme Court declared
corporations to be artificial persons and expenditures to be speech. Yes,
corporations were defined as people, although artificial people. Yes,
expenditures were defined as speech. The Supreme Court held that the
free speech clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government
from restricting independent expenditure by for-profit organizations,
non-profit organizations, labor unions, and other associations. Now
corporations spend huge amounts of money to oppose or support
candidates – as long as (a detail) the money does not go directly to
campaigns. In 2012, some $840 million was spent on the election. An
average price of winning a Senate seat grew to $10.4 million and a House
seat to $1.4 million (Whitehouse, 2017, p. 31). After Citizens United and
in 2016, “top Republican insider donors contributed $1.34 million per
couple, and Democrats $1.6 million” (New York Times, September 26,
2017). Of course, there had previously been moves, such as the Tillman
Act of 1907 barring direct campaign contributions from corporations –
46 Context: Infiltration
and the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act legalizing corporate poli-
tical action committees.
The super-rich typically pay a lower tax rate than those less well-off.
For example, the tax rate in 2007 for the rich was 16.6 percent on the
top 400 households, compared with 20.4 percent for taxpayers in
general. Warren Buffet, a very rich man who owns parts of this and
that corporation, reported that he paid a lower tax rate than his
secretary. Is this not an amazing contrast – the poorer person paying
a higher percentage than the richer person? Other good tax deals in the
U.S. include the inheritance tax that applies only to estates over
$5 million; and corporate profit taxes that are below the standard
income tax rate. Subsidies go to financial assets, intellectual property,
land property, and mineral rights. In 2014, oil, coal, and gas were
subsidized by $21 billion. Such tax rates are not confined to the U.S.
Most rich countries have subsidies totaling more than 6 percent of
gross domestic product.

Toward Meaning from Economists

The meaning of infiltration of government owes a substantial debt (yes,
a hammer blow debt) to the support of the thinking and teaching of the
freshwater branch of neoclassical economics, the Chicago School. It is
a branch of economics that includes reliance on the free market and
minimal government – on the efficacy of the invisible hand. It opposes
governmental regulation; it supports de-regulation. Reliance on the
invisible hand of the free market implies that no governmental regula-
tions – none whatsoever – are needed for the effective functioning of the
market. But the meaning of the infiltration goes beyond economics, e.g.,
including not only big money and corporate activities, different levels of
post-truth, and many business-oriented people and members of the
public and the government.
Such divisions as regulated v. unregulated should include reference to
descriptions of related and interesting dichotomies. For example, there
was a dichotomy that can be described as defining Modern Economics,
and that was between Nobel Prize winners John Maynard Keynes and
Friedrich Hayek. Keynes, famously and otherwise conservative, pre-
scribed governmental action as a method for correcting severe unem-
ployment; and Hayek was celebrated for opposing governmental
intervention. Writes Wapshott (2011) “the Republicans, egged on by the
Tea Party, have adopted Hayek’s cry for smaller government and have
challenged Democrats to defend the status quo. In that sense, American
politics has become increasingly Hayekian.”
The choice of free market (of de-regulation) was embraced by
a minority of branches of economics – and by a minority of neoclassical
economists. Do you recall – from Chapter 3 – the reference to the 10 or
 Context: Infiltration 47
so schools or branches of economics, and the difference between the
freshwater and saltwater divisions of the neoclassical branch of econom-
ics? Contemporary neolibertarianism is indeed the result of the work
primarily of the Chicago free market school of economics. It is in the
tradition of Spencer, Mises, Rand, Rothbard, and the older Hayek and
the older Friedman. (Hayek had left the London School of Economics in
1950 to join the University of Chicago.) Neolibertarianism contrasts with
classical liberalism, the latter including both the younger Hayek and
younger Friedman. Contemporary neolibertarianism recommends
a great reduction “in virtually all areas and all levels of government,
leaving a ‘night watchman’ state essentially protecting private property
rights . . . (It) favors profound inequality in society – progressive taxation
is rejected” (Ebenstein, 2015, pp. 194–195).
For opposition from a contrary and larger Neoclassical economic
dialect, recall mention in Chapter 3 of a well-known economics textbook
during the past seventy years – from Nobel Prize winner Paul
A. Samuelson’s and William Nordhaus’ Economics (2010 and earlier in
2005, 2001, 1998, 1995, 1992, 1989, 1985, 1980, 1976, 1973, 1970, 1967,
1964, 1063, 1058, 1955, 1853, and 1948). The helpful material appears in
the chapter titled “The Modern Mixed Economy” (Samuelson & Nord-
haus, 2010, pp. 25–44). Samuelson and Nordhaus refer to a mixed
economy as providing for “the visible hand of government.” They
explain their view that governments have three main functions in
a market economy – to increase efficiency, to promote equity, and to
foster macroeconomic stability and growth. They describe governments
as increasing efficiency by “promoting competition, curbing externalities
like pollution, and providing public goods.” Equity is promoted by
designing tax and expenditure plans to redistribute income to needy
groups. Macroeconomic stability and growth are fostered through fiscal
and monetary policy – “reducing unemployment and inflation while
encouraging economic growth” (Samuelson & Nordhaus, 2010, p. 35).
There are nine other schools of economics, as summarized by Chang
(2014, pp. 117–122); recall from Chapter 3 the Classical, Neoclassical,
Institutionalist, Behaviorist, Austrian, Schumpeterian (and Neo-
Schumpeterian), Keynesian, Marxist and Developmentalist. Other
branches might be added, e.g., Neuroeconomics. Only three can be
described as recommending the free market – the classical, the Austrian,
and part of the neoclassical. Within the divided Neoclassical, there are
indeed conflicting views on the free market.
The other schools recommend critical governmental regulation of the
market, e.g., for such purposes as property, bankruptcy and other laws.
For example, the institutionalist branch holds that individuals are
socially constructed; the behavioralist school argues for bounded ration-
ality; the Schumpeterian branch thinks that capitalism will atrophy as
corporations become more bureaucratic; the Keynesian school thinks
48 Context: Infiltration
that what helps individuals may not help the whole economy; the Marx-
ist school argues that capitalism will collapse; and the Developmentalist
branch claims that backward economies cannot develop if they leave
things entirely to the market.
For two features of this listing, (1) see economist Ha Joon Chang’s
remark that acknowledging that there are a multitude of different
approaches to economics is not adequate. Instead, understanding the
different perspectives of all of the different approaches “allow us to have
a fuller, more balanced understanding of the complex entity called the
economy” (Chang, 2014, pp. 115–116). Yes, I would go farther, and
repeat that economists should apply epistemic pluralism to their study of
the 10 schools. (2) Notice the strange-for-us detail that Marxism is
included as a school of economics. As Harvey Wasserman (1983) prob-
ably would agree, the U.S. audience is not largely open to use of even less
traumatic words like democratic socialism (the choice of Bernie San-
ders). And this underscores that evaluations about government are not
going to rest on the merely rational: we would expect to go beyond to
emotional battle, and to the realm (discussed later in Chapter 6) of the
post-truth.

Toward Meaning from the Business Community

The Powell Memorandum (also a hammer blow) was a call to action.
Aggressive business support was thus developed for the neoliberal market,
beyond the contribution of the Chicago School of Economics. It was
developed as a battle plan for the business community by Justice Lewis
Powell (1907–1998) – working through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Powell emphasized that “No thoughtful person can question that the
American economic system is under broad attack” (Powell, 1971); battling
including hammer blows was, in his view, unquestionably needed.
For an account of the battle plan, turn to the Powell Memorandum
(Powell, 1971), written on August 23, 1971, two months before President
Richard Nixon nominated Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court. It was
addressed to the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it was
used by the Chamber. This memorandum is not the sole cause of the battle
plan. For instance, credit (or discredit) has to go to personalities like
President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (who
responded with TINA – “There is no alternative.”) Credit also has to go to
money and also (as Michel Foucault might add) to power considerations.
Chief influences of the Powell memorandum have been described as
the proactive involvement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a wide-
ranging series of activities, inspiring the involvement of business-friendly
institutions (like the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the
Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and Accuracy in Aca-
deme), and the creation in corporations of Vice-Presidents for defending
 Context: Infiltration 49
against (and attacking) opponents of what in effect is the American
Business Model (ABM).
To facilitate consideration of the battle-plan in Powell’s memorandum,
the following are twenty-five of the action points made (battle moves
listed) by Lewis Powell (1971). They concern comments on initiatives by
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and by businesses themselves. They are
divided (IMO) into two categories – eleven considered relative shoves
and fourteen tending to be relative hammer blows. Recall from Chapter
1 that a hammer blow is a term used in such areas in rail or martial arts
terminology. For example, a martial arts hammerblow (spelt in one
word, unlike the rail term) brings the palms together, links the fingers,
and swings like a club – often with damaging effect.

Battle Moves: Relative Shoves

1. Recognize the desirability of creating “think-tank” institutes.
5. “Why not fight back?” (Powell, 1971).
6. The first essential is that business should approach this problem as
a primary responsibility of corporate management.
9. The Chamber, as one counter, should hire a staff of those highly
qualified in the social sciences.
11. The Chamber should seek equal time on the college circuit.
13. The Chamber should have courses in schools of business.
19. Businesses should devote 10 percent of their annual advertising
budgets to paid pro-business advertisements.
21. The Chamber should retain spokesmen for pro-business.
23. There should be more generous support from business to the
Chamber for pro-business activities.
24. People should recognize that this is not just an economic problem.
It is also about freedom.
25. The Chamber and businesses should start to implement these
changes with a complete study.

Battle Moves: Relative Hammer Blows

2. Recognize the sources of the attacks against the business culture.
3. Recognize that the foundations of the pro-business culture are
under attack.
4. Recognize that corporations are currently not aggressive enough.
7. Each corporation should have an Executive Vice-President
assigned the task of countering the attacks against the business
culture – as part of the significant first step.
8. Recognize that university social science faculties are unreliable.
10. The Chamber should evaluate text books used in universities.
12. The Chamber should urge balance in faculties at universities.
50 Context: Infiltration
14. The Chamber should evaluate secondary school activities, and
conduct an active pro-business program for such schools.
15. The Chamber should utilize staffs of scholars to influence the
public.
16. Television should be “kept under constant surveillance – including
news analysis” (Powell, 1971).
17. Radio and press should also be challenged to present affirmative
business information.
18. Books, paperbacks and pamphlets should be monitored for pro-
business adequacy.
20. Businesses should be alert to the neglected political area, like pro-
business lobbying.
22. The Chamber should adopt a more aggressive pro-free-market
attitude.

The Powell Memorandum is indeed a call to action. Justice Lewis Powell

(1971, p. 30) wrote it is “crystal clear that the foundations of our free
society are under wide-ranging and powerful attack – not by Commu-
nists or any other conspiracy but by misguided individuals parroting one
another . . .” The Powell Memorandum suggests a do-able battle plan for
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and for corporate America.

Nudging: Meaning of Meaning

Should rights and freedoms of corporations be placed ahead of the
rights and freedoms of individuals? Or, should rights and freedoms of
individuals be placed ahead of corporations? Is the current primary de
facto meaning of government to use, and to support, the rich?
Recall Robert Fogel, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics. He
argued that it is necessary

to address such postmodern concerns as the struggle for self-

realization, the desire to find deeper meaning in life than the endless
accumulation of consumer durables and the pursuit of pleasure,
access to miracles of modern medicine, education not only for
careers but also for spiritual values . . .
(Fogel, 2000)

For him, the greatest mal-distribution in rich countries is in terms of

spiritual, not material, assets. For him, the spiritual resources (and he
was not at all using the word spiritual in a religious sense) include:

a sense of purpose,
a vision of opportunity,
a sense of mainstream life and work,
 Context: Infiltration 51
a capacity to engage with diverse groups,
an ethic of benevolence,
the capacity to resist the lure of hedonism,
the capacity for self-education,
an appreciation for quality,
and self-esteem.

Let’s imagine that the Nobel Prize winner convinced the legislators that
he was right about the relative importance of such postmodern factors
(and imagine that many, many members of the public agreed), weighed
against monetary profit. What should happen? Who rules? In the Fogel
case, who should rule, government or corporation?
I doubt whether a change would be that simple. I expect that it would
include talking, arguing, lying, cheating, advertising, contributing to,
paying for . . . First, I expect that it would depend largely on our identity –
especially on how much money we have and how much we expect. Second,
I expect it would depend on what alternative we expect . . .
I doubt whether any change would be occasioned if we repeated some
of the uncomfortable facts that the economist Joseph Stiglitz suggested.
For example, some of Stiglitz’s facts about the U.S. economy are that

a) “Recent income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent income

distribution
b) There is little income mobility – the notion of America as a land of
opportunity is a myth.
c) And America has more inequality than any other advanced country
. . .” (Stiglitz, 2012, p. 25).

The political would be well served by those with the vision to establish
arrangements for expelling what has been described in this chapter as
infiltration.

Summary
This chapter seeks knowledge and meaning of infiltration of govern-
ment – where infiltration refers to big money and big corporations, their
owners and billionaires. A major nudge in the past half-century has been
the enrichment of the rich since the late 1970s and early 1980s. This has
been joined by the dominance of the neoliberal or free market – espe-
cially led by the freshwater sub-branch of neoclassical economics. It has
also been facilitated by the battle plan developed by Justice Powell for
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It has been accompanied by the
constraining of government by such means as the growth of corporate
lobbying, the involvement of money in elections, globalization of eco-
nomic activity, moneyed control of politicians through monetary and
52 Context: Infiltration
other rewards, threats and punishment. It has also been aided by the
Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations are artificial persons and that
money is the same as speech. The meaning of meaning is also noted
from Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel and others like another Nobel
Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz. The nudge from infiltration is
that the current primary de facto meaning of government is to use, and
to support, the rich.

References
Chang, H. (2014). Economics: The User’s Guide. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Ebenstein, L. (2015). Chicagonomics: The Evolution of Chicago Free Market
Economics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Fogel, R. (2000). The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Jefferson, T. (1816). Letter to George Logan.
Kay, J. (2004). Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets: Why Some
Nations Are Rich But Most Remain Poor. New York: HarperCollins.
Klein, N. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Canada:
Knopt.
Korton, D.C. (1995). When Corporations Rule the World. West Hartford, CT:
Kumarian.
Kuttner, R. (2018). Can Democracy Survive Capitalism? New York and London:
W.W. Norton.
Lindsey, B. & S. Teles (2017). The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich
Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Loomis, B. & M. Stremph (2003). Organized Interests, Lobbying and the Industry
of Politics. Paper for Mid-West Political Science Association meeting, April 4–7,
2003, Chicago, IL.
Powell, L. (1971). Powell Memorandum. Published August 23, 1971.
Roosevelt, T. (1912). Progressive Party Platform. Retrieved from www.pbs.org
/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/tr-progressive
Samuelson, P.A. & W. Nordhaus (2010). Economics. New York: McGraw Hill
Irwin.
Standing, G. (2016). The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work
Does Not Pay. London: Biteback Publishing.
Stiglitz, J.E. (2012). The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endan-
gers Our Future. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Wapshott, N. (2011). Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics.
New York: W.W. Norton.
Wasserman, H. (1983). American Born and Reborn. New York: Collier Books.
Whitehouse, S. (2017). Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democ-
racy. New York: The New Press.
5 Context
Exfiltration

Shouldn’t contemplation of government-in-context seek understanding

of nudges towards the relatively diminishing condition of middle-income
and lower-income persons? Exfiltration of such citizens (where exfiltra-
tion is understood as being removed to a significant extent and in
significant ways from the governmental context) is now being experi-
enced and probably will accelerate in the future.
The middle- and lower-income classes are being exfiltrated as a result
of neoliberal (free market) theory and by corporate and big money
involvement in government – and by government involvement with big
business. The exfiltration in fact, if not merely in theory or belief, extends
beyond the economic to the political by the extent to which the big
money class dominates the political and vice-versa. Lower- and middle-
income Americans are disadvantaged by costs. Lower class monetary
needs are being denied, e.g., rental evictions, health coverage for the
poor, pharmaceutical pricing being high. In the future, another nudge is
technology, holding profitable prospects for entrepreneurs and disturbing
prospects for the middle and lower classes. It faces the uncertain pro-
spect, for example, of the development of a world of robots who are
described (as explained later in this chapter) as being more intelligent
than mere human beings.
Four nudges are indicated for your contemplation. The first is about
the economic and political aspects of exfiltration. The second concerns
the meaning of poverty. The third concerns the meaning of the future of
work. The fourth is about public administration specialists and others
exploring the meanings of cultural inequality for economics, for Political
Science – and for democracy. Government-in-context needs attention.

