OPINION:

The longer I have been involved in government and public policy, the more I have been convinced that the current system is permanently broken. It must be profoundly rethought and replaced, not reformed.

Modern government has been growing more distant from the people since at least the emergence of the civil service movement in the 1870s and 1880s. This has been an ongoing diversion of power from the people to the professional classes. Those professionals form guilds that entrench their authority and establish rules that protect them from …