Replies to post #124919 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[brightness]

A new government department is a necessity every few generations in a "meritocratic" bureaucracy. After a few generations, a governmental department simply gets too clogged up by career place holders to get much of anything done. That's why there is a national security advisor, which duplicates the job of State Department, a communications director duplicating the spokesperson, etc.etc.; CIA and FBI having been in existence for about half a century now, it's simply politically more convenient to organize a new department instead of going through a mass firing of both departments in the aftermath of 9-11.

It's not a new phenomenom. British Empire went all the way to MI6 (with five different instantiations before it) before the empire collapsed. Ancient Persians, Egyptians, Romans and Chinese all had similar experience with massive government super-structure, in the past few thousands years. No reason to expect change.

[brightness]

As for your silly comments on FEMA, they are immature and you can do better.

Not sure what you meant by that. If you want instantaneous reponse from FEMA, you need hundreds of thousands if not millions or tens of millions of agents to take care of everyone else. Don't think that's entirely out of realms of imagination. East Germany was really keen on prevent subersion of government, so eventually its intelligence agency had fully one quarter of the entire population, or some 5 million out of a population of 20 million, on its payroll spying on each other. It's all about priorities.