Nudging: Economic and Political Aspects of Exfiltration

A polity with extremes of wealth and poverty is a city not of free
persons but of slaves and masters, the ones consumed by envy, the
others by contempt.
(Aristotle, Politica, 1295b)
54 Context: Exfiltration
Exfiltration is nudged by the extremes of wealth and poverty (merci
beaucoup, Aristotle!), neoliberalism, crony capitalism, the financially
declining middle and lower classes, and a tendency toward a dual
economy. The Pew Research Center (DeSilver, 2018) explains that the
real average wage for U.S. workers (that is, the wage after accounting for
inflation) has the same purchasing power as it has had since before 1978.
The title of that PEW publication is For Most U.S. Workers, Real
Wages Have Barely Budged in Decades. In bold print, it claims that
Americans’ paychecks are bigger than 40 years ago, but the purchasing
power has hardly budged. That is, it was the same as it was some 40
years ago. To explain further, let me add that The Pew Research Center
noted that cash money is not the only way workers are compensated,
e.g., there is health insurance, retirement account contributions, tuition
reimbursement, transit subsidies, and other benefits. Wages and salaries
are about 70 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Meanwhile, the 1 percent of the population – and the 0.1 percent of the
population – prosper, and in the last chapter we noted that the wealthy
could be 16 percent richer since the late 1980s.
Around the late 1970s, a transformation – supporting exfiltration –
started in the United States and elsewhere, as in Great Britain. The free
market form of capitalism, neoliberalism, re-emerged – replacing regu-
lated capitalism and aiming for liberalization, privatization, and stabili-
zation. It led to decades of increasing economic inequality and reduced
public services.
Let’s note in this paragraph examples of ways in which government’s
role changed: the important point is that government was increasingly
relieved of its government of the economy, of its context. (It is not being
claimed that the government is not held “responsible” for stock market
trends – as opposed to the items in the rest of this paragraph.) The
government moved away from effectively regulating key industries like
railroads, television, trucking, and airlines. It adopted financial dereg-
ulation for banks. Social regulation was essentially abandoned, such as
consumer product safety. Anti-trust measures were abandoned. Programs
like social security, minimum wage, and unemployment compensation
came to be seen as interfering with economic benefits like work incen-
tives. A core belief was that government provision of public goods is
basically inefficient. The progressive taxation of the progressive period
was reduced drastically in the era of neoliberalism. The corporate
income tax was reduced from 50 percent to 34 percent in 1988; the
capital gains tax was lowered to 15 percent in 2003. And Keynesian
demand management – government “intervention” to retain full employ-
ment – was out the window.
Crony capitalism is an economy in which big business thrives as
a result of the blending of the commercial class with the political class;
and the link is powerful in both the United States and in Europe. The
 Context: Exfiltration 55
businesses receive tax breaks, grants, and permits. Corporations spend
vast sums on lobbying. For example, The Economist reported (The
Washington Wishing-Well, June 13, 2015) that American corporations
pay for more than three quarters of the $3.3 billion officially spent on
lobbying in Washington, D.C. This number does not include company
employees in governmental relations – or the use corporations make of
professional lobbying firms of academics. This interference with demo-
cratic politics is not confined to the United States, as evidenced by the
30,000 or more lobbyists in Brussels, the seat of NATO.
Temin gives mass incarceration and the private prison industry as
another example of crony capitalism. He explains that private prison
firms signal to state legislators their interest in having more prisoners in
various ways: by personal relations, campaign contributions, and
lobbying.

The Corrections Corporation of America has spent over

$20 million on political campaigns and lobbying and is continu-
ing these efforts. They also lobby through the American Legisla-
tive Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative, nonprofit
organization founded and funded by the Koch brothers in
1973 . . .
(Temin, 2018, p. 110)

Recall President Eisenhower’s warning on January 17, 1961 against the

military-industrial complex which constitutes another example, and that
was a few years earlier than the neoliberal change of the 1970s. Stated
the President, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by
the military-industrial complex” (Congressional Quarterly Service,
1968, p. 53).
“Since 1998, Lockheed has spent $80 million on lobbying and received
$94 billion in government contracts,” reports the Center for Public
Integrity (2005). Whom do lobbyists lobby? According to the same
Center for Public Integrity (2005), it is the House of Representatives
(17,300 companies); U.S. Senate (17,200 companies); Department of
Defense (2,800 companies); Health and Human Services (2,400 compa-
nies); Department of Commerce (2,300 companies); Department of
Treasury (2,300 companies); Department of Transportation (2,200 com-
panies); Executive Office of the President (2,000 companies); White
House Office (1,900 companies); and Department of Agriculture (1,800
companies). The same Center reported that, in the period 1998–2003,
non-bid contracts accounted for 40 percent of Pentagon spending: that is
$362,000,000,000. It also reports that 250 former members of Congress
and agency heads were active lobbyists.
56 Context: Exfiltration
The country moves toward a two-tier economy, and the income
distribution of the dual economy. It came from the expansion of the
capitalist sector. This claim is offered by Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus
of Economics at M.I.T., in his book The Vanishing Middle Class:
Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy (2018). Temin charts the
income distribution of a dual economy following the thinking of
W. Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979. The
dual economy describes a situation where the economy is divided into
two parts. Lewis called the two sectors “urban” and “rural;” Temin titled
them “the FTE sector” (FTE meaning “finance, technology, electro-
nics” – employing about 20 percent of the population) and “the Low-
Wage sector” (about 80 percent of the population). The FTE sector (the
20 percent) manages the economy. And the rising inequality of income
has increased the inequality of wealth in America. The FTE capitalists
neglect the financial and political needs of the low-wage sector in order
to keep their taxes low. They also want to keep wages low in the low-
wage sector to provide cheap labor for their businesses. The new
arrangements work for the benefit of the corporations, but not for the
workers’ benefit. Temin (2018, p. 87) holds that, since the FTE sector
determines policy for the whole economy, a dual economy is
a plutocracy. A link between the two parts of the economy is education.
The difference between the two sectors is not simply in their incomes but
also in their thought processes. Access to the plutocracy sector (FTE
sector) is limited by three kinds of capital – physical capital like
machines and buildings; human capital, gains from education; and
social capital.
The U.S. middle class has diminished significantly since the 1970s. But
recently, some stability has been reported in terms of the numbers in the
middle class. Yet the financial drop continues. The Pew Research Center
published a report with the title The shrinking middle class in U.S.
metropolitan area: 6 key findings (Fry, R., & Kochhar, R., 2016,
May 12), and the report’s first claim was that in most U.S. metropolitan
areas the middle class is shrinking, and lower- and upper-income tiers
are growing. They explained its three-tiered household income system
(upper, middle, lower), where middle-income households are those with
an income that is two-thirds to double the U.S. median household
income. Another claim was that, on a national basis, the number of
middle-income adults has fallen since 2000 and the lower- and upper-
income tiers have increased. Temin was emphatic that “Growing income
inequality is threatening the American middle class, and the middle class
is vanishing before our eyes. There are fewer people in the middle of the
American income distribution, and the country is divided into rich and
poor” (Temin, 2018). The middle class, less better off, is described as
vanishing at a rapid rate. The Pew Research Center later (Kochhar,
September 6, 2018) published a paper titled The American middle class
 Context: Exfiltration 57
is stable in size, but losing ground financially to upper-income families. It
explained that the recent stability in middle-income households marks
a change from “a decades-long downward trend. From 1971 to 2011, the
share of adults in the middle class fell by 10 percentage points.” Family
income after taxes is the most unequal in the world for people under 60,
and the average real wage fell to $10.76 an hour (in the) last month of
2018, 2 cents down from where it was a year previously. The most
dramatic piece of information is the change in income distribution.
Care must be taken with statements involving any political claims,
including the statistical. Sometimes political claims are made that are
statistically true but are also misleading. To give only one example, the
claim was made in 2019 that there had been a significant decrease in the
unemployment level. However, the claim might be doubted if the listener
wondered how many discouraged job workers no longer applied for jobs.
Examples could also be offered concerning non-statistical untrue state-
ments, of course – as may become clearer when contemplating post-truth
claims.

Nudging: Meaning of Poverty

Do the monetary needs of lower-income persons, such as a living wage,
seem irrelevant to economics and to business administration – and to
entrepreneurs? If I were an entrepreneur, I might see urban (or rural)
poverty as a curiosity, but really as having little or nothing to do with me –
beyond my commercial interests. Same with health coverage, same with
pharmaceutical prices. Same with mass incarceration, public education . . .
And it is harder for an entrepreneur or any other affluent person to see
poverty as acute distress. But I would be wrong – in at least one sense. There
is really no such thing as a person who is only an economic worker, solely an
employee in a corporation. Isn’t s/he really a human being who is a political
citizen or who is a person-in-herself-in-her-difference?
But let’s pursue the question. Should the poor person be totally
responsible for his/her own poverty and his/her own situation? Barbara
Ehrenreich (2001, p.10), an author and a “person with every advantage
that ethnicity and education, health and motivation can confer …
(experienced) in a time of exuberant prosperity, to survive (anon-
ymously) in the economy’s lower depths.” Her resulting book was titled
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, and she does an
excellent job of indicating how poverty can be understood as acute
distress. She made three comments (among others, and written some
twenty years ago) in that book that relate to the issue of whether a poor
person is totally responsible for his/her own poverty. First, there is “a
vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy but
a culture of extreme inequality.” It’s the culture, with strong significance
for the nature of government-in-context! Second, “whatever keeps wages
58 Context: Exfiltration
low, the result is that many people earn far less than they need to live on”
(Ehrenreich, 2001, pp. 212–213). Third, it “is common, among the non-
poor, to think of poverty as a sustainable condition – austere, perhaps, but
they get by somehow, don’t they? They are ‘always with us.’ What is harder
for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress” (Ehrenreich, 2001,
p. 214). If the living wage is too low, look for the meaning in the culture.
I was stunned when I went to see the National Building Museum in
Washington, D.C. The exhibit was titled Evicted (as was Desmond’s
book) and I learned things about poverty and about the rental arrange-
ments of low-income persons – about which I had little idea. Part of my
interest is that I think it is a myth to think that only the poor have
themselves to blame for their poverty.
Here are some upsetting details. “Every year in this country, people
are evicted from their homes not by the tens of thousands or even the
hundreds of thousands but by the millions” (Desmond, 2016, p. 295).
Poor families are living above their means, but the apartments are
already at the bottom of the market. “Today, over 1 in 5 of all renting
families in the country spends half of its income on housing” (Desmond,
2016, p. 303). The number of evictions is high, e.g., in 2012, New York
City Housing Courts processed 28,743 eviction judgements and 217,914
eviction filings for nonpayment, Cleveland saw 11,072 eviction filings of
the 95,702 occupied renter holdings, and in Chicago 32,231 evictions
(7 percent of the city’s rental inventory) (Desmond, 2016, p. 392). It can
take a substantial amount of money to set up a home; evictions can
cancel all that, as the evicted can lose possessions, job, and more.
Desmond (2016, pp. 305–306) raises an interesting consideration when
he emphasizes that poverty is not simply a matter of low incomes,
because it also results from the extractive market. “In fixating almost
exclusively on what poor people and their communities lack – good jobs,
a strong safety net, role models – we have neglected the critical ways that
exploitation contributes to the persistence of poverty” (Desmond, 2016).
For him, poverty has two components, as is indicated in this quote that
claims that we should focus not only on what the poor lack (such as
good jobs) but also on ways that exploitation contributes to poverty.
Much money can be made off the poor; we have overlooked this but
landlords never have. “The ‘hood is good.’” Desmond concludes by
asserting that “no moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture
or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our
country to become” (Desmond, 2016, p. 313).

Nudging: The Future of Work and Robotry

The world of work changes often enough. But it is not easy to know the
future, especially because robotry (described later) appears so challen-
ging. It seems of limited help either to look back to history (e.g., to the
 Context: Exfiltration 59
factory system) or to look at the present (e.g., at the gig economy).
Starting with the example from history, the factory system was born in
England during the Napoleonic Wars, when the greatest achievements
were probably imagined by the population to be Nelson’s victory at
Trafalgar and Wellington’s victory at Waterloo. The Luddites were sure
that the best response to the emerging factory system would be to burn
the factories down; the owners and Adam Smith would have thought it
best to have workers build them up.
Continuing with the example from today, there is the example of the
establishment of the gig economy, like Uber – “No Shifts. No Boss. No
limits.” The percentage of the U.S. workforce that does not have a full-
time job could be as high as 40 percent – and Kessler (2018, p. 9) adds
that, when it launched in 2009, Uber merely took advantage of a trend –
employing as few people as possible – and adapting it for the smart-
phone era. By 2016, 20 percent to 30 percent of the workforce had
engaged in freelance work in the U.S. and in Europe. I agree with Kessler
(2018, p. 250) that the gig economy is not “the” improvement to the
future of work, and she gave examples of companies that – for training,
motivation, consistency of service, and avoiding lawsuits – switched from
the Uber for X business model (for on-demand services) to a model of
utilizing employees. But it will play “an important role in exemplifying
what the future might look like, and the slow, hard work that we must do
to prepare for it” (Kessler, 2018, p. 250).
A future development, with significant impact especially for the
employment of poorer people, is in robotics. Edward O. Wilson,
a Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist, commented about the future reality
when robots will be made that work more efficiently and think faster
than humans doing blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Wilson added that
at present “these envisioned advances (in robotics) are the stuff of
science fiction. But not for long. Within a few decades they will be
reality” (Wilson, 2014, p. 58).
There will also be implications, as Wilson notes, for all humans from
what is called BNR: biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics. He
points out that volitional evolution will be recognized by “the most
myopic political think tanks in a few decades” (Wilson, 2014, p. 59), and
a massive redistribution of Homo sapiens genes will become an issue. He
emphasizes that this is neither science fiction nor frivolous. He asks “With
more and more decision making and work done by robots, what will be
left for humans to do? Do we really want to compete biologically with
robot technology by using brain implants and genetically improved intel-
ligence and social behavior” (Wilson, 2014, pp. 59–60)?
The significance of this line of thinking for poorer people and others is
also discussed by Ursula Franklin and Ellen Ullman. Franklin (1990, pp.
48–49), for example, writes about prescriptive technologies requiring
“external planning, management and control and reducing workers’
60 Context: Exfiltration
autonomy and skills.” (Dear reader, on reducing the need for worker
skills, there was a time when check-out clerks in stores had to enter the
prices of items – but now the machine “reads” the prices.) And Franklin
(1990, p. 49) adds that traditional ideas about what is private and what is
public and about the role of government are “in the light of these
changes more often akin to fairy tales than to factual accounts of
possible relationships of power and accountability.”
Ullman (2017, p. 131), as another example, explains that researchers in
robotics and artificial life can question whether human life is “special.” In
the past half-century, she notes that cybernetics has come up with three
answers to the question of the nature of humans – either they “are (1)
computers, (2) ants or (3) accidents.” (E.O. Wilson is a myrmecologist –
a specialist in ants.) She adds “Once you accept the definition of human
life as artificial – designed, engineered – it is then an easy matter to say
that the proper study of man is not man but some other engineered object,
the machine” (Ullman, 2017, p. 136). Yes, and as is re-discussed under the
nudge about meaning, it is not easy to know the future.

Nudging: Meanings of Cultural Inequality

“Is the U.S. economic system fair to most Americans, or is it ‘rigged’ to
favor the rich and powerful?” (Fingerhut, 2016). So begins
a February 10, 2016 report on a survey by the Pew Research Center.
The report continues that “A substantial majority of Americans – 65 per-
cent – say the economic system in this country unfairly favors powerful
interests.” Fewer than half as many (31 percent) say the system “is
generally fair to most Americans” (Pew Research Center, 2016). That is
important. But it should have included the government and the culture
in the question. It could have asked: “Is the U.S. culture – including
economic system and governmental system – fair to most Americans, or
is it ‘rigged’ to favor the rich and powerful?”
The corporate impact on government and on politics is affected not
only by what corporations do – but also by what members of the public
understand, and we will revisit this in discussing post-truth in Chapter 6.
In understanding of economics, for example, there might be some
difference – with exceptions – between understanding of economics by
the FTE group (the 20 percent) and members of the Low-Wage Sector
(80 percent). Earlier, it was mentioned that the link between the two
groups is education, and absence of higher education must have an
effect. However, economics is now taught in school – starting in
kindergarten.
Standards of learning (SOLs) for economics have been established for
all school grades, and the National Council on Economic Education
(NCEE) has been encouraging economics teaching in elementary schools
since 1949. Each state decides what it will do, and so the story varies
 Context: Exfiltration 61
between states. To take kindergarteners and early graders in a suburban
area in Virginia, two aims are (a) to teach little children the difference
between basic needs (e.g., food and clothing) and wants (e.g., things
people would like) and (b) to recognize that people use money to
purchase goods. (Dear reader, even if they never went to school, I have
trouble believing that uneducated persons would not know what money
is for.) Economic practice is presented at higher grades as a game for
winners, where there are only money-seeking investors – and not people
like the seriously ill, the homeless, and other economic “non-players.”
The name of one of the games used in South Carolina is “Hootie and
the Blowfish Take Stock in South Carolina.” As Seiter (1989, p. 5)
explains, “economics instruction in secondary school also influences
students to develop positive attitudes about the economic system and
the subject of economics.” The instruction encourages love for the
unfettered market, adoration for perfectly competitive capitalism. It
misleads students, sadly.
There has been almost a virtual corporate and big money take-over of
politics. Political democracy, post 1970s, is being impacted by the
expanding role of money in politics, especially money from mega-
corporations and billionaires. The more that lobbyists spend, the more
they control what the government does. Robert Reich (2007, p. 163) has
argued that our voices as citizens – as opposed to our voices as investors
and consumers – are being quieted. Less attention, in his view, is paid to
social equity and fairness issues.
The strength of the collusion merits repetition and emphasis. Political
action has set out to increase the inequality of outcomes and to reduce
equality of opportunity. Even though market forces help shape the extent
of inequality, government policies help shape those market forces. Much
of today’s inequality is the result of government policy (e.g., changing
income tax laws to help the rich): inequality has always been
a component feature of government. It is a result of political, as well as
economic, forces; each sometimes shapes the other. Government also
modifies the distribution of income – through taxes and social expendi-
tures. Government affects the dynamics of wealth, for instance, by
passing and providing free public education. The Supreme Court, stran-
gely, and to repeat, has recognized corporations as artificial persons, and
it has declared money as speech.
Dear reader, I recommend that you focus on identifying for yourself
the meanings of features that interest you. Some are macro, others are
micro: few are limited to a single discipline. Maybe you would agree with
Stiglitz, for instance, and focus on the view that macroeconomic models
have placed too little emphasis on inequality – where macro is the bigger
picture about the economy rather than the micro or individual economic
set of actions. We should add that the choice here is not merely twofold –
equality v. inequality; alternatively, it could be equality v. significant
62 Context: Exfiltration
inequality (defined in different ways) v. massive, massive inequality (also
defined in different ways), etc. Or, again, the inequality could be exam-
ined in different ways. For example, should the stock market be regarded
(by itself) as measuring the economy?
On the other hand, maybe you would agree with Korten on a different
topic, and express your frustration at the way that advertising has not
only crucified our enjoyment of television-sans-advertisements but also
the way that it has been used to shape our beliefs. Korten (1995, p. 149)
claims that “television has already been wholly colonized by corporate
interests . . .” The goal of the colonization is not simply to increase sales
and to strengthen the consumer culture. It is also to shape a public belief
that equates the corporate, with the human, interest. Korten (1995,
p. 149) points out that the “rearrangement of reality begins with the
claim that in a market economy, the consumer decides and the market
responds . . .” The latter point is that it is untrue that prospective
consumers simply make up their minds about what they want to buy
(e.g., a bunch of bananas) and then the market responds: on the
contrary, the advertising participates in shaping what is demanded, etc.
But the corporate shaping does not mean that, whenever we choose (or
semi-choose) a bunch of bananas, we really do not want them.
There is a contra-literature that can contribute to these and to other
meanings. For example, the macro approach is offered in such books as
The Big-Rip-Off: How Business and Big Government Steal your Money
(Carney, 2006) and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantalize
Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (Barber, 2007). It is also offered in 23
Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism (Ha-Joon Chang, 2001).
For those who themselves want to research and explore the mean-
ings of features that interest you, more is required than exploring only
the mainstream literature of economics itself. It is being reiterated that
it requires reflecting on economic theory and practice in an epistemic
pluralist context. Disciplines within their own cul-de-sacs – within
their intellectual dead-ends – are too limiting.
In other words, it is being suggested that public administration
thinkers should themselves initiate and use epistemic pluralism when
they want to gain information in other disciplines. As an example, say
that you want to learn something about economics or Political Science:
you, the public administration thinker should initiate and conduct the
epistemic pluralist study. Economics does not “belong” to economists:
Political Science does not belong to political scientists. To repeat,
I recommend considering important economic claims – or political
claims – both from their own mainstream disciplinary perspectives and
from within the contexts of any number of other relevant disciplinary
perspectives. Economic or political ideas require contemplation not only
from a mainstream economic or political perspective but from any
number (the more the better) of the disciplinary perspectives. However,
 Context: Exfiltration 63
you may also wish to use a smaller number of the perspectives – and that
is entirely your choice when doing the study. But the important point is
that, without standing in the way of economists or political scientists
doing epistemic pluralism themselves, you – as a public administration-
ist – should not hesitate to conduct epistemic pluralism on any other
discipline. Remember that your aim is to understand whichever question
you have chosen, even though you are a public administration thinker.
This is what lies behind the recommendation in Chapter 1 for
a Fourth-Level Interdisciplinary (or Epistemic Pluralistic) Level Team
to Enhance Democracy – setting up the team at a University, and maybe
also at the governmental, level. Not only epistemic pluralism, but also
computer capability, can be expected to increase significantly in capabil-
ity over the years. Suggestions can be offered for the different general
patterns of such epistemically-linked multiple disciplines.
One useful question to focus on indeed could be “Is the U.S. culture –
including economic system and governmental system – fair to most
Americans, or is it ‘rigged’ to favor the rich and powerful?” To repeat
an important consideration. Is Economics adequate to answer this
question by itself ? Consider the following four disciplinary areas that
should be added, and there are others. Wouldn’t (to name only four)
a feminist, a philosophical, an evolutionary biology, and a sociological
perspective offer insights unavailable to economics by itself ? (For exam-
ple, see Marks and Courtivron, 1980 about othering; see Russell, 1971
about money and the purpose of life; etc.)
Celebrated economists, Ha-Joon Chang and Thomas Piketty, have
recommended that non-economists should participate in doing econom-
ics. For similar advice from distinguished thinkers about government,
you can turn first to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Chang argues for non-
economists to be willing “to challenge professional economists . . . The
economy is too important to be left to the professional economist alone”
(Chang, 2014, pp. 331–332). It is recommended that you (a public
administration thinker) do that through epistemic pluralism. Even more
significant is University of Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang’s next
sentence. “I would go one step further and say that the willingness to
challenge professional economists – and other experts – should be
a foundation of democracy” (Chang, 2014, pp. 331–332). And critical
indeed is the meaning of government-in-context.

