The system isn’t broken — it’s working as exactly intended

One of the key faults of conservative political analysis has been its focus on stated goals instead of true purpose revealed through actions.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, recently declared on X (formerly Twitter): “Mass migration has failed.”

“Oh no my friend,” I quickly replied, “it has succeeded at its actual goal.”

Kirk is correct that mass migration has been a disaster for citizens of the countries that have implemented it. Crime has increased, real wages have fallen or stagnated, housing prices have skyrocketed, and social cohesion has collapsed. The promise that these populations would assimilate while increasing economic prosperity and solving a demographic crisis rings hollow. But this was never the real purpose of mass migration, and attempting to judge success or failure by the stated goal of the policy is a mistake.

The interests of the ruling classes in the West have radically diverged from the people of those nations, and this means it is far more useful to understand the real goals of our elites than it is to listen to their hollow words.

Americans have been taught that we live in an “enlightened age of reason.” Conservatives believe that everyone in America has the general well-being of the nation in mind, so facts, statistics, and logical argumentation in the marketplace of ideas will produce the best result through the democratic process.

It should be obvious at this point that this is not the case.

We are ruled by increasingly inept, decadent, and out-of-touch elites who have shielded themselves from the consequences of their decision-making on behalf of the nation.

While conservatives make arguments hoping to sway popular opinion, the left takes control of the institutions that actually manufacture that opinion and implement policies that will permanently transform the nation in a way that generates an electoral advantage in perpetuity. As long as conservatives debate instead of act, the borders stay open and mass immigration continues. The stated goal was always asinine, but that hardly matters. As long as the right is arguing with the stated goal instead of stopping the real purpose of the policy, the left wins.

This disconnect between stated purpose and actual goal can be observed in almost every institution in the United States. Public education claims to be about helping students learn to read, write, do math, and think critically, but our schools are objectively terrible at this. What public schools are very good at doing is inundating children with radical leftist ideology on topics like gender, race, and sexuality. The schools have not failed; they have excelled at their true task. Our elites care far more about someone doing a racism then an entire generation failing to learn to read, and those preferences are reflected in the focus of our education system.

The same can be seen in institutions like the United States military. The purpose of any military, since time began, is first and foremost the defense of its nation’s borders. Conquest or peacekeeping are nice, but the most basic reason to organize a military in the first place is to defend the nation from people who are not supposed to cross into it. War-hawk politicians from both parties always seem to have a reason to keep the American military deployed, but the one place the armed forces are never allowed to protect is the southern border of the United States.

Congress will funnel untold billions of dollars to defend the borders of Ukraine, the president will deploy carrier groups to defend Israel, but the invasion at the southern border continues. Our ruling class could use the military to end the invasion of the country tomorrow, but despite the stated purpose of the armed forces, that is not their real goal. Instead, money and personnel are directed to the real priorities.

If the stated goal and true purpose of our major institutions have radically diverged, then it is vital to learn what caused this split. Institutions are central to the maintenance of any civilization once it reaches a certain size; the larger and more complex a society becomes, the more it relies on institutions that can care for the needs of the people and perpetuate their way of life.

Most of our institutions retain credibility because they were founded explicitly with the purpose of protecting the populace or improving their lives. So why have they stopped doing that? What we are observing is a problem of scaling civilization beyond its natural limits. The global village is a disastrous vision for social organization. So is importing the world into the United States and expecting that public schools and television will transform everyone into a cohesive polity.

Ideology is nice in the abstract, but the question of who acts is critical. People who do not feel the weight of their decisions will become out of touch, making lazy and poorly informed choices. They are also very likely to take actions that benefit themselves at the cost of the institutions they operate or the people they serve.

If you see the faces of the people you are supposed to work for every day, if your family lives in the neighborhood you are supposed to protect, you are far more likely to do your job well. If instead the mission of your institution is something abstract, serving a class of people you never interact with or neighborhoods you never see, it is much easier to turn the power you wield inside that organization to your own benefit.

The disconnect between the actor and the person or group who actually bears the cost of the action is called the principal-agent problem. Anyone who has ever worked in a large bureaucratic organization could recognize this phenomenon immediately. The stated goal of a company may be serving the customer and making money, but the different managers and functionaries in that organization are far more interested in their own power and prestige. This often leads them to make decisions on behalf of the company that have nothing to do with customers or profit, but only serve their personal needs or their faction inside the organization. This can only occur because the company has become so large and complex that a portion of its resources can be redirected to the abstract squabbles of managers without collapsing the entire business.

America’s founders understood this and implemented federalism to mitigate some of the problems that scaling civilization represents. By locating as many political decisions as close to the people that they impact as possible, you reduce the chance that the agents will be completely unimpacted by the choices they make.

Politicians are less likely to bulldoze a community for profit or let illegal aliens sleep in the streets if their kids play in that neighborhood. But the war against federalism has been relentless, the 10th Amendment has been dead for a very long time, and the phrase “states' rights” has become a punchline. The U.S. government has exploded in size and justified centralization at every opportunity. Local governments and private institutions are held hostage by centralized funding and bureaucratic regulation, ensuring that real decisions are made in Washington, D.C., not in the heartland.

People often ask me how our elites became so unhinged that they would risk killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is easy to see why bureaucrats would act in their own interest, but why would they enact policies that are actively malicious? Do they not realize that if they destroy the country as it is now, they can no longer benefit from the resources they are currently siphoning to themselves?

No, they do not.

People, especially intelligent people who think all important knowledge is contained in their field of expertise, are terrible at understanding second- or third-order effects. Bureaucrats sitting at the top of a system always think that they understand how a system works, even though they are very far away from crucial parts of the infrastructure that they are slowly eroding. For someone designing woke educational policy or lax immigration law in Washington, D.C., the power has always come on, planes have always landed, groceries have always been delivered, and they always will be.

The ruling class is free to pursue polices that serve only their ends because the plebes have always kept the country running and they always will. So what if they cannot buy a home, or have kids, or are dying deaths of despair? The elites do not have to see any of that; they do not live in flyover country. Just replace the plebes with immigrants. One drone is as good as the next, right?

Many would like to imagine a large cabal working to destroy the United States. Do not misunderstand: There are those who conspire against the nation. But much of what is now happening can be attributed to the forces that have mortally wounded most great empires throughout history.

We are ruled by increasingly inept, decadent, and out-of-touch elites who have shielded themselves from the consequences of their decision-making on behalf of the nation. Our institutions have grown bloated and sclerotic, far more interested in internal political struggles than the populace they were designed to serve.

Until decisions are placed back in the hands of those who will feel the sting of failure and the thrill of success, our institutions will continue to pursue their own perverse power and ignore the well-being of the people.