The Discreet Reverse Darwinism Of The Bureaucracy

Plum Island Animal Disease Center Building 257

"Reverse Darwinism" suggests a survival of the stupidest or most incompetent. I think there may be a corollary to this law, something along the lines of reverse darwinism leading to enormous and unwieldy bureaucracies along the lines of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security...such a typical American response: let's pretend that if we smoosh a whole bunch of agencies together that we shall (1) achieve enormous economies of scale, and (2) communications miraculously will occur between the new areas of this mega- department, and (3) it will be vastly more efficient...neglecting the fact that we have not yet defined what "efficiency" is for the behemoth.

I call this attitude "Czarism". It is another expression of the desire for "czars": drugs czars to head the War on Drugs, for one example. Czarism is an off-shoot of Manhattan-Project-itis, which is the attitude that if one suspends free markets and throws a lot of money at something, good results are guaranteed. Of course, from where this guarantee comes is not defined. Anyway here goes: Assuming one has a foot-and-mouth disease ( disease of cattle) laboratory, is it safer to have it located in (1) an isolated island? or (2) on the mainland in proximity to other cattle? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/11/bush-admin-wants-to-move_n_96203.html