Summary
The exfiltration of the lower-income and middle-income groups is exam-
ined, including the agony created by small incomes and employment
opportunities. The exfiltration is also from the economic and the poli-
tical by neoliberalism. Lower class monetary needs are being denied in
such terms as rental evictions, health coverage for the poor, and
64 Context: Exfiltration
pharmaceutical pricing. Reputable organizations describe the real aver-
age wage as having the same purchasing power as it had in the seventies.
The nudging toward exfiltration promises to accelerate with changes like
the gig economy, and by the prospects for humans when faced with the
creation – as is forecast in the next several decades – of robots that can
think faster and work more efficiently at laboring jobs than humans. The
corporate take-over of government and politics is affected both by what
corporations do and also by what the public understands. The limita-
tions of free market economics are re-explored. The meaning of poverty
is examined, explaining the view that the meaning is not only low
incomes but also the extractive markets. The meaning of cultural
inequality is also discussed. The utility of epistemic pluralism as part of
the reader’s reflections are examined and illustrated in relation to the
question whether the U.S. culture – including governmental system and
economic system – is fair to Americans, or whether it is rigged to favor
the rich and powerful?

References
Barber, B. (2007). Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantalize Adults,
and Swallow Citizens Whole. New York: W.W. Norton.
Carney, T.P. (2006). The Big-Rip-Off: How Business and Big Government Steal
Your Money. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Center for Public Integrity. (2005). Lobbyists Double Spending in Six Years.
Retrieved May 15, 2019, from Lobby Watch, www.publicintegrity.org/pns/
default,aspx?act=summary.
Chang, H. (2001). 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism. London:
Penguin.
Chang, H. (2014). Economics: The User’s Guide. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Congressional Quarterly Service. (1968). Legislators and Lobbyists. Washington, DC:
Author.
DeSilver, D. (August 7, 2018). For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely
budged in decades. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York:
Broadway Books.
Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.
New York: Henry Holt & Company.
Fingerhut, H. (February 10, 2016). Most Americans Say U.S. Economic System is
Unfair, But High-Income Republicans Disagree. Washington, DC: Pew Research
Center.
Franklin, U.M. (1990). The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House of Anansi
Press.
Fry, R. & R. Kochhar (May 12, 2016). The Shrinking Middle Class in U.S.
Metropolitan Areas: 6 Key Findings. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
Kessler, S. (2018). Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work. New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
 Context: Exfiltration 65
Kochhar, R. (September 6, 2018). The American Middle Class is Stable in Size, But
Losing Ground Financially to Upper-Income Families. Washington, DC: The Pew
Research Center.
Korten, D. (1995). When Corporations Rule the World. West Hartford, CT:
Kumarian Press.
Marks, E. & I. Courtivron (1980). New French Feminisms: An Anthology. Amherst,
MA: University of Massachusetts.
Reich, R. (2007). Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy,
and Everyday Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Russell, B. (1971). The Conquest of Happiness. New York: Liveright Publishing.
Seiter, D.M. (1989). Teaching and Learning Economics. Bloomington, IN: ERIC
Clearing House.
Temin, P. (2018). The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power. Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press.
The Economist, (June 13, 2015). The Washington Wishing-Well. London: Hamish
Hamilton.
Ullman, E. (2017). Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology. New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Wilson, E.O. (2014). The Meaning of Human Existence. New York: W.W. Norton.
6 Context
Post-Truth

Shouldn’t contemplation of government-in-context seek understanding

of the nature and meaning of our post-truth thoughts, beliefs, and
actions? Shouldn’t this include recognition that our thinking, beliefs
and actions are shaped by the unconscious and by the conscious?
Recall the profound statement in a Yale University Commencement
Address by President Kennedy, declaring that

For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate,
contrived and dishonest – but the myth, persistent, persuasive and
unrealistic . . . We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of inter-
pretations… Mythology distracts us everywhere – in government as
in business, in politics and in economics .
(Kennedy, 1962)

I have read and re-read it many times as it is written on a wall at the Kennedy
Center, and it always moves me as I read it and reflect on his thought that
prefabricated interpretations limit us. We now have a newish term. Post-truth
describes people as concerned less with truths than with opinions, and it
considers such opinions as appealing to our emotions, prejudices and perso-
nal beliefs. Notice that names can change over time but also that they can
include related items with other titles – like ideologies or myths.
Three nudges are explained for your contemplation. The first is about
post-truth and neuroscience. The second is about the importance of the
variety of post-truths in shaping understandings, even in theorizing. The
third is about democracy. Post-truth thinking and believing have signifi-
cance for all interested in government-in-context and for all who think
and believe. It is also of significance, as noted in Chapter 4, for those
interested in the post-truth features of economic models and business
entrepreneurs. For instance, each such model enjoys high approval in the
belief system of many people, even if they know little about it. Concepts
concerning government include democratic models and plans from the
first democracies of ancient Athens.
 Context: Post-Truth 67
Nudging: Post-Truth
We should recognize that we have been described as living in a “post-
truth era.” In support of this and as mentioned before, the Oxford
Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2016 is “post-truth,” the Dictionary
denoting that “objective facts are less influential in shaping public
opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Context is also
significant. Its meaning may be understood in terms of the view, often
attributed to Alfred North Whitehead, that “Not ignorance, but ignor-
ance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.” However, the sub-title of
Crawford (2015) captures the idea well enough in today’s society – “On
becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.” Again, I agree that
my cell phone, my television, my computer, my tweeting distract me.
But a few years ago, I argued that I don’t know if we really have more
invasive post-truth (or more total distraction) than a medieval or an
ancient person. Consider Ancient Greece and 373 BC. That date is when
The Republic is being written and when Plato’s Socrates is arguing for
philosophy and truth against sophistry and opinion. Alain Badiou’s
“hypertranslation” regards this as an eternal battle against a view that
includes regarding “a human being as what we might call . . . an ‘animal
with opinions’” (Reinhard, 2012, p. xvi). I remember the Society for
Neuroeconomics in September–October 2011 that was held in Evanston,
Illinois: it was entitled Neuroscience: Decision Making and the Brain.
I should have remembered that, despite the variety in post-truths
sources, a better answer requires interaction with neuroscience.
There is an important neuroscience literature on decision-making and
the brain. To take one example, Robert Burton (2008, p. 218) explains
that “the feelings of knowing, correctness, conviction, and certainty aren’t
deliberate conclusions and conscious choices. They are mental sensations
that happen to us,” he demonstrates that “despite how certainty feels, it
is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and
similar states of ‘knowing what we know’ arise out of involuntary brain
mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason”
(Burton, 2008, p. 218). In support of these conclusions, he offers under-
standable accounts of experimental and other data about the symphony
of neuronal networks, activities and controls – in the complexity of each
of your and my more than a hundred billion brain cells. “Certainty is
not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to
tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the
language and tools of probabilities” (Burton, 2008, p. 223). The “stan-
dard definitions of to know – to perceive directly; grasp in the mind with
clarity or certainty, to regard as true beyond doubt – are inconsistent
with our present-day understanding of brain function.” (Burton, 2008,
p. 219) On Being Certain: Believing You are Right Even When You are
Not (as the title of Burton’s book puts it) is certainly a more important
68 Context: Post-Truth
item than some of us think. Or, to put it another way, we are certainly
more complicated than many of us think.
There is an active output of books on post-truth from different
disciplines, and – even though a little colorful – even some of their
titles can be helpful. For instance, there are The Post-Truth Business:
How To Rebuild Brand Authenticity in a Distrusting World (De Chene-
cey, 2017); Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What
We Can Do About It (Davis, 2017); Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered
the World (Ball, 2017); and Saving Truth: Finding Meaning and Clarity in
a Post-Truth World (Murray, 2017).

Nudging: Myths
Myths are a powerful kind of post-truth, and they impact many features
of society such as government-in-context. Examples are the myths of
exceptionalism and of the nation. Of course, there are other kinds of
post-truths, including (say) the sloganeering and the rhetoric of some
politicians, advertisers, and other people one encounters. For example, as
indicated in Chapter 5 (mentioning the unemployment level), care should
be taken in evaluating political claims – statistical and non-statistical –
as political language often enough uses post-truths. For non-American
analyses, consider Freud and Jung who are among those who wrote
brilliantly about myths.
Belief in American exceptionalism is a striking example of a myth
regarded as “the” truth. While there is more than one meaning, it
emphasizes that the country is more beneficial than others. It is also
married to the belief that human democratic government (at least in this
country) is reliable and straight-forward, even if biologist E.O. Wilson is
correct (as will be explained toward the end of this chapter) that the
Paleolithic period left humans with capability for individual evolution
but little for evolution of cooperative governance capability at higher
than a village level. But belief in exceptionalism is not itself exceptional:
many major countries consider themselves exceptional.
Richard Hughes (2003) – as another example – argues that the myth
of Nature’s Nation reflects the “conviction that American institutions
such as democracy and free enterprise are grounded in the natural order
of things.” (Dear reader, this was written by a Professor Emeritus at both
Pepperdine University and Messiah College. On the matter of myths,
I repeat – and probably he would agree – that all major countries have
myths, and most people in most countries would find it unsettling if
asked about their national myths. But I think that it is helpful if people
in this or that country contemplated about their myths. I recollect being
at a party at the home of a French friend, and I proposed a toast to the
Emperor Napoleon – and that proved very welcome. If in China,
 Context: Post-Truth 69
I recommend that you propose a toast to Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
A myth from country X is indeed typically pro country-X.)
Writing about the Myth of Nature’s Nation, Hughes (2003, p. 126)
claims that

Americans who benefited from the capitalist system could hardly

imagine viable alternatives. Because it seemed so natural, so
thoroughly in keeping with ‘the way things are meant to be,’ it
was easy to imagine that the capitalist system was rooted squarely
in the self-evident patterns of ‘Nature and Nature’s God.’
(Hughes, 2003, p. 126)

He also claimed that “capitalism drew its legitimacy from all the (Amer-
ican) myths.” In addition to the Nature’s Nation myth, these four
additional myths are those called the myth of the Chosen Nation, of
the Christian Nation, of the Millennial Nation, and of the Innocent
Nation. These four claims are as follows:

“God chose the U.S. for a special redemptive mission in the world”
(Chosen Nation).
“American ideals are grounded in bedrock Christian values” (Christian
Nation).
“the U.S. will usher in a golden age for all humankind” (Millennial
Nation).
“while other nations may have blood on their hands, the U.S. always
preserves its innocence in even the bloodiest of conflicts by virtue of
its altruism and its righteous intention” (Innocent Nation).

Based on what he reports, it seems that Hughes modified his view later
when he was told that he had left out the

most important of the American myths – the myth of White

supremacy . . . After much introspection (he) . . . concluded that
James Noel, a professor of color, was correct that, in fact, the
myth of white supremacy undergirds all the other myths that (he)
explore(d) in (Hughes’) book
(Hughes, Fall 2016)

– the book called Myths America Lives By. He speaks of a national crisis
fed by racial tensions and terrorism at home and abroad. (Dear reader,
this seems like a wise move to adjust positions on reflection of
a conflicting view. As you will probably agree, not everyone is eager to
70 Context: Post-Truth
do that. However, does this not suggest that the mythic character might
vary between parts of a claim? No disrespect is meant for the United
States. But couldn’t St. Joan of Arc or any other French citizen be
surprised at the bias in God’s inclination toward the U.S. in the chosen
nation and the innocent nation claims, even if they thought it reasonable
to choose both the U.S. and France for such claims?)
Chapters 3 and 4 described four dominant economic models which
you and I might consider to be significantly mythic and which others
(like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and economists like many in
the Chicago School of Economics) would not. These are the myths
of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurship ecosystem, and those
of the free market (understood as the American Business Model)
and the Lewis Powell Memorandum. Let me remind you what they
are. An entrepreneur is a person or a team who creates, sets up,
organizes and operates a business or businesses; s/he is often
described as designing, launching and running a new business,
identifying and using opportunities to transform technology and
inventions into new products. Celebrated economist Joseph Schump-
eter spoke of the entrepreneur in terms of creative destruction of old
industries and the introduction of new businesses – dynamic disequi-
librium: other economists contributing to analyzing entrepreneurship
were Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. The entrepreneur-
ship ecosystem specifies some facilitative measures to help entrepre-
neurs. The American Business Model – you will recall from Chapter
2 – consists of self-interest, market fundamentalism, the minimal
state, and low taxation. The Powell Memorandum (discussed in
Chapter 4) is a sort of battle plan against the public sector.
Let me also explain what is meant by the description that a claim is
“significantly mythic.” The myths of the entrepreneur and the entre-
preneur ecosystem can illustrate the earlier view that parts of a claim
can be more mythic than others, and this is useful in using the
description “significantly mythic.” Part of the first mythic claim is
that the entrepreneur is a more valuable citizen than a civil servant,
who should work in a minimal government, etc. Part of the ecosystem
claim is that the results of such an ecosystemic context are more
important for societal members than a poor-people-centric context.
The entrepreneur is the master of making money, the creator and
leader of business, the force for profit, the imperative for growing
business, the king of self-interest, the power house who can enrich
society. This is different, and more important, than (for example) what
St. Joan of Arc did. (Dear reader, the situation will become more
interesting if you recall – from the previous section of this chapter –
what Burton (2008) tells us about the limits of certainty.)
Roger Backhouse (2010, p. 182) states – and I agree with him – that
“the dominant myths, both within contemporary society and within
 Context: Post-Truth 71
academic economics, are the competitive market and inefficient or
corrupt governments.” The entrepreneur is also a significant mythical
figure. The commercialization and the dominant myths have not been
confined to the United States, occurring in countries including Great
Britain and France. Recall the earlier mention of the anti-globalist and
anti-fast-food protests of Jose Bove (2000), for example.

Nudging: Myths about Democracy

there are many kinds of democracy and many of oligarchy.
(Aristotle, Politica, 1296b)

One way of evaluating one’s own democracy is to compare it with the first
democracies – those of Ancient Greece. The Greeks recognized that there
are different kinds of democracy, and Aristotle (for example) was clear
that he preferred a democracy where the middle class did the governing.

Now in all states there are three elements: one class is very rich,
another very poor, and a third is a mean…Thus it is manifest that
the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle
class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered, in
which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both
the other classes . . .
(Aristotle, Politica, 1295b)

During the decade when I taught political philosophy, Aristotle’s Nico-

machean Ethics and Plato’s Republic were my favorite classical texts.
(Dear reader, my favorites among medieval thinkers were Augustine and
Aquinas; more favorite later thinkers included Thomas Hobbes, Locke,
Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Spinoza, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, Popper,
Rousseau, Russell, and Wittgenstein. At different times, different thin-
kers were exceptionally helpful. But I have always been a fan of Aristotle
and Plato – including about democracy and more.)
Some of the differences between the first democracies and
U. S. democracy would be hard enough – others easy enough – to
follow. In the hard category, the essential features of the Greeks were
freedom from tyranny and inclusion of all citizens in government. The
Greeks came to consider majority rule to be undemocratic; rather, it
was merely government for the majority. It was a tyranny of the
majority, regarding it as a seductive double of democracy. George
Tollefson (2017, p. 5), opposing unbridled democracy, is among those
who explain that the “Achilles heel of democracy lies in a tyranny of
the majority. This consists of a complacency of that majority, which
makes possible a domination of the political environment by financial
72 Context: Post-Truth
interests and social pressure groups.” Meanwhile, many in the
U.S. tell themselves, especially those who do not know details like
there are different kinds of democracy, that U.S. democracy enjoys
exceptionalism – a light for the world. Tollefson describes democracy
as majority rule; consensus, the power of the people, is a myth. Of
course, the first democracies had the advantage of dealing with only
some 30,000 citizens, unfortunately only males being eligible to vote.
And (as an anti-tyranny of the majority practice) they could have
a discussion meeting of the first 6,000 citizens to arrive at the meeting
place, whereas the U.S. population in February 2018 was some
327 million. (It was different at the first U.S. election which occurred
in 1788–1789, and the number of landowning white males – the
eligible voters – that voted was less than the Greeks – 13,332 men.
That led to 69 electoral votes from 10 states, and George Washington
won by 100 percent.) And, Greeks could have anti-tyranny-of-the-
majority rules such as selecting a council annually by lot (with equal
numbers from each tribe), and forbidding the assembly to consider
items not approved by the council. On leaving office, all magistrates
would have their records examined and if they had committed impro-
per acts, any citizen could take them to court in a process called
euthunai – “setting things straight.”
In the “easy enough to follow” category, we can turn to Tollefson and
his views about the parasitic character of capitalism and the false
rationality premise of the American experiment. He writes that capital-
ism “is not the equivalent of a free-market system. Without careful
regulation, it is a parasite which devours its host. And its host is the
free market system” (Tollefson, 2017, p. 10). He also reasserts that the
American experiment is based on the false premise that man is a rational
animal. The first democracies had deficiencies which they never cured –
like the U.S., until abolition and reform. For example, some people were
slaves (non-voters) and women (non-voters).
Paul Woodruff (2005) analyzes the American version of democracy in
terms of the Greek experience. He does so in terms of seven aims, and he
evaluates American governance in these cases. These seven aims are
listed shortly, and I note what I consider the examples of American
governmental problems that are well worth reflection and that he lists.
Each of the aims also relates to government-in-context. But I do not
agree with all of Woodruff’s omissions, e.g., such as, under the rule of
law, Citizens United and the majority system of the life-time appoint-
ments of the supreme court judges. Citizens United, as you will recall,
came up with the pro-rich rulings that corporations are artificial persons
and that monetary expenditure is speech.
His first three aims belong to every ancient theory of good govern-
ment, and underneath (with the heading Re U.S.) I suggest possible
problems (examples only) from the perspective of the United States:
 Context: Post-Truth 73
• Woodruff Aim 1: harmony (in such ways as accepting difference)
rather than enflaming class warfare.
◦ Re U.S.: between Haves, Middle-Haves, and Have-Nothings.

• Woodruff Aim 2: rule of law and customs and laws of nations,

written and unwritten, over majority rule.
◦ Re U.S.: pro-rich, income and other tax legislation.

• Woodruff Aim 3: and freedom from tyranny – of the tyrant and

of the majority.

◦ Re U.S.: power of wealth and money.

The other four aims are those that he considers natural to democracy:

• Woodruff Aim 4: natural equality, e.g., that the poor should be equal
to the rich or well-born in sharing governing.
◦ Re U.S.: political advantages of wealth,

• Woodruff Aim 5: citizen wisdom – common human wisdom,

upgraded by general education.
◦ Re U.S.: discriminatory impact of high university costs

• Woodruff Aim 6: reasoning without knowledge – called “euboulia,”

capability of making good judgements on, say, shaky arguments. No
one is expert about everything.
◦ Re U.S.: debate as skirmishing between political parties.

• Woodruff Aim 7: Education (called paideia) that makes for better

citizens – as opposed to vocational education.
◦ Re U.S.: education overemphasizing training for jobs.

Dear reader, I think that approaching American problems through the lens
of the first democracies has no chance whatsoever of succeeding. I repeat
that I say this as one who loved reading Plato and Aristotle, and who once
wrote my Master’s thesis on “Aristotle: The Persistence of Matter” (Farmer,
1986). That approach through the Athenian lens is, in my view, a loser. That
is one reason why the approach, focusing on government-in-context and
described in this book, is recommended. Just reflect on the population
differences, mentioned earlier, between Ancient Greece and the U.S.A.
Just reflect on the number of years between U.S.A. now and Athens then.
Reading about Ancient Greek ideas is useful for you, because – as we
74 Context: Post-Truth
have just indicated – the ideas have relevance for the U.S. I was relieved
that Woodruff (2005, p. 231) himself agreed with this and with the
complete loser argument.
But I do agree strongly with the utility and relevance for the U.S. of two
of the questions in Woodruff’s final paragraph. “Are we ready to shake off
the idea that we are already a perfect exemplar of democracy? Are we
ready to put the goals of democracy foremost in our political minds, as
many Athenians did?” (Woodruff, 2005, p. 232). I would also add that, as
long as it doesn’t adjust the power issues related to government-in-
context, the United States is relying too much on good luck.
The approach to American democratic problems has to be sought in
terms of going beyond post-traditional and to the other ways indicated
in Chapter 7. Turn again, as an example, to evolutionary biology and to
the words of Pulitzer Prize winner E.O. Wilson – to the conflict between
individual and group levels of natural selection – and to the rarity of
eusociality among animals. The Paleolithic period left humans with
capability for individual evolution but little for evolution of cooperative
governance capability at higher than a village level. Listen to Wilson.

The problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens

is an innate dysfunctional species. We are hampered by the
Paleolithic Curse: genetic adaptations that worked very well for
millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence but are increasingly
a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society. We
seem unable to stabilize either economic policies or the means of
governance higher than the level of a village.
(Wilson, 2014, pp. 176–177).

Even Athens was bigger than a village.

Summary
This chapter discussed the mal-nudges of post-truths in the context of
government. “Post-truth” is noted as the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of
the Year for 2016, and it suggests that we live in a post-truth era (or an
age of distraction). Myths are described in powerful support of capital-
ism, the entrepreneur, the free market – and of government. It describes
our nudging received by post-truths – where emotion and feeling can be
more influential than truth – and my source can be my cell phone, my
television, my cinema, painting, posters, advertisements – buttonholing,
must-buy, and a big stretch from the truth. The evidence from neu-
roscience is noted, describing people more as “animals with opinions”
rather than as people who have thought through a hypothesis. The
American democracy is first evaluated in terms of the democracy of
 Context: Post-Truth 75
Ancient Greece, the first democracy. Then modern evaluations are noted.
There are insights that can be criticized, e.g., Athens had fewer citizens
than contemporary U.S., etc. Significant criticisms – like tyranny of the
majority and the discomfort of post-truth – legitimately stimulate
concern.

References
Aristotle. (1295b). Politica.
Backhouse, R.E. (2010). The Puzzle of Modern Economics: Science or Ideology?
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ball, J. (2017). Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World. London: Backbite
Publishing.
Bove, J. & F. Dufour (2000). Le Monde n’est pas une merchandise: Des paysans
contre la malbouffe. Paris: Editions La Decouverte.
Burton, R. (2008). On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You Are
Not. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Crawford. (2015). The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming An Individual in an
Age of Distraction. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Davis, E. (2017). Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We
Can Do About It. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.
De Chenecey, S.P. (2017). The Post-Truth Business: How to Rebuild Brand
Authenticity in a Distrusting World. London: Kogan Page.
Farmer, D.J. (1986). Aristotle: Persistence of Matter. Charlottesville, VA: University
of Virginia.
Hughes, R. (2003). Myths America Lives By. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University
of Illinois.
Kennedy, J.F. (1962). Yale University Commencement Address. June 11.
Murray, A. (2017). Saving Truth: Finding Meaning and Clarity in a Post-Truth
World. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Reinhard, K. (2012). Introduction: Badiou’s Sublime Translation of the Republic.
In Badiou, A. (Eds.), Plato’s Republic: A Dialogue in 16 Chapters. VII-XXII
New York: Columbia University Press.
Tollefson, G.L. (2017). Unbridled Democracy: And Other Philosophical Reflections.
Eagle Nest, New Mexico: Palo Flechado Pres.
Wilson, E.O. (2014). The Meaning of Human Existence. New York: W.W. Norton.
Woodruff, P. (2005). First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea.
New York: Oxford.
7 Government-in-Context
Practical Nudges

Earlier chapters have suggested that government is out-of-joint through

a mal-trinity of contexts – infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth. This
mal-trinity has direct and indirect consequences for government – as well
as consequences for economies, for society and for individuals. Nudges
for government-in-context – or government-in-totality, if you prefer that
description – are needed that are fundamentally effective in terms of
policy and administration.
The practical planning includes four stages for public administration
(P.A.) thinkers intending to contemplate and nudge a “better” marriage
of content and context within the notion of government-in-context, etc.
Eighteen sets of subject aims are offered as examples arranged under the
mal-trinity of infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth. To some extent
(some completely and others less so), they all necessarily involve the
theoretical – e.g., as theoretical and as hammer-blow as (say) the free
market and the mixed market. (Dear reader, life is not simple: in Chapter
8, you will be asked to evaluate these eighteen options and to consider
other possibilities.) For infiltration, six sets of aims are indicated under
these titles:

1. Resolve lobbying and election money nudges;

2. Resolve income tax and subsidies nudges;
3. Resolve globalization and crony capitalism nudges;
4. Resolve climate change (including carbon dioxide control) and gun
control nudges;
5. Resolve corporate welfare and Eisenhower’s military-industrial com-
plex nudges;
6. Know more about infiltration: a context-out-of-joint.

For exfiltration, six more sets of aims are listed:

7. Resolve the middle-income and university debt nudges;

8. Resolve the living wage, as well as minimum wage, nudges;
 Government-in-Context 77
9. Resolve lack of health insurance for all (and effective pharmaceutical
insurance) nudge;
10. Reinstall the Mixed Market.
11. Explore the future of BNR: biotechnology, nanotechnology, and
robotics;
12. Know more about exfiltration: economic defects.

For post-truth contemplation, six more sets of aims are discussed:

13. Correct post-truth political nudges, carefully;

14. Correct post-truth economic nudges;
15. Correct post-truth educational nudges;
16. Post-truth P.A, going beyond;
17. Correct post-truth about democracy;
18. Know more about post-truth: the good life.

These are sets of aims for the four planning stages, offering what can be
considered as broader procedural approaches, starting with P.A. practical
involvement. But the approach here is not only political. Such procedural
approaches – and the eighteen aims – may be drafted, re-drafted and
drafted again in what is explained below as the third stage – led by
recognition that political landscapes change at different times and in
differing degrees, and that (regrettably) arguments are frequently enough
less important than politics – and that (happily) arguments at other times
can be more important than politics.
Plans to correct government-in-context are suggested in this chapter in
terms of preface, stages, and aims.

Nudging: Practical Plan Preface

Dear reader, this preface is to whisper in your ear something you know
already, at least in part. It is helpful for both you and me to be conscious
of our own contexts – bio-psycho-social and other contexts – when
evaluating and devising practical plans. That is, we should recognize
that our own conscious and unconscious contexts include our own truths
and post-truths, already inside our biological brains, our psyches, our
social relations, our religious or other beliefs, our prejudices, or whatever
and wherever else they are in our own bodies. They can also include
what has been called features of Agnotology – the making and unmak-
ing of ignorance. We have to overcome not only the unconscious but also
the complexity in our own contexts: we have to meditate/contemplate.
Let me add six examples of the complexity of contexts of beliefs. The
examples are beliefs that you and I might (or might not) share that (1)
the free market is a gift from nature and from economic science, that (2)
only instant and non-theoretical solutions are practical, that (3) the
78 Government-in-Context
answers at the macro level (focusing on three major contexts – infiltra-
tion, exfiltration, and post-truth) should surely be settled by economic
analysis alone, that (4) a minimal government is essentially beneficial,
that (5) the economy is an adequate guide to future needs, and that (6)
the U.S. democratic government is unquestionably “exceptional” in the
world.
Dear reader, such examples of beliefs or post-truths are typically more
complicated than the mere statements, because they can be linked to sub-
claims or sub-situations – and even to multiple sub-sub-claims or multiple
sub-sub-situations. The six examples of possible common sub-situations
and sub-sub-situations could be as follows:

1. The free market as a gift from nature and from economic science –
concerning a sub-situation, where the believers have profited from
what approximates a free market – concerning a sub-sub-situation,
where the believers never have studied philosophy of social science
(or economic science), or never have read a book on whether eco-
nomics is a science like physics.
2. Only instant solutions are practical – concerning another sub-
situation, where the believers might be a group (e.g., some politicians
or some business people) that has a political or economic interest in
longer-range solutions not being encouraged – concerning a sub-sub-
situation, where the believers might have a different aim, e.g., re-
election, or employment promotion.
3. The answers at the macro level (focusing on infiltration, exfiltration,
and post-truth) should surely be settled by economic analysis alone –
concerning a sub-situation, where the believers have read an eco-
nomic analysis by (say) Kotz (2015, pp. 203, 207, 213, 219) who is
one who evaluates the paths of the ideas and institutions of business-
regulated capitalism; the ideas and institutions of social democratic
capitalism; moving beyond capitalism, the ideas and principles of
democratic participatory planned socialism; and he agrees that neo-
liberal capitalism promises stagnation, further inequality, declining
living standards, and political instability. Concerning a sub-sub-
situation, where there is the difficulty that these words – capitalism,
socialism, democratic participatory planned socialism – seem outside
the emotional bounds of most popular thinking. For another diffi-
culty, the government-in-context situation we face is not merely an
economic problem – especially if it does not utilize epistemic
pluralism.
4. Minimal government is essentially beneficial – concerning a sub-
situation, where some believers work in private enterprise – concern-
ing a sub-sub-situation, where some believers are envious of job
security in the civil service, and/or have been influenced by the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce’s battle plan.
 Government-in-Context 79
5. The belief that the economy is an adequate guide to future needs –
concerning a sub-situation, where being a worker who is often short
of money, or alternatively being an investor in the stock market –
concerning a sub-sub-situation, where believing that prospects of
employment – or the stock-market – are the guide to that believer’s
future.
6. The U.S. democratic government is unquestionably exceptional in the
world – concerning a sub-situation, where don’t most people from
any country think that their country is the greatest? Concerning
a sub-sub-situation, where don’t most schools – and T.V. news pro-
grams – teach a positive account of their country’s history? And
aren’t the students usually graded (or examined) on this version of
history?

Is there a tendency – big-time or small-time – for countries to tell far-

fetched stories about how wonderful is that country and how magnifi-
cent are the people of that country, and how different has been that
country (and that people) from any other country (and people)? In the
U.S., many believe in American exceptionalism – a description that (to
repeat) came into common usage following its use by Joseph Stalin in the
1920s, referring to the Jay Lovestone-led faction of the American com-
munist party. In 1892, the University of Georgia’s president Walter Hill
announced, as an earlier equivalent example, that “America is a nation
of presidents.” I guess that would be possible if each were president for
a limited number of minutes. Thank you, dictator Joe. Thank you,
university president Walter. Thank you, dear reader – for putting up
with this preface on the utility and complexity of self-understanding.)

Nudging: Practical Plan Stages

The practical planning includes four stages. As described in Chapter 1,
the first stage is to contemplate and nudge (at conferences and in
writings) on the nature, advantages and disadvantages of a “better
marriage” of content and context within the concept of government-in-
context. The second is to establish full-time P.A. government-in-context
specialists, and to develop alliances with employees in other disciplines
including Public Policy and then Economics and Political Science. The
third would be macro government-in-context specialists (from P.A. and
other disciplines), plus some elected officials. The fourth stage is to
establish an Interdisciplinary (or Epistemic Pluralist) Team to Enhance
Democracy – setting up the team at the university (maybe also at the
governmental) level. It is practical for P.A. to offer leadership in funda-
mentally upgrading government-in-context in terms not only of admin-
istration but also of increasing its assistance with policy. These stages are
intended to help nudge the development of that capability.
80 Government-in-Context
It is hoped that those involved will notice the importance of side-lines
of the second stage in obtaining full-time participants, of the third stage
in including some elected officials, and the fourth stage in enlisting some
philanthropists (and philanthropic institutions) able to invest monies. It
is hoped also that the participants in these stages will learn from the
techniques of those who have advocated for difficulties that came to face
the democracy, e.g., including the theoretical advocacy (laced with
mathematics) of the so-called free market and the battle plan of the
American Business Model. It is hoped that the participants will recog-
nize that there is reluctance to admit the problems of government-in-
context. It is hoped that their nudging will complement the hammer
blows and shoves of the practical planning aims with both the hammer
blows and shoves from the four stages.

Nudging: Practical Planning Aims

The practical planning aims can be understood as contributing to the
framing of governmental infiltration, governmental exfiltration, and
post-truths – three governmental contexts that require correction. Let’s
begin by noting the specific aims recommended under each of these three
contexts. These three contexts and eighteen aims can be conceptualized
as hammer blows or shoves.

That these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of
the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.
(Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address)

Infiltration
A first and important set of aims is to diminish significantly big money
and corporate infiltration into government. As explained in Chapter 4,
infiltration refers to the dominant intrusion of a controlling context into
governmental policy-making, management and thinking. The power of
big money and corporations does infiltrate, participating in forming
a form of government-in-context. The word infiltration is also used in
other contexts, e.g., as the way that a liquid permeates something by
penetrating its pores or interstices, or as the way that access is surrepti-
tiously gained by a military into an organization or place, or the way
that smoking a pack of cigarettes each day can give the smoker lung
cancer.
The infiltration is gained by corporations and the rich paying money
and by receiving money, by paying dark money and receiving monetary
benefits, rewarding, threatening, and punishing – and the rest. Let’s give
 Government-in-Context 81
examples of six sets of aims – 1) Resolve lobbying and election money
nudges; 2) Resolve income tax and subsidies nudges; 3) Resolve globalization
and crony capitalism nudges; 4) Resolve climate change (including carbon
dioxide control) and gun control nudges; 5) Resolve corporate welfare and
Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex nudges; and 6) Know more about
infiltration: a context-out-of-joint.

Lobbying and Election Money

Lobbying throughout the history of the U.S. has certainly given
a “special ear” to the best organized and lavishly funded of the lobbyists,
as Senator Byrd would have known with his 51 years in the Senate. In
the Byrd Amendment (1987), he advocated the limitation of appro-
priated funds to influence certain federal contracting and financial
transactions – and he is said to have wanted the interests of all citizens
to be heard without giving special ear to the best organized and lavishly
funded. But special ears are special. Chapter 4 explains how big bucks
and corporate lobbying have infiltrated government – dominating and
shaping government policy, laws and regulations, and how it enriches the
rich and how it has contributed toward exfiltrating the lower and middle
classes. However, lobbying has not been confined to the United States,
e.g., lobbying occurred, famously, in the nineteenth century in rooms
adjacent to the United Kingdom’s parliament.
Decidedly, citizens should not be prevented from lobbying in the sense
of attempting to influence politicians, through talking and demonstrat-
ing, etc. But money and corporate lobbying should be prevented from
buying politicians and political parties, and paid lobbyists – and related
activities like gerrymandering – should be policed. Citizens United, if
possible, should be overturned: corporations should not be considered to
be artificial people and their expenditures should not be recognized as
speech. Corporations, institutions and non-persons, indeed, should be
prohibited from funding – or sending gifts to – political parties and
politicians. Election expenditures should be significantly capped, or
publicly funded. Former politicians should be banned from lobbying.
The aim should be to implement such changes and to establish
a mechanism for “policing” the changes.

Income Tax and Subsidies

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. This
adage is often ascribed to Albert Einstein. I doubt whether he said it
(although the internet reports that he did) and I doubt whether it is
true. But there are striking inequities in the tax system. The super-rich
typically pay a lower tax rate than they should, for example and as
explained in Chapter 4. No longer is the top bracket in the U.S.
82 Government-in-Context
91 percent, as it was in 1964. As noted earlier, the tax rate in 2007 for the
rich was 16.6 percent on the top 400 households, compared with 20.4 per-
cent for taxpayers in general. It was mentioned that Warren Buffet, a rich
owner, paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. And it can be added that
Mitt Romney paid a tax rate of 14 percent on his $22 million income in
2010. Other good tax deals in the U.S. as of 2017 include the inheritance
tax, paid by the inheritors of an estate and not by the estate of the
deceased – with federal estate tax exemption of $5,450,000 – or
$10.90 million for a married couple. (Only 0.0006 percent of the population
benefits.) Corporate profit tax rates were reduced in 2017 from 35 percent to
21 percent. Corporate welfare is used to describe money grants, tax breaks
and other favorable treatment for large corporations. Subsidies relate to
financial assets, intellectual property, land property, and mineral rights.
The U.S. income tax rates on the rich should be increased closer to the
rates that existed in the 1960s. They should be neither lower nor equal to
the rates on the less rich. Consideration should be given to reducing the
subsidies substantially. Also, it should be recognized that there is
a difference between income and wealth. This aim should be to raise
the income tax rates and the capital gains tax rates on the rich.
The U.S. reporting system requires each of us to fill out the I.R.S. income
tax forms (and there are 800 different types). In other places (like Sweden,
Estonia, Japan and the United Kingdom), the system is different. The
equivalent of the I.R.S. fills out the forms and mails it to the taxpayers: all
the taxpayer has to do is to approve and sign. A major force behind the
U.S. choice of income tax system is corporate lobbying.

Globalization and Crony Capitalism

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over
men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the
government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it
to control itself.
(James Madison, Federalist No. 51)

Globalization increased the ability of corporations and the super-rich to

avoid paying taxes. Among the methods, the most straightforward is
competition among countries to cut tax rates. Kuttner (2018, p. 230)
reports studies estimating havens (shelters) as holding upper-income
wealth of $7.6 trillion – or much higher at $21 trillion – one fourth of
the world’s wealth. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
(Phillips et al., 2017) estimates that 366 of the largest U.S. corporations
maintain tax haven subsidiaries that total $2.5 trillion in accumulated
profits. The executive summary notes that, saying that “U.S. based multi-
national corporations are allowed to play by a different set of rules than
 Government-in-Context 83
small and domestic businesses or individuals when it comes to paying
taxes.” It reports that the U.S. tax code is riddled with exceptions and
loopholes. Tax havens include the OECD havens (Ireland, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, and Switzerland) and havens in the Caribbean (the
Cayman Islands, Panama, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands,
Dominica, Nevis, Anguilla, Costa Rica, Belize, and Barbados). A tax
haven offers little or no tax liability. They have not been closed down.
There was a contest between nations to cut taxes; and the tax system
became flatter, and less progressive. Kuttner (2018, p. 257) states that
globalism “has been great at advancing the interests of capital and feeble
at defending or enlarging the domain of human rights. The home of
democracy – or antidemocracy – continues to be the national polity.” And
the title of his book asks the question, Can Democracy Survive Global
Capitalism?
This can readily be recognized as crony capitalism. Such capitalism is
an economy where businesses succeed not as a result of the risks of
business enterprise, but as a return in terms of money gained from the
connection between the corporate and the political classes. Including
discussions with other countries supporting similar activity and recogniz-
ing the economic consequences, the options of closing the tax havens and
reversing the various loopholes and other tax arrangements should con-
stitute an aim.

Climate Change (Including Carbon Dioxide Control) and Gun

Control
Globalization in the form of crony capitalism has both monetary
benefits (to the corporations) and costs in terms of some public
policy costs. An aim should include achieving policies for effective
climate change and gun control. But other examples could be offered
for both of these. Instead of climate change, one could consider
examples like air pollution, loss of biodiversity, chemical pollutions,
ocean acidification, etc.
Let’s note climate claims first – as an example of items that require the
U.S. to engage with all other powerful economies like China. Weighing
the probability of future catastrophe (such as the extinction of human
life on earth) against shorter-term items (such as higher profits for some
corporations and higher profits for stock market investors) suggests the
need to take appropriate group action. Climate change relates to weather
conditions prevailing in an area or over a long period – change in global
or regional climate patterns – in particular a change apparent from the
mid to late twentieth century and onward and attributed largely to the
increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of
fossil fuels. It refers to rising global average temperatures resulting from
such sources as oil and coal, which emit greenhouse gases into the
84 Government-in-Context
atmosphere. Other human activities, such as agriculture deforestation,
also contribute to the proliferation of greenhouse gases that cause
climate changes. Substantial agreement that climate change is occurring
and due to human activity has been affirmed by U.S. organizations such
as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. But it is natural that leverage against climate change
action might be taken by large oil and gas corporations in the context of
government – U.S. corporations like Exxon Mobil, Valero Energy,
Chevron, Phillips 66, Marathon Petroleum, Enterprise Products, and
Conoco Phillips.
Ownership of guns in the U.S. is a right, rather than a privilege. The
U.S.A. is the country with the most guns in the world – 112.6 guns per
100 residents in 2016. Defining mass shootings as an incident where four
or more people are shot, the Guardian reported (Sam Morris, 2018, 15th,
February) that there have been 1,624 mass shootings in 1,870 days in the
U.S.A.

Corporate Welfare and Eisenhower’s Warning

Famously, President Eisenhower ended his term of office by issuing
his celebrated warning that in “the councils of government, we must
guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The poten-
tial for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will
persist” (Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961). The Pentagon
and related programs’ budget for 2018 was super-gigantic – some
$700 billion. It did produce gigantic corporate welfare for major
weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop
Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Listen to this story
titled The Military-Industrial Complex Is on Corporate Welfare (Wil-
liam D. Hartung, February 27, 2018). The article indicates that
corporate leaders will be able to give themselves a salary increase
beyond the $96 million they gained as a group in 2016, and this will
be helped by the cutting of the corporate tax rate. And the article
offers examples of what it calls wasteful spending such as the $1.5
trillion on F-35s that may never be ready for combat, sloppy buying
arrangements, and projects which the writer characterizes as making
the Pentagon “fatter not stronger.” And then he asks whether there
will not be funding of attitudes like what he calls the U.S.’s hyper-
militarized foreign policy – a large issue indeed. President Eisen-
hower saw the danger of the military industrial complex. An aim
should include controlling this danger.
 Government-in-Context 85
Knowing More about Infiltration: A Context-Out-Of-Joint
To know more about infiltration, it would help to contemplate elements
of the context of these five aims. An option would be to start with
postmodernist Jacques Derrida, seeking to know more about decon-
struction and what is out-of-joint in the world. The aim would be to
elucidate understanding and meanings of the context – rather than
behavior and causes. Another start option would be to recall Chapter 4
about the ideology but also the mythic dimensions of capitalism that are
described, say, by Richard Hughes (2004, pp. 126–152).
Deconstruction has been characterized by Derrida as a good reading
of a text, where text is not limited to the written text (e.g., cops and
criminals can read a street better than we can; soldiers can read
a battlefield, etc.). J. Hillis Miller, in his The Ethics of Reading, writes
that, “Deconstruction is nothing more nor less than good reading as
such” (Miller, 1987, p. 10). In all our texts, binary opposites (male-
female, right-wrong, etc., where Derrida explained that one is read as
superior) and metaphors limit the way that we think and understand. So,
deconstruction would include such activities as reversing the order of
precedence in binary opposites. Also, it is a misleading practice to
suppose that there are only two options per binary opposites – e.g.,
right or wrong; maybe there are two more options – neither right nor
wrong, also right and wrong.
In a good reading of Derrida’s 10 ways, is it enough to know that out-
of-joint is a state of disorder or, in the medical case of a body joint,
dislocation? Is it helpful in stimulating the reader’s imagination to add
the suggestion that Derrida is making a literary reference that he is
directing to the audience’s attention? Being out-of-joint can be read as
a reference to the opening scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, especially the
lines speaking of his father Old Hamlet’s murder by uncle Claudius who
later married his mother Gertrude. The line “That ever I was born to set
it right” is linked to the “time is out of joint – O cursed spite” is linked
by Derrida to the 10 ways that our world is as it should not be (that we
are born to set it right?) – or maybe not. Is the reference merely literary
or also substantial, and is it binary? (But, dear reader, I agree that
Jacques Derrida can seem deterring. However, 1), if this paragraph is out-
of-joint for you, go straight to the 10 ways. However (2), context can
nudge.)

“The time is out of joint – O cursed sprite,

That ever I was born to set it right” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1)

Let’s contemplate the context of the world and of aims 1–5 as we

examine the following 10 ways in which Derrida (1994, pp. 100–101)
describes the World as being out-of-joint.
86 Government-in-Context
• Unemployment, and underemployment.
• Massive exclusion of homeless citizens from participation in the
democratic life of states
• Ruthless economic war between countries.
• Inability to master contradictions in the concepts, norms and reality
of the free market.
• Aggravation of the foreign debt.
• The arms industry and trade.
• The spread of nuclear weapons, now uncontrollable.
• Inter-ethnic wars.
• The growing power of phantom states like the mafia.
• The present state of international law, where the U.N. charter
depends on an historical culture (e.g., sovereignty) and where there
is dominance by particular states.

Take for your first example and reflect on Derrida’s claim about “Inabil-
ity to master contradiction in the concepts, norms and reality of the free
market.” How would you (perhaps starting with Chapter 4) answer these
four questions about this claim?

a) What are examples of the contradictions that Derrida intended?

E.g., Free market economics v. market reality?
Free market myths v. market reality?
Government as obstacle to freedom v.
democratic government?
Self-interest v. Societal interest?

b) How would you rank them?

c) What other questions would you ask?
d) How would you relate the answers to infiltration in government-in-
context?

Exfiltration
A second and important set of aims is to diminish significantly lower-
income (and middle-income) exfiltration from government. As explained
in Chapter 5, exfiltration refers to the exclusion of what was once a part
of the controlling context from governmental public policy-making,
management and thinking. The word exfiltration is also used in other
contexts – e.g. remove someone furtively from a hostile area, or with-
draw troops (or spies) surreptitiously especially from a dangerous posi-
tion, or a method for managing stormwater runoff, or air escape from
a building, or as data theft from within a computer system or network.
 Government-in-Context 87
Let’s give six sets of aims (using the numbers, starting with number 7,
taken from the list toward the beginning of this chapter) – 7) Resolve the
middle-income and university debt nudges; 8) Resolve the living wage, as
well as minimum wage, nudges; 9) Resolve the health insurance (and
effective pharmaceutical insurance) nudge; 10) Reinstall the Mixed
Market; 11) Explore the future of BNR; and 12) Know more about
exfiltration: economic defects.

The Middle-Income and University Debt

The country has become increasingly divided toward a two-tier (or dual)
economy. The top group (the top 20 percent of the population) of the
dual economy has been called the capitalist or FTE (finance, technology,
and electronics) sector; it determines policy for the whole economy. The
bottom sector (the bottom 80 percent) is the low-wage sector. A passage
from the low-wage sector to the FTE sector is education, a bridge that
experiences blocks at both the grade school and university levels. Issues
at the grade schools are in such terms, for instance, as the two-school
system (city v. suburban) and in reduction/lack of Federal and other
grants. At the university level, there is the problem of huge debt burden
borne by students. For example, I notice that the tuition and required
fees for in-state full-time first-year students at the University of Virginia
has been increased for the 2019–2020 school year to $17,266; for out-of-
state students, the figure is $50,184. For first year students at Harvard in
2016–2017, tuition was $43,280 – and, including room and board and
other necessary fees, it was $63,025.
An aim should be to remove the blocks that could help restore
a significant middle group. Peter Temin (2018, pp. 154–155) argues
that the

FTE sector makes plans for itself, typically ignoring the needs of the
low-wage sect… Even more than other members of the FTE sector,
the top 12 percent resist tax increases . . . Their remedy is to cut
spending on these programs even more.

This spending should be restored to upgrade the quality of performance

of schools. An aim here should be to get into the educational details,
including how, for instance, to abolish the for-profit online universities
and to help the oppressed inner-city schools.

Living Wage, as Well as Minimum Wage

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far
greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity,
besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the
88 Government-in-Context
people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor
as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.
(Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1.viii.36)

A living wage is for a worker to meet his/her basic needs, while

a minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally
pay their workers. These are different entities. An aim of anti-exfiltration
would include raising the minimum wage toward the living wage, and
increasing and broadening the items included in calculating the living
wage. Another item would be to reduce the variety between state-
administered unemployment benefits. The following three paragraphs
describe the living wage, minimum wage, and add a note on unemploy-
ment benefits.
The living wage specifies what it costs for a worker to meet his basic
needs. These needs are defined as including housing, food, childcare,
transportation, and other “essential” needs. The goal is to allow the
worker to have a basic but decent standard of living. Some countries are
more generous than others. The living wage in the United States is
$16.14 per hour or $67,146 per year in 2018 – $15.12 per hour in
2015 – for a family of four (two working adults and two children). The
highest metropolitan area is San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward California
at $94,662 per year; for New York City, it was $90,765 per year; and the
hundredth metropolitan area is Jackson, Mississippi at $56,450 per year
for the family of four, according to the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Living Wage Calculator (Amadeo, K., January 24, 2019).
The poverty level is the way that the Federal Government determines the
eligibility of a household for certain federal subsidies and health pro-
grams like Medicaid. The Government’s Department of Health and
Human Services, part of the Federal Government, set the poverty level
for a family of four in 2018 at $24,600 per year. It was $11.83 per hour
for a full-time worker.
A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can
legally pay their workers, and it is set by both the Federal or State or
municipality or county governments. The Federal minimum wage, set by
the Fair Labor Standards Act on June 24, 2009, is $7.25 per hour. When
the Federal and the State minimum wage differs (or when the munici-
palities’ or counties’ wages differ), the higher rate prevails. As of Jan-
uary 2018, there were 29 states and Washington D.C. (the latter having
the highest minimum wage of $13.25 per hour in 2018) with higher
minimum wages than the Federal minimum. States with the lowest
minimum wage in 2018 were Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,
South Carolina, Tennessee and Wyoming – and they had the Federal
minimum wage of $7.25 and no state minimum wage. The minimum
wage is higher in California, being $11.00 in 2018 and $12.00 in 2019
and $15.00 in 2022 for employers with 26 employees or more. It should
 Government-in-Context 89
be added that the Fair Labor Standards Act excludes smaller businesses
whose employees do not engage in interstate commerce. And younger
workers (those aged under 20 years) can be paid less than the minimum
wage. Raising the minimum wage has pro and con arguments. Pro
arguments include upgrading workers’ lives, e.g., improving mental and
physical health, reducing child neglect and improving family life and
even stimulating the economy, etc. Some people fear the negative eco-
nomic effects, e.g., encouraging employers to outsource more jobs, and
lay off more people, etc.
Unemployment compensation varies between states – in terms of
maximum benefits, duration and eligibility. States like Massachusetts
could pay as much as $1,153 in weekly benefits; New Jersey $681;
Rhode Island $707; and Pennsylvania $569. The majority provide aver-
age benefits in the range of $300 to $500. Unemployed workers in most
states are eligible for 26 weeks of benefits, although there is variety as
nine states provide less and two provide more. Such variations should be
re-examined.

Health Insurance (And Effective Pharmaceutical Insurance)

Among advanced countries, the United States is alone in being without
a universal health care system. Lack of a national health system is no big
deal for the rich. For the poor, however, lack of health insurance leads to
poorer health for all who are poor. In 2014, The U.S. Health Care
System: An International Perspective notes that almost 90 percent of the
U.S. population had some type of health insurance, including 66 percent
having private health insurance. Among the insured, 36.5 percent of that
population had coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, veterans and/or
military care. More than 32.9 million had no health care. The Affordable
Care Act was enacted in 2010, and in 2014 the individual mandate
(requiring all to have some form of health insurance) was adopted.
An aim should be for the U.S. to have a national health plan – in the
form of either a national health service, a national health insurance
system or a multi-payer health insurance system. The National Research
Council and Institute of Medicine (2013, p. 11) stated that “U.S. health
care specialists are among the best in the world. However, treatment in
the U.S. is inequitable, overspecialized, and neglects primary and pre-
ventive care.” Of seventeen rich countries, the U.S. had the highest or
near highest prevalence of infant mortality, obesity, heart and lung
diseases, car accidents, sexually transmitted infections, injuries, and
homicides.
The high cost of medicines is among other problems. Accordingly, the
aims in this area should include repealing the Medicare Modernization
Act (2003), which bars government from negotiating cheaper drug prices.
90 Government-in-Context
Reinstall the Modern Mixed Economy
Reinstalling the Modern Mixed Economy was described briefly in
Chapter 3, with references to Samuelson and Nordhaus (2010, pp.
25–44). It has advantages over the free market, but – while surely it
should be preferred – it has disadvantages. Samuelson and Nordhaus
(2010, p. 42) list advantages and disadvantages for the visible hand.
For an example on the pro side, they assert that both halves of the
mixed system – government and market – are needed for a humane
and efficient system. For a con example, the government might fail to
allocate resources appropriately if faced with imperfect competition
(such as monopolies and oligopolies) and externalities. They insist
appropriately that “Drawing the right boundary between market and
government is an enduring problem for societies . . .”

Future of BNR
BNR will have a happy – but also a foreboding – future for government
and for society, as you will recall from the discussion of the celebrated
biologist Edward O. Wilson in Chapter 5. B=Biotechnology, the exploi-
tation of biological processes for industrial and other purposes;
N=Nanotechnology, the branch of technology concerned especially
with the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules – and one of
the technologies that worried Astronomer Royal Martin Rees (see him
mentioned above); and R=Robotics, an interdisciplinary branch of
engineering and science that includes mechanical, electronic, and infor-
mation engineering, as well as computer systems. Ullman (2017, p. 131)
explains that robotics and artificial life researchers openly question the
“specialness” of human life. She notes that “some call life as we know it
on earth merely one of many ‘possible biologies’ and see our reverence
for humanity as something of a prejudice (‘human chauvinism’).”
Wilson (2014, p. 58) is quoted as asserting that the construction of
“robots that can think faster and work more efficiently than humans in
most white-collar and blue-collar labor” will be a reality in “a few
decades.”
The aim for the future of robotics will be to prepare adequately for the
optimal macro and micro transformation of government-in-context and
of the economy. It will include preparing for the optimal benefit to be
shared with the unemployed human beings when they are replaced by
robotic capabilities. “With more and more decision making and work
done by robots, what will be left for humans to do?” (Wilson, 2014,
p. 59). (Dear reader, it is true that 30 or so years is in the future. But it
doesn’t seem too long for a democracy to think about the complex
matter of what to do.)
 Government-in-Context 91
Knowing More about Exfiltration: Economic Defects?
To know more about exfiltration, it would help to contemplate elements
of the context of these five aims. An option would be to start with
contextual features offered by the nature of economic theory. Again, the
aim would be to elucidate understanding and meanings – rather than
behavior and causes. Another start option would be to recall Chapter 3
and the postmodernist Michel Foucault and his thinking on the nature
of governmentality.
Turn to the first option – about the nature of economic theory. Turn
now to the question that asks whether there are values or ideology
hidden within the rational structure of economic theory? Yes, there are.
There is a questionable embrace of rational economic man in most
branches of economics, and an identification of labor with commodity.
Let’s consider rational economic man. Is it rational for so much of
economic theory to rely so completely on rational economic man? There
is a literature that would deny this. For an example, see Jonathan Haidt
(2012). He describes humans as basing their ideas on moral intuition,
not reason. That is, they have emotions and then develop their rationale
to fit their emotional constructs. There is also negative evidence from
neuroscience. The reliance in mainstream economics on the purely
rational also seems odd in view of our own economic behavior and the
emotional behavior of consumers and producers that we see. It is also
odd to celebrate rationality so much when economics incorporates so
centrally such metaphors, such tropes, as the invisible hand. See Michael
Shapiro (1993) in the large literature on the invisible hand, pointing out
how the invisible hand and the law of supply and demand work toward
harmony; the self and other are considered always congruent. The Fable
of the Invisible Hand has a sub-text, in Shapiro’s reading of Adam
Smith, of divine providence! Such are metaphors, more than models.
In considering the rationality of the “rational man assumption” in
economic theorizing, recall that there are at least three differing senses of
economic rationality. These are the instrumental (typical in mainstream
economics), the procedural, and the expressive. Under the assumption of
instrumental rationality, the individual person acts so as to satisfy his
preferences optimally. Such rationality “is located in the means-ends
framework as the choice of the most efficient means for the achievement
of given ends” (Heap, 1989, p. 6). The procedural version of rationality
conceives the individual as a rule follower, and such behavior is proce-
durally rational. An example is Herbert Simon’s “satisficing” principle.
Expressive rationality is described by Heap (1989, p. 6) as focusing on
ends pursued rather than on actions taken in pursuit of those ends. By
contrast with mainstream economics, of course, there are alternative
economics (e.g., Neuroeconomics and Behavioral Economics) that do
not need such assumptions about rational economic man. A similar
92 Government-in-Context
explanation and criticism could be offered for the view that economic
man is always selfish in his decision-making, choosing only what will
optimize his own utility. Economic man is not primarily concerned with
features such as civic virtue, empathy, or love. An altruistic Good
Samaritan would be considered misguided.
Let’s consider labor as commodity. Would such a rational economic
man have designed economic theory to give economic man a place that
equated himself with a commodity, e. g., with an apple, a pickled herring
or a football? Yet, see Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman (1998, p.2), writing
that at

the heart of capitalism’s inhumanity – and no sensible person will

deny that the market is an amoral and often cruelly capricious
master – is the fact that it treats labor as a commodity. Economics
may treat the exchange of labor for money as a transaction much
like the sale of a bushel of apples, but we all know that in human
terms there is a huge difference.

Well yes, it is odd if rational “economic man” chose to equate himself

with a mere commodity.
Michel Foucault developed an understanding of government in terms
of governmentality – like music can be linked to musicality. Governmen-
tality, in his view, is not limited only to the political and administrative,
as you will recall from Chapter 2: it also links control of the self and
“biopolitical” control of populations – and also joins to other concepts
like biopolitics and power-knowledge. It does not think of power only in
terms of hierarchical, top-down power; it also includes forms of social
control in disciplinary institutions (e.g., schools and hospitals and psy-
chiatric institutions). Each society, in his view is a regime of truth – the
types of discourse that it accepts, makes function as true, instances to
distinguish true and false, and gives status of those charged with saying
what counts as true. (Dear reader, could not this be helpful to your
thinking about U.S. history – and the role(s) of capitalism?)

Post-Truths
A third and important set of aims is to diminish significantly post-truth
nudges among all categories of people and organizations – including
voters who constitute a part of the context of government. (This is
similar to the bio-psycho-social-and-other contexts mentioned earlier.
The contexts are not only yours and mine. They are also those of
politicians and voters, academics and P.A. thinkers working government-
in-context.) As explained in Chapter 6, such nudges – and you may
prefer to call them mal-nudges – are critical hindrances to contemplation
and thinking. And we return again to Agnotology, the making and
 Government-in-Context 93
unmaking of ignorance – although LOL that is a strong word. Let’s give
the six sets of aims (again using the numbers, starting with number 13,
taken from the list toward the beginning of this chapter) – 13) Correct
post-truth political nudges, carefully; 14) Correct post-truth economic
nudges; 15) Correct post-truth educational nudges; 16) Correct post-
truth P.A., going beyond; 17) Correct post-truth about democracy; and
18) know more about post-truth: the good life.

Post-Truth Political
The political understandings and misunderstandings are shaped by con-
texts, requiring both reformative practical action and contemplation. On
the reformative side, it should be recognized that money-seeking law-
infracting behavior by politicians (responding to corporate money
opportunities and offers) require criminal law enforcement by, say, the
F.B.I. Yes, this should be done with great care, because it is not at all
intended to relate to political beliefs and actions themselves, but only to
making money illegally. Care is also required because there are not only
significant advantages but also rare dangers from policing (e.g., some-
times from possible interference with the governmental process but also
even from some incidents of corruption in law enforcement). On the
same reformative side, it is amazing how political thinking is shaped by
weaponized advertisements, by many television news shows (covering
myself here with the word “many” rather than “all”), by money, by the
internet, by lies.
On the contemplative side, there is a helpful literature on this through
post-modern and other thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and Michel
Foucault. Influenced by the critical thinking of the Frankfurt School,
Herbert Marcuse (1964) described technological rationality as colonizing
life, robbing individuals of freedom and individuality – and this is
significant if an aim is to re-shape an understanding of government-in-
context. He would distinguish between uncritical thinking from existing
thoughts and social practices, while critical thought seems like alterna-
tive modes of thought and behavior. One dimensional thought, as he
explains in books like One-Dimensional Man (1964), joins in analyzing
new configurations of state and economy in contemporary capitalist
societies. A mechanics of conformity, as Marcuse explains, spreads
throughout society. Economic planning in the state, the rationalization
of culture in the mass media, and the increased bureaucratization of life
has resulted in “a totally administered society” and “the decline of the
individual.” As Best and Kellner explained, One-Dimensional Man “pro-
vides a model analysis of the synthesis of business, the state, the media
and other cultural institutions under the hegemony of corporate capital
which characterizes the U.S. economy and polity in the 1980s and 1990s”
(Best & Kellner, 1991, p. xxxviii).
94 Government-in-Context
Post-Truth Economic
Economic Theory is indeed the Queen of the Social Sciences. I have
joined in believing this since hearing when a teenager my first lecture on
economics from Lionel Robbins (1898–1984), the celebrated neoclassical
economist – well-known for his definition of economics as “the science
which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and means
which have alternative uses.” He walked out on the stage from behind
a large green curtain in what is still called The Old Theater at the
London School of Economics; without smiling or greeting, he talked
about supply and demand, and then he walked behind the curtain and
disappeared (presumably out a back door) – without saying goodbye or
even smiling. Welcome to the Queen of the Social Sciences. Yet, every
discipline has not only truths but also post-truths. Let us look at three
examples.
The first example is from the University of Cambridge economist Ha-
Joon Chang (2010), titled Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism.
As he (2010, p. xiii) explains,

I believe that capitalism is still the best economic system that

humanity has invented. My criticism is of a particular version of
capitalism that has dominated the world in the last three decades,
that is, free-market capitalism. This is not the only way to run
capitalism, and certainly not the best, as the record of the last three
decades shows.

He analyzes 23 “things they don’t tell you about capitalism:” we will list
six of them.

Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market.

Thing 4: The washing machine has changed the world more than the
internet has.
Thing 10: The U.S. does not have the highest living standard in the
world.
Thing 14: U.S. managers are over-priced.
Thing 18: What is good for General Motors is not necessarily good for
the United States.
Thing 21: Big government makes people more open to change.

For the last thing (21), Chang explains that, if Europeans lose their jobs
due to foreign competition, they can protect their living standards
(through unemployment benefits) and get trained for another job (with
government subsidies): employees in the U.S. have to make do with less.
The second example is the contention that more non- economists –
like P.A. thinkers – should participate in doing economics. In his
 Government-in-Context 95
monumental book on Capital in the Twenty-First Century, for instance,
the French economist Thomas Piketty claims that the distribution of
wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists and a few
others: it is “of interest to everyone, and that is a good thing” (Piketty,
2014, p. 2). In his book on Economics: The User’s Guide, Chang (the
same Ha-Joon Chang) argues for non-economists to become what he
calls economic citizens. He claims that

You should be willing to challenge professional economists… The

economy is too important to be left to the professional economist
alone. I would go one step further and say that the willingness to
challenge professional economists – and other experts – should be
a foundation of democracy.
(Chang, 2014, pp. 331–332).

He adds that economics is “easier than you think . . . (and) economics is

far more accessible than many economists would have you believe”
(2014, pp. 333–334). That P.A. thinkers should become involved in
economic theorizing has also been discussed in the P.A. theory commu-
nity. For instance, notice the recommendation that “non-economists
should contribute more to the supply of economic theory, and especially
to the foundations of economic theorizing . . . Non-economists should
be more than mere buyers of economic theory” (Farmer, 2014, p. 99).
The third example is that economic understanding can be, and should
be, deepened by epistemic pluralism. Such pluralism seeks to facilitate its
theorizing by seeking help from a number of other disciplinary sources.
It struggles against undue and distorting specialization. Through episte-
mic pluralism, economics can seek understandings from perspectives that
include those of the mainstream, political, economic history, post-
structural, psychoanalytic, neuroscientific, critical theory, feminist, new
rhetoric, ethical, evolutionary biological, mathematical and physics, and
philosophy of science. Here I will suggest just two further examples –
New Rhetoric and (at the expense of encountering the objection that
Economics necessarily knows all about Economic History!!!) – Economic
History. But, to repeat, even more disciplines are better.
On New Rhetoric, (a) the economist Deidre McClosky has utilized the
perspective of New Rhetoric and Symbolic Interactionism to add
insights about, and to, economic thinking. For instance, she has argued
that the proofs of the law of demand are “mostly literary” (McClosky,
1998, p. 23).
On (b), would economic analysis be different if the focus of economic
theory were on the work place, rather than on the market place?
On (c), what are the rhetorical reasons why there is a difference
between what has been described as the cleanliness, beauty, and orderli-
ness of economic theory (e.g., see Farmer, 1995, pp. 154–167) and what
96 Government-in-Context
Kenneth Burke describes as the “scramble, the wrangle of the market-
place, the flurries and flare-ups of the barnyard … the logomarchy, the
onus of ownership, the wars of nerves” (1969, p. 42). Burke (to mention
him again) describes New Rhetoric as leading us and economics through
this condition.
On Economic History, (a) would history be among the perspectives
capable of adding to a fuller and more useful classification of types of
capitalism? Some historians have indicated that it is difficult to find any
period that has no market, no capitalism. In his The Idea of Capitalism
before the Industrial Revolution, Richard Grassby (1999, p. 23) writes
that the “main problem with the idea that capitalism emerged at
a particular historical moment is that it is hard to find a pre-capitalist
economy . . . Market capitalism appears as old as civilization and is
recognizable even in primitive societies.”
On (b), would history be among the perspectives that could provide
insights helpful in upgrading the predictive capability about future
developments in the world economy? Yes, economic history has long
been studied by economists (but recall that the point here is not
a minimal, but a grand, strategy) and important centers for the study of
economic history include, for example, the University of Toronto. We
turn to that university and Robert Heilbroner (1993, pp. 19–20) giving
the 1992 Massey Lecture on twenty-first century capitalism. At one
point, he writes that in the 1970s, he

had occasion to discuss the success of economists in foreseeing large-

scale events during the twenty-odd preceding years such as the
advent of the multinational corporation, the rise of Japan as
a major economic power… Not a single one of these world-shaking
developments (as he claimed) had been foretold.

Post-Truth Educational
University education is inhibited by limitation of theory to a single
discipline and by limitation to its history, like economics or public
administration or Political Science or any other theoretical disciplines.
And I should apologize for mentioning epistemic pluralism again. But
I should add two qualifications. Epistemic pluralism does not prevent
use of a single-discipline when it is required. Also, I don’t advocate
epistemic pluralism for many practice-focused topics. If I am having
someone working on cleaning my teeth, for example, my prejudice is that
I would prefer that to be a dentist or a periodontist, etc. But otherwise
and as was mentioned above, lack of epistemic pluralism does encourage
post-truth.
 Government-in-Context 97
Limitation of a discipline to its own history also requires recognition.
That is suggested now in relation to free market economics and the
unconscious. That branch of economics conceptualizes economic man as
having no unconscious. Insights about the effect of the unconscious are
treated as irrelevant for economics conceptualized as studying the beha-
vior of human choices. The serious study of the unconscious was
unknown in Adam Smith’s time, but now it is well known. This is odd
in the Age of Hyper-Advertising – much directed toward manipulating
the unconscious element of choice.
It is not being suggested that there have been no innovations. The use
of mathematics by economics has been long, for instance, and the
mathematization of economics has grown significantly. The use of
mathematics by economists significantly preceded the great neo-classical
economist Alfred Marshall, who wrote in his later years the prescription
“Burn the Mathematics!” Weintraub (2002, p. 261) characterizes the
mathematics for nineteenth-century economics honors students as a set
of “tricks and details, based on Newton, which were linked to applied
physics and mechanics…” The mathematization of economics has grown
especially during the past half-century. Weintraub (2002, p. 261) notes
that in recent years economists have debated the impact of the “sub-
stantial ratcheting upward of standards of mathematical sophistication
within the profession.”
The literature, of course, does contain criticisms of the mathematical
impulse and rigor. As an example, take Herbert Gintis (2009, p. xiii–xiv)
writing on game theory, which is described as the study of mathematical
models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent and rational
decision-makers. He characterizes as “manifestly absurd” the discipline’s
prevailing idea that game theorists can do social theory without regard
for the facts or any contributions from other social sciences. He goes on
to add that the game theory assumption that humans are rational is only
an “‘excellent first approximation,’” adding that the bounds of reason
are “not the irrational, but the social” (Gintis, 2009, p. xiv).
Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth, 2017) is an example of an
attempt to develop embedded economics. It quotes a 2014 letter stating
that the

teaching of economics is in crisis too, and this crisis has conse-

quences far beyond the university walls. What is taught shapes the
minds of the next generation of policymakers… We are dissatisfied
with the dramatic narrowing of the curriculum that has taken place
over the last couple of decades… It limits our ability to contend with
the challenges of the 21st century – from financial stability, to food
security and climate change .
(Raworth, 2017, p. 2)
98 Government-in-Context
It recommends a doughnut embedding of economics in an ecological
ceiling which includes nine elements, such as climate change, ozone layer
depletion, and biodiversity loss. She advocates seven changes. The first is
to change the goal from GDP, or national output, to meeting the human
rights of every person. The remainder include “to see the big picture, to
nurture human nature, and to be agnostic about growth.” Epistemic
pluralism is a better element of an aim to upgrade university teaching
and research against post-truth. But the aim should also include
attempts at Kate Raworth’s kind of thinking.
An aim for Economics should also include clarifying for students the
variety of the eleven schools (the Classical, Neoclassical, Marxist, Devel-
opmentalist, Austrian, Schumpeterian, Neo-Schumpeterian, Keynesian,
Institutionalist, Behaviorist, and Neuroeconomics) where three (the
Classical, the Austrian, and part of the Neoclassical) recommend such
policies as the free market. The aim should also include the significance
of robots for economic practice and thinking. A parallel aim should be
followed by other disciplines. And all disciplines (including economics)
should look forward to the relevance and implications when robots with
super-human capabilities replace (or supplement) humans.

Post-Truth Public Administration, Going Beyond

Again, the limitations discussed under the heading Post-truth Education
also apply here – relating to a single discipline, and history, and to the
development of robots.
For P.A., an aim for going beyond its own disciplinary limits should
include exploring the utility of epistemic pluralism within government
agency analyses. Waldo concluded both editions of his Administrative
State with the claim that “administrative thought must establish
a working relationship with every major province in the realm of
human learning” (Waldo, 1984, p. 203). For him the doctrines of public
administration constituted a political philosophy.
For P.A. and going beyond history, the claim should also include – as
discussed in this book – going beyond post-traditional public adminis-
tration. This would include going beyond the one-country limit that
occurs in much thinking in American public administration. Recall the
comment in Chapter 3 about the Police Commissioner Patrick
V. Murphy of the NYPD writing about the utility of a world perspective –
when many in the NYPD thought that there was nothing of utility in
a police department outside New York.
For P.A. and super-human robots, the aim should also include theore-
tical and practical advice – again, making use of epistemic pluralism –
for the Federal and for state and other governments. As time goes on,
my anticipation is that civil servants working within government will be
replaced by very smart robots.
 Government-in-Context 99
Post-Truth about Democracy
Post-truths about democracy are encouraged in individuals and in
groups by elements of society – by the history of our advertising, by
societal and individual beliefs, by emotions, by educational practices and
teaching, by parents and by shallow thinking. An aim should include
assessing and working toward reducing such mislearning. Should we aim
for Plato’s philosopher-kings?
Let’s confine ourselves to one comment from the book Unbridled
Democracy. Tollefson (2017, p. 3) writes that the U.S. “established
reason as the basis for its legal relations, that emphasis on reason
produced an idea of equality of treatment … But as the republic has
become more openly democratic, popular emotionalism has arisen and
with it an unwillingness to recognize any standard of superiority among
persons, either in talent, station, or character. Money is the only stan-
dard . . .”
(Dear reader, do you prefer this “philosophical” way of thinking, or
do you prefer “practical” or “concrete” statements from history, like the
following claim about punishment?) What effect would it have on
a spectator’s – or your – admiration for American democratic govern-
ment if told that the United States imprisons a quarter of the World’s
prisoners – or that it is one of the few civilized countries that executes
people?

Know More about Post-Truths: The Good Life

To know more about post-truth, it would help to contemplate elements
of the context of these five aims.
The limits of language do play a significant role in seminal develop-
ments in philosophy – a discipline which Wittgenstein (1958, p. 109) later
described as “a battleground against the bewitchment of our intelligence
by means of our language.” He describes “the limits of my language (as
meaning) the limits of my world” (1958, p. 109). Later, philosophers like
Derrida indicated the utility of deconstructing sub-texts and sub-subtexts
in language. How this affects P.A. has long interested me (e.g., see The
Language of Public Administration, 1995). And myth and post-truths
were discussed earlier in Chapter 6.
I suggest that, dear reader, you start thinking about each of these five
aims in terms of what (and I stress that religious meaning is neither
intended nor excluded) you would consider “the good life.” For Marcuse
(1991, pp. xiii, xxx), the

“containment of social change is perhaps the most singular achieve-

ment of advanced industrial society . . . Consumerism, advertising,
mass culture, and ideology have integrated people into a world of
100 Government-in-Context
happy consciousness and effectively destroyed the chances of what
can be called critical philosophy.”

Differently, Robert and Edward Skidelsky (2012, p. 92) describe Eco-

nomics as the theology of our age, the language of all interests –
respected in the halls of power. They argue that the

Anglo-American version of individualist capitalism is kept going

largely for the benefit of a predatory plutocracy, whose members
cream off the richest prizes while justifying their predation in the
language of freedom and globalization; the reality is well hidden
from public scrutiny, or even understanding.
(Skidelsky & Skidelsy, 2012, p. 181)

Indeed, what is the good life? All aims should include aiming for
eudaimonia, what Aristotle and others called the highest human good.

Summary
This chapter describes practical and theoretical plans for government-in-
context. At the practical level, it explains eighteen sets of aims for the triple
contexts of infiltration, exfiltration and post-truth. It is explained that the
procedural approaches and the sets of aims are drafted without basing it only
on the primacy of the “political” but they may be re-drafted (and re-re-
drafted) in the third stage at different times, with the understanding that
(regretfully) often arguments are frequently less important than politics – and
that (happily) arguments at other times can be more important than politics.
For infiltration, six sets of aims are indicated under these titles:

1. Resolve lobbying and election money nudges;

2. Resolve income tax and subsidies nudges;
3. Resolve globalization and crony capitalism nudges;
4. Resolve climate change (including CO2 control) and gun control nudges;
5. Resolve corporate welfare and Eisenhower’s military-industrial com-
plex nudges;
6. Know more about infiltration: a context-out-of-joint.

For exfiltration, six more sets of aims are listed:

7. Resolve the middle-income and university debt nudges;

8. Resolve the living wage, as well as minimum wage, nudges;
9. Resolve lack of health insurance for all (and effective pharmaceutical
insurance) nudge;
10. Reinstall the Mixed Market.
 Government-in-Context 101
11. Explore the future of BNR: biotechnology, nanotechnology, and
robotics;
12. Know more about exfiltration: economic defects.

For post-truth contemplation, six more sets of aims are discussed:

13. Correct post-truth political nudges, carefully;

14. Correct post-truth economic nudges;
15. Correct post-truth educational nudges;
16. Post-truth P.A., going beyond;
17. Correct Post-truth about democracy;
18. Know more about post-truth: the good life.

The sets of aims can function as counter-nudges against the nudges from
the infiltrators, exfiltrators, and perhaps even some of the post-truthers.
The eighteen sets of aims constitute a number of hammer blows, aiming
over time toward fundamental upgrading of government-in-context.

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8 Epilogue

Woodrow Wilson stressed the benefit that can come from using fearless
commonsense in evaluating the national political system, rather than
exhibiting the timidity and false pride in insisting that the governmental
system is “perfection” – such as implied in, say, the notion of American
exceptionalism. (Earlier, it was noted that it is not even exceptional for
major countries to believe in being exceptional. And, is it necessary that
an excellent or a good or an effective tennis player must be a perfect
tennis player? On the contrary, such thinking can be a disadvantage.)
Wilson (1885, p. 294) wrote

And the first step towards emancipation from the timidity and false
pride which have led us to seek to thrive despite the defects of our
national system, rather than seem to deny its perfection, is a fearless
criticism of that system. When we shall have examined all its parts
without sentiment, and gauged all its functions by the standards of
practical common sense, we shall have established anew our right to
the claim of political sagacity . . .

The quote from Wilson is taken from the last paragraph of his Congres-
sional Government: A Study in American Politics, a publication that
studies what he considers the essential machinery of governmental
power.
This constitutes an important claim for Wilson and for the project of
this book. As he repeated just before the quote above, using his decora-
tive nineteenth-century academic language: the

charm of our constitutional ideal has now been long enough wound
up to enable sober men who do not believe in political witchcraft to
judge what it has accomplished, and is likely still to accomplish,
without further winding. The Constitution is not honored by blind
worship.
(Wilson, 1885, p. 294)
104 Epilogue
It was written before he became President of Princeton University
(1902–1910), Governor of New Jersey (1911–1913), and then President
of the United States (1913–1921). Let us wind beyond. It was in the
same time period that Wilson, one of the founders of P.A., also wrote
his essay The Study of Administration. In his first paragraph (quoted
in the first paragraph of this book), he wrote “It is the object of
administrative study to discover, first what government can properly
and successfully do . . .” (Wilson, 1887). This is consistent with the
aim of this book.

P.A. Leadership
We have argued that public administration (P.A.) thinkers should take
the initiative in leading the fundamental upgrading of government-in-
context in terms of policy. If not, thinkers from other disciplines should
do so. Four stages are explained in Chapters 1 and 7 for the P.A. leaders.
The first is an individual stage intended for P.A. thinkers; later stages
utilize other disciplines’ thinkers. The second stage is to establish
P.A. macro full-time-specialists and active pro-government-in-context
alliances suggested with other disciplines including Public Policy and
then Economics and Political Science. Somewhat later is a third stage
combination of macro full-time-specialists with some Elected Officials.
A fourth stage is the creation of an Interdisciplinary (or Epistemic
Pluralist) Team to Enhance Democracy – at the University, and maybe
at a governmental, level. The team would include working toward
modifying the cul-de-sac system which now separates academic
disciplines.
P.A. thinkers should not limit themselves only to topics within tradi-
tional disciplinary boundary lines. It is practical for P.A. to offer leader-
ship in fundamentally upgrading government-in-context in terms not
only of administration but also of radically increasing its assistance
with policy. These stages are intended to help nudge the development of
that capability.
P.A. can lead and encourage contemplation of government-in-
context, especially nudges and mal-nudges from contextual features
impacting government. “Nudges” – mild pressures or prods – is
a term explained by Richard Thaler as associated with Behavioral
Economics. A nudge is a mild poke or a prod toward a choice, like
a mild or gentle poke in the ribs. In this book we have encouraged
heavier nudges like a shove or a hammer-blow. (Dear reader, don’t
you think that, if he were with us today, Woodrow Wilson – one of
the founders of public administration – could be talked into agreeing
with the plan of encouraging P.A. leadership to work toward
upgrading government-in context?)
 Epilogue 105
Upgrading Government-in-Context
P.A. thinkers should take the initiative in leading the fundamental
upgrading of government-in-context in terms of policy (Chapters 1 to
7). The leadership should utilize contemplation and hammer-blow
nudges against macro government-in-context (Chapters 4 to 6). It could
utilize contemplation and shove nudges against micro (or sub-macro)
aims of government-in-context (discussed in Chapter 7).

Hammer-blow Nudges
Government-in-context is introduced at the macro level by focusing on
three practical macro nudges – infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth.
The first macro context, infiltration, refers to the intrusion and squeezing
by big money and big corporations, their owners and billionaires. Two
features have combined in the past half-century. One is the on-going
enrichment of the rich. Another feature is the emergence of free-market
economics inspired by neoliberalism, starting in the 1970s. Big money
and big corporations constrain government by such means as the growth
of corporate lobbying, the involvement of money in elections, globaliza-
tion of economic activity, control of politicians through monetary and
other rewards, threats, and punishment.
The second macro context, exfiltration, refers to the financial losses
and agonies of the middle-income and the lower-income classes. It
concerns the meanings of the economic and political aspects, of poverty,
and of the future of work. It is also about P.A. specialists and others
exploring the meanings and relevance of cultural inequality – and for
democracy and government-in-context.
The third macro context, post-truth, yields mal-nudges in the context
of government. “Post-truth” was noted earlier as the Oxford Diction-
aries’ Word of the Year for 2016, and it suggests that we live in a post-
truth era (or an age of distraction). Myths are described as powerful
supports of capitalism, the entrepreneur, and the free market. It
describes nudges received by post-truths – when emotion and feeling
can be more influential than truth – and the source can include (say)
advertisements and texting. The evidence from neuroscience is discussed,
describing people more as “animals with opinions” rather than as people
who have thought through a hypothesis. Discussion of citizen context is
often too simple. One aspect of such post-truth is suggested in the Pew
Research Center (September 11, 2017) report on How People Approach
Facts and Information. The Center reported that 38 percent of those
counted are relatively engaged with information; that 13 percent are
relatively ambivalent about information; and 49 percent are wary of
information. That is 62 percent (if you believe the PEW information)
reported not to be relatively engaged with information. But, as we have
106 Epilogue
suggested, neuroscience offers the stronger idea that all of us (including
those relatively engaged with information) are heavily engaged in post-
truth. (Dear reader – another project for your spare time, recognizing
one-time distinguished P.A. theorist Hebert Simon. Consider his impor-
tant concepts for economics (in his Models of Man, Simon, 1957) of
bounded rationality and satisficing. And, if he were still with us,
wouldn’t he have applauded conversation about post-truth?)

Nudges: At Least at the Shove Level

Government-in-context is discussed at the micro level in terms of 18 sets
of policy aims for the tripled macro context infiltration, exfiltration and
post-truth. The focus is intended to be upgrading the democracy in our
government. (Also, dear reader. You may think that – although the
policy aims are micro compared with the three macro contents – they
may seem to be quite big deals to be called micro. You may prefer
another term like “sub-macro.” They are indeed shoves or hammer
blows.)
Let’s recall what the sets of policy aims were intended to correct. For
infiltration, six sets of aims are indicated under these titles:

1. Resolve lobbying and election money nudges;

2. Resolve income tax and subsidies nudges;
3. Resolve globalization and crony capitalism nudges;
4. Resolve climate change (including “carbon dioxide” control) and
gun control nudges;
5. Resolve corporate welfare and Eisenhower’s military-industrial com-
plex nudges;
6. and know more about infiltration: a context-out-of-joint.

For exfiltration, six more sets of aims are listed:

7. Resolve the middle-income and university debt nudges;

8. Resolve the living wage, as well as minimum wage, nudges;
9. Resolve lack of health insurance for all (and effective pharmaceutical
insurance) nudges;
10. Reinstall the Mixed Market;
11. Explore the future of BNR: biotechnology, nanotechnology, and
robotics;
12. and know more about exfiltration: economic defects.

For post-truth contemplation, six more sets of aims are discussed:

13. Correct post-truth political nudges, carefully;

14. Correct post-truth economic nudge;
 Epilogue 107
15. Correct post-truth educational nudge;
16. Post-truth P.A nudge, going beyond;
17. Correct post-truth about democracy nudge;
18. and know more about post-truth: the good life.

Governmentality and Contemplation

The meanings of government-in-context, contemplation and nudges were
indicated.
Government – and government-in-context – is a social construction,
and P.A. thinkers are urged to take a bigger part in helping to under-
stand its meaning. What can be interpreted as nudges are explored from
Ayn Rand and Michel Foucault. Ayn Rand and her followers argue for
the social construction of minimal government; they are opposed to Big
Government. Michel Foucault understands governmentality as related to
power, thinking not only of top-down state power. He explains what he
called “the conduct of conduct.” Foucault’s governmentality developed
as governing relationships between self and self, self and family, and
relations with others – understanding technologies of the self as techni-
ques that allowed control over one’s own body, mind, soul, and lifestyle.
Neither Political Science nor economics (nor any discipline) has
exclusive mastery over its own subject area, as the repeated examples of
epistemic pluralism have indicated. Focusing on three contexts – infiltra-
tion, exfiltration, and post-truth – differs from discussions that focus
only on economic analysis
“The man of system . . . is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and
is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own plan of
government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from it”
(Adam Smith, 1759).
This large corrective task needs the guidance and leadership involve-
ment not only of Traditional P.A. but also of Post-traditional public
administration, “going beyond” to address the issues of government-in-
context. P.A. thinkers will be especially helpful in thinking out of the box
to achieve the cooperation of others and of appropriate sets of policy
aims. Post-traditional public administration is needed as discussed in
earlier chapters, incorporating what has been explained as imaginization,
epistemic pluralism, and either postmodernism or poststructuralism.
Post-traditional thinking/feeling does indeed aim for open and fresh
consciousness. This consciousness is constituted by play that privileges
the human and that is sensitive to context. Thinking as playing is indeed
an escape route out of the doldrums of traditional governance. The
consciousness is also stimulated by justice (ethics) as seeking and by
practice as art. Justice as seeking seeks insights from open-endedness in
traditional wisdom and, routinely, from other cultural traditions. Prac-
tice as art pursues ways of including the commonsense but not
108 Epilogue
permitting the routine to dominate. Adam Smith, a founding thinker of
the modern economy, seems right about the traditional. Post-traditional
P.A. should not be expected to fall into the trap of acting merely
traditionally.

Evaluating the Shove Level Policy Aims

Attached is a sheet on which you are asked to record your four most
favored micro level sets of policy aims – choosing among the 18
suggested in Chapter 7, from the five extra examples that follow, and
from any others that occur to you.
It is requested that you then prepare a letter recommending your
choices to a politician, and ask for his or her response to your views.
The politician could be your home area’s member of the House of
Representatives or the Senator – or, if you wish, the President. Or, it
could be a candidate for one of these positions. You may (or may not)
enjoy the response you receive – and, in the best of all worlds – it might
stimulate your thinking.
Beyond the 18 discussed in Chapter 7 and listed earlier, here are five more
suggested possibilities. One is titled Unions and the Future of Gig Work
(which will be discussed here) and the others (which will not be discussed
here) are Abolish the Electoral College System in the Counting of Votes,
Establish a System for Policing Crime on the Internet, Limit T.V. and other
Advertisements, and Regulate Texting. Let’s begin with the first option:

Unions and the Future of Gig Work

Shouldn’t we work toward reviving reformed unionism – unions helpful
for the future of gig work and technology?
Gig work and technology, both discussed in Chapter 5, seem to be
facts of work life for an increasing and sizeable number. The Gig
economy, you will recall, is a system of temporary positions and where
organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engage-
ments. Work can be done from a home office with the aid of the internet,
and it may have appeal for the younger workers like millennials who
probably are increasingly mobile and increasingly familiar with the use
of their cell phones and the internet. The images of such work are
activities like UBER drivers (launched in 2009), but it has extended far
beyond to other activities like walking the pet dog or cleaning the
apartment, etc. The aim in this section should include benefiting Gig
workers with a national health service (when it is available for all
citizens), unemployment insurance (perhaps at a significantly lower rate
than is available for full-time employees), and/or Universal Basic Income
(UBI) as a way to control Gig poverty. It should also include considering
 Epilogue 109
recognizing an employment category between employees and indepen-
dent contractors.
Technology will be changing the work place significantly as time pro-
gresses, just as the car, the telephone, and other devices in olden days have
changed work. Technology will transform the work procedures and the
work place, in such areas as the internet – as smart machines get even
smarter and as users of computers and cell phones (from millennials, then
to post-millennials, and then to post-post-millennials) get ever more adept.
The aim of this section should include analyzing how these technological
procedures should be designed, especially in the area of government-in-
context. But the aim should also go farther, recognizing the limits of
technology. Here are two limits from Sarah Kessler and Martin Rees.
Kessler asked, “In the United States, 1.8 million people make a living
driving trucks; another 687,000 drive buses; another 1.4 million deliver
packages; and another 305,000 work as taxi drivers and chauffeurs. What
will they do when vehicles drive themselves?” Rees in his 2003 book Our
Final Century, the British Astronomer Royal, wrote that “Our odds are no
better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization . . . will survive to the end
of the present century . . . unless all nations adopt low risk and sustainable
policies based on present technology” (Rees, 2003, p. 8).

Honest Graft v. Dishonest Graft

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) was a well-known politician who
practiced what he called “honest graft,” often nowadays called “machine
politics.” Belonging to the Tammany Hall political machine, Plunkitt was
a member of the New York Senate and of the New York State Assembly for
many years. Honest graft, for Plunkitt, is when the graft is – like machine
politics – for his party, his state and him: dishonest graft is when the graft is
solely for him. His main method was buying pieces of land when he knew
that they would be needed for public projects, and then reselling them at
inflated prices. The act was dishonest, in his view, if it was done only for his
own benefit. “Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tammany men growin’
rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest
graft and dishonest graft” (Riordon, 1995, p. 3). Yes, they should not think
about such a distinction.
Upgrading government-in-context is neither simple nor easy; but it
can be done – eventually. The infiltration, exfiltration and post-truth can
be treated for the cancers they are. However, mal-nudges have long been
a problem, involving regrettable behavior by powerfully rich business
persons and powerful political persons. The discontent is neither only the
fault of the entrepreneur nor only the fault of the politician: typically, it
is the fault of both. However, it is unreasonable for many of the rich
entrepreneurs to enrich themselves so much, just as it is unreasonable for
many of the politicians to enrich themselves and their machines so
110 Epilogue
much – to the detriment of democracy and citizenry. Let’s encourage
P.A. to provide leadership to upgrade government-in-context.

Summary
This chapter started with Woodrow Wilson’s opposition to the view that
the national governmental system is perfection and his support of the
view that the first object of administrative study is what government can
properly and successfully do. Upgrading government-in-context is
neither simple nor easy; but it can be done – eventually. This chapter
recaps the macro-level features of infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth
and recalls the nudges recommended. Readers are given guidance for
a policy exercise about suggested policy aims, involving correspondence
with a politician. The chapter ends with George Washington Plunkitt’s
unfortunate distinction between “honest graft” (similar to today’s
“machine graft”) and dishonest graft. The chapter concludes by saying
that it is unreasonable for so many of the rich entrepreneurs to enrich
themselves so much, just as it is unreasonable for many of the politicians
to enrich themselves and their machines so much – to the detriment of
democracy and citizenry. Let’s turn towards encouraging P.A. to provide
leadership to achieve fundamental upgrading of government-in-context!

References
Pew Research Center. (September 11, 2017). How People Approach Facts and
Information. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
Rees, M. (2003). Our Final Century. London: William Heinemann/Random House.
Riordon, W. (1995). Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. New York: New American
Library.
Simon, H. (1957). Models of Man. New York: Wiley.
Smith, A. (1759). Theory of Moral Sentiments. London: Andrew Miller.
Wilson, W. (1885). Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics. The
New Englander, 45 (192): 294.
Wilson, W. (1887). The Study of Administration. Political Science Quarterly, 2
(2): 197–222. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
 Epilogue 111
Notes for Draft of Letter to Politician

Titles of Policy Aims Considered Most Important

1.
2.
3.
4.

Notes for Reasons for Support of Title 1.

a.
b.

Notes for Reasons for Support of Title 2.

a.
b.

Notes for Reasons for Support of Title 3.

a.
b.

Notes for Reasons for Support of Title 4

a.
b.

Name and Address of Politician

Index
the 1 percent 43, 46, 51, 54
9/11 National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks on the United
States 10
10 Ways 85–86
ABM see American Business
Model
administration, post-truth 98
adverts 62
age of distraction 67
aims of nudging 80–81
alterity 34
altruism 19, 92
American Business Model (ABM) 17,
19–20, 70
American exceptionalism 68–70, 103
Appiah, K.A. 38
aristocracy of monied corporations
42–43
Aristotle 29, 32, 53, 71
artificial persons 45
A-theory of time 31–32
Atlas Shrugged 17
automation 58–60, 90
Backhouse, R.E. 25, 70–71
Badiou, A. 67
Barber, B.R. 23
battle moves of Powell Memorandum
49–50
behavioral economics 7–8, 39
Behavioral Insights Team, UK 6
biopolitics 92
biotechnology, nanotechnology,
and robotics (BNR)
59–60, 90
B-theory of time 31–32
Burton, R. 67–68
businesses see corporations
calligraphic contemplation 30
capitalism 23; crony 54–55, 82–83;
defects 91–92; and democracy 72;
economic history 95–96; legitimacy
of 69
Capitalism and Freedom 8
Capital in the Twenty-First Century 95
carbon dioxide control 83–84
Chang, H. 94–95
Chicago School 27–28, 46–48, 70
Chosen Nation, myth of 69–70
Christian Nation, myth of 69–70
Citizens United case 45
climate change 83–87
collectivities 2–3
commmoditization of labor 92
complexity 11
conduct of conduct 20
Contemplating Bureaucracies 36–37
Contemplating Cops: A Tale of
Identities 35–36
contemplation 1, 27–41; concepts
28–38; as deep thinking 29–30;
deterritorialization 34–35;
governmentality 107–108; and
identity 38–39; meaning of nudges
6–7; of nudges & government in
context 7–9; of nudges 5–9, 39;
philosophical 28–32; of the practical
35–38; silent lessons 30; of the
theoretical 32–35
corporate welfare 84
corporations: aims of 23; aristocracy of
42–43; enthronement 43–46;
infiltration 42–52, 80–81, 85–86;

lobbying 45–46, 55, 61, 81; meaning
from 48–50; nudging 42–46; rights
and freedoms 45, 50–51; social
responsibility 8
Corrections Corporation of
America 55
cost of Senate seats 45, 81
creativity 10
Creel, R.E. 30
critical thinking 30
crony capitalism 54–55, 82–83
cultural inequality 60–63
decision-making 67–68
deconstruction 33–35
deep thinking 29–30
defects, economic 91–92
democracy: meaning of 24–25; myths
71–74; post-truth 99
de-regulation 43–46
Derrida, J. 21, 33–34, 85–86
Desmond, M. 58
deterritorialization 34–35
Doughnut Economics 97–98
economic history 95–96
Economics 47
economics: defects 91–92;
deterritorialization 34–35; education
60–61; embedded 97–98; exfiltration
53–57, 91–92; mathematization
97–98; meaning from 46–48;
meaning of 23–24; myths 70–71;
post-truth 93–96
Economics: The User’s Guide 95
economy: Foucault 20, 22; mixed 90;
two-tier 9, 56–60
education: of economics 60–61;
post-truth 96–98
efficiency 8, 44
Ehrenreich, B. 57–58
Einstein, A. 3
Eisenhower, D.D. 55, 84
election financing 45, 81
embedded economics 97–98
enthronement of corporations 43–46
entrepreneurs, myths of 70–71
epistemic pluralism 12–13, 33–35,
62–63, 95–96
epistemiology 28–29
ethics, Rand 19
euthunai 72
evictions 58
Index 113
exceptionalism 68
exfiltration 4, 53–65; cultural inequality
60–63; economic defects 91–92;
economic/political aspects 53–57;
future of work 58–60; nudging
86–87, 91–92; poverty 57–58
expressive rationality 91
Fair Labor Standards Act 89
Federal Election Campaign Act
(1971) 46
finance, technology, electronics (FTE)
sector 56
Fogel, R. 50–51
formation of teams 12–13
Foucault, M. 16, 20–22, 92
Fountainhead, The 17, 19
fourth stage of leadership 12–13
Franklin, U. 59–60
freedoms of corporations 45, 50–51
Friedman, M. 8
FTE sector see finance, technology,
electronics sector
future of work 58–60, 90, 108–109
game theory 97
gig economy 59, 108–109
Gintis, H. 97
global capitalism 43–46, 82–83
goals: of business 23; of democracy
24–25; of economics 23–24; of
government-in-context 25; of the rat
race 24
good life 24, 99–100
government: constraint by
corporations 43–46; meaning of 2–4;
social construction 16–22
governmental context 4–5
governmentality 20–22, 92, 107–108
government-in-context 1–9;
contemplation of 35–38; meaning of
25; nature and meaning of 2–5;
nudging 5–9, 76–102; upgrading
105–108
Grant, U.S. 45
Grassby, R. 96
Greek democracy 71–72
Guilded Age 44
gun control 83–87
Hayek, F. 46
health insurance 89
Heap, S. 91
114 Index
Heilbroner, R. 96 living wages 87–89
honest graft 109 lobbying 45–46, 55, 61, 81
Hughes, R. 68–70 Lockheed, lobbying 55
hyper-specialization 13 Luddites 59
hypertranslation 67
McClosky, D. 95
identity 38–39 macro-level nudges 105–106
imaginization 10, 33–34 macro practitioners 11–13
incarceration 55 McTaggart’s paradox 31
income distribution 25, 43, 51, 54, Madison, J. 82
56–58, 81–83, 87–89 Marcuse, H. 93, 99–100
indebtedness 87 market fundamentalism 19
Individual Plan 9–11 Marshall, A. 97
inequality 43, 46, 51, 54, 56–63; mass incarceration 55
the 1 percent 43, 46, 51, 54; cultural meaning 22–25; of business 23; from
60–63; of incomes 25, 43, 51, 54, business community 48–50; and
56–58, 81–83, 87–89; nudging 81–83; cultural inequality 60–63; of
of taxation 46, 81–83 democracy 24–25; of economics
infantilization 23 23–24; from economists 46–48; of
infiltration 4, 42–52; context-out-of- government-in-context 25; of
joint 85–86; economics 46–48; meaning 50–51; of poverty 57–58; of
lobbying 45–46; nudging 80–81; the rat race 24
Powell Memorandum 48–50; rights metaphysics 29
and freedoms 50–51 micro-level nudges 106–108
Innocent Nation, myth of 69 micro level policy aims 108–109
Institution on Taxation and Economic middle class, shrinking of 56–57, 87–90
Policy 83–84 Millennial Nation 69
insurance 89 minimal government 17–20
interdisciplinary teams 12–13 minimum wages 88–89
interpretation of interpretation 21 mixed economies 47, 90
invisible hand 10, 46, 91–92 Mollen Commission 36
morality, Rand 19
Jefferson, T. 42–43 myths 8, 68–74
justice: deconstruction as 34; as
seeking 10 National Council on Economic
Education (NCEE) 60–61
Kasparov, G. 33 national myths 68–71
Kay, J. 19–20 Nature’s Nation, myth of 68–69
Kennedy, J.F. 66 NCEE see National Council on
Keynes, J.M. 46, 47–48 Economic Education
knowledge, and post-truth 67–68 neoclassical economics 46–48
Korten, D.C. 24, 62 neoliberalism 43–46, 46–48, 54
Krugman, P. 92 neuroscience and post-truth 67
Kuttner, R. 82 new rhetoric 95
New York City Police Department 36
labor, as a commodity 92 Nixon, R. 48
Lahav, R. 29–30 Nordhaus, W. 47
leadership: concepts 1; first stage 9–11; Nudge Unit, UK 6
fourth stage 12–13; initiative 104; nudging 1; aims 80–81; by corporations
second stage 11; third stage 12 42–46; climate change 83–87;
Lectio Divina 30 contemplation of 7–9; cultural
Lies That Bind, The 38 inequality 60–63; democracy 71–74;
Lincoln, A. 43, 80 economic theory 91–92; exfiltration
 Index 115
53–57, 86–87, 91–92; future of work public administration see leadership
58–60; government-in-context purchasing power 54
76–102; health insurance 89;
indebtedness 87–91; infiltration Rand, A. 16–20
80–81, 85–86; living wages 87–89; rationality 18–19
lobbying 45–46; macro-level rational man assumption 91–92
105–106; and meaning 22–25; the rat race 24
meaning of meaning 50–51; Raworth, K. 97–98
micro-level 106–108; myths reflection: on government-in context
68–74; post-truth 67–68, 92–100; 2–5; on meaning of nudging 6–7; on
post-truths 92–100; poverty, nudging and government in context
meaning of 57–58; practical plans 7–9; see also contemplation
76–102; reflection on meaning 6–7; regulation, reduction of 43–46
stages 79–80; taxation and subsidies Reich, R. 61
81–83 renters 58
revolving doors 45
Objectivism 18–19 rhizome model 13
One-Dimensional Man 93 rights of corporations 45, 50–51
organizational economy 2–3 Roaring Twenties 44
robotry 58–60, 90
Pew Research Center 54, 56–57 Roosevelt, T. 43
pharmaceutical insurance 89 Rovelli, C. 11
philosophical contemplation 28–32
Piketty, T. 95 Samuelson, P.A. 47
Plato 29 satisficing 3, 28, 91
Plunkitt, G.W. 109 Save More Tomorrow Plan 7
pluralism, epistemic 12–13, 62–63, SBST see Social and Behavioral
95–96 Sciences Team
poetry 11 schools of economics 27–28, 47–48
police departments 35–36 Schumpeter, J. 34, 70
policy aims 108–109 Seiter, D.M. 61
political donations 45–46 self-interest 19
political economy 21–22, 44–46, 61 Shapiro, M. 91
political post-truth 93 shrinking of middle class 56–57
postmodernism 11–13, 33–35, 50–51 silent lessons 30
poststructuralism 21 Simon, H. 2–3, 8, 91
post-traditional governance 10–11, Skidelsky, R. & E. 23, 99–100
33–38 Soccio, D.J. 30
post-truth 5, 66–75; administration Social and Behavioral Sciences Team
98; democracy 71–74, 99; (SBST) 6
economics 93–96; education social construction 16–22; advertising
96–98; the good life 99–100; myths 62; Foucault 20–22; Rand 17–20
68–74; nudging 67–68, 92–100; social lobbying 45
politics 93 Socratic method 31
poverty 57–58 SOL see standards of learning
Powell Memorandum 48–50, 70 Son of Virginia 37
power, Foucault 20–21 spacetime 3, 31–32
practice: as art 10; contemplation of spiritual resources 50–51
practicalities 35–38; standards of learning (SOL) 60–61
deterritorialization 34–35; Stiglitz, J.E. 51
post-traditional 33–38 Study of Administration, The 1
prisons 55 subsidies 81–82
propaganda 62 symbolic interactionism 95
116 Index
Tale of Identities 36 tyranny of the majority 71–72
Tales from the Field 3/4 37
taxation: Chicago School 47; and Ullman, E. 59–60
minimal government 18, 19; uncertainty 67–68
nudging 81–83; of the super-rich 46, unemployment compensation 89
81–83 unions 108–109
tax havens 83–84 university debt 87
Taylor, C. 38–39
team formation 12–13 wage disparity 25, 43, 51, 54, 56–58,
technological rationality 93 81–83, 87–89
television 62 Ward, S.C. 45
Temin, P. 55, 56 Wasserman, H. 48
Thaler, R. 7 wealth ownership 43, 82–83
Things They Don’t Tell You About weapons contractors 83–87
Capitalism 94–95 Weintraub, E.B. 97
thinking: as play 10–11; see also Whitehead, A.N. 67
contemplation white supremacy 69–70
third stage of leadership 12 Wilder, L.D. 37
Tillman Act (1907) 45 Willard Hotel 45
time, theories of 31–32 Wilson, E.O. 13, 59, 74,
Tollefson, G.L. 71–72 103–104
top 1 percent of income 43, 46, Wilson, W. 1
51, 54 Wittgenstein 2, 99
truth: Foucault 22; see also Woodruff, P. 72–74
post-truth work: future of 58–60, 90, 108–109;
Truth About Markets, The 19–20 living wages 87–89; see also wage
tuition fees 87 disparity
two-tier economies 9, 56–60