Commenting on my writing, someone recently asked in a facetious way, “Why don’t you tell us how you really feel about the bureaucracy?” Well, here it is.
I have no tolerance for the slavish words of praise we hear some fishermen lay on fishery managers, and cringe when industry representatives prostrate themselves in front of imperious commissioners who have just slammed them, in the pitiful hope that they will go easier next time. So, no! I am not going to cheer regulators for their service to our industry, and I am not going to thank highly paid bureaucrats for their tireless work in fishery management. I do, however, want to clarify my attitude towards the individuals in government, who have unfortunately become our adversaries, instead of our advocates.
To paraphrase the writer, bureaucrats are just like you and me, except they have more power. With only a couple of notable exceptions, the people I’ve had contact with in the fishing bureaucracy, have been polite, informative, hard working, and dedicated. By and large, they see themselves as helping to preserve the ocean environment, and have no conscious desire to hurt the commercial fishing industry. Most however, truly believe that the suppression of individualism, and complete government control of fishermen, is necessary for effective management – though I have run across a few closet conservatives, and suspect there may be a lot more who simply fear to speak out.
Some are smart and perceptive, others brilliant or dumb, and some just don’t want to be bothered. Some are personable and friendly, some are irritating, and some are insufferable – just like fishermen. I’ve had many private conversations with bureaucrats that were both enlightening and interesting.
Most, I think, are convinced that government knows best, but still wish to understand the fisherman’s side. In other words, bureaucrats as human beings, mirror the general population, and as with politicians, it is much easier to dislike them, if you don’t know them personally.
So, if they are such great human beings, why do I speak so disparagingly of bureaucrats, and so disdainfully of the bureaucracy they operate. Well, as I was once told by the chairman of a fishery commission after he unexpectedly voted against us: don’t take it personally. Even as they maintain that it’s not personal when they further restrict our ability to earn a living, so we must not hesitate to fight overreaching bureaucratic power just because some nice person might feel offended. Between the two sides, we in commercial fishing have the far greater claim to offense, since we are the only ones who are losing something.
Of course, just saying it’s not personal, does not make it so. Personally, I am highly offended when unelected public officials – whose own jobs are secure, and paychecks guaranteed – arbitrarily cut my income, and pass heavy-handed regulations that can make criminals out of people who are merely trying to earn a living for their families. Even more personal to those of us who believe that individual freedoms are the foundation of our democratic system, is the bureaucracy’s imperious assumption of power. Our Constitution never proscribed a permanent, ruling class of government employees, yet we are presided over by just such a group.
To those of us in business, the astounding inefficiency of the bureaucratic system that governs us seems incomprehensible…. There is always another approval that’s needed. There’s always some other person we need to talk to. There’s always one more form to fill out. There’s always one little wrong step we took. Someone is out of the office, and will call back. Someone is on vacation. Someone told us the wrong procedure to follow…..The frustration of finding our way through such a maize of paperwork and approvals, has us believing that the system is broken, and screaming out, “Somebody please make a decision!”
In actual fact, the bureaucratic system itself is not broken. That’s the way bureaucracies function – inefficiently. Each form that must be filled out, and each approval that must be received, represents someone’s personal area of control. Generally speaking, power is shared within the bureaucracy, and so that no one’s toes are stepped on, multiple approvals must be obtained before a decision can be reached. A single objection by anyone, can delay a decision indefinitely, and leave fishermen feeling as if they are running in circles.
What is broken, however, is the rule making procedure itself. It is supposed to be a participatory process, in which the experience and knowledge of the fishing industry is combined with the rule making expertise of bureaucrats. In reality, fishermen are viewed as the untrustworthy vested interest, and frozen out of any effective input by cleverly building an extremely complex bureaucratic structure.
If the everyday functioning of the bureaucracy is a frustrating mystery to fishermen, then the public regulatory process is an absolute enigma. The average fisherman, and the average spokesperson, is hopelessly lost in the winding, constantly diverging path to a final rule, and has virtually no chance of influencing the final outcome. The agenda is pre-set, and the outcomes pre-determined. Except for a handful of sharp industry representatives, none of us have the expertise to actually work within the system.
Fishery management is the bureaucracy’s game, and when it comes to regulations, and the public process, they play only hard ball. Fishermen can never understand the rulebook, because they don’t even speak the language. Bureaucratese is an insider’s parlance that fishermen can never learn. It is a bewildering conglomeration of scientific phrases, politically correct words, acronyms, pseudo-legal terms, nouns twisted into verbs, paragraph length sentences, and plain old intellectual puff words that are intended to impress or confuse.
To make matters worse, the language is constantly changing, and only those inside the loop know when it’s happening. While we’re talking about Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQ), they start calling them Catch Shares (CS), but are now switching to the more properly Orwellian, Limited Access Privilege Programs(LAPPs). We were still saying No Fish Areas, when they liked the sound of Replenishment Zones bettor – until we caught on and they started calling them Ecological Reserves. Total Allowable Catch (TAC) is no longer the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), but can be the Annual Catch Limit (ACL), the Optimum Yield (OY), or the Maximum Fishing Mortality Threshold (MFMT).
No matter how incomplete or wrong their science, it is always the best available, which they are conveniently mandated to use. All input from the commercial fishing industry is considered anecdotal, which is therefore unscientific, and presumed to be self-serving. Studies are commissioned to support pre-determined outcomes, and statistics are endlessly manipulated to support their agenda and confuse the fishermen. Timely press releases, and dire warnings about the potential for stock depletion, always portray the fishing industry as the bad guy who needs to controlled, and the managers as the ones who are protecting the ocean environment and looking out for the public interest.
If catches are good, it means there is room for effort reduction. If catches are poor, it means we need effort reduction. If fishing income suffers because of ridiculously low quotas as in kingfish, it means we have too many boats in the industry. If quotas are filled too fast – net kingfish lasted 3 days – it doesn’t indicate higher catch limits can be sustained, but that Individual Fishing Quotas are needed, so the season can be dragged out. When catches go down proportionate to reduced effort, it only indicates that the government acted prudently because the stock was obviously in decline.
In other words, there is no statistic or fishing scenario in which the managers cannot work the facts to support their reduction agendas. Fishermen simply do not have a chance through argument or reason. While fishermen are pulling traps or packing fish, teams of bureaucrats are working 40 hour weeks to fine tune their regulations. In the 30 years since I was appointed to the lobster advisory panel for the initial Gulf Council, fishery managers have become so sophisticated at implementing their agendas, that all input from industry is little more than functional window dressing.
The bureaucracy plays more to the public today, than they do to industry. Image and public perception, is far more important to passing fishery regulation, than industry support. As long as life time bureaucrats and ambitious appointed officials, feel that they hold the high ground in the public’s eye, they are comfortable with passing any rule. Presumably because we kill things, commercial fishing is always perceived to be on the wrong side of marine ecology, and it is critical to regulators that they keep us there.
It is doubtful that any high level fishery managers share our concerns over excessive bureaucratic power, or see anything wrong with the entire rule making process. They sincerely believe that they know best, and any means to reach the desired end is fine. For them, public relations is just another tool for implementing good management practices, and they even play the game with fishermen by dispensing IFQ nuggets to a favored few. Even the most bizarre arguments made in favor of their programs are just considered good salesmanship, and when they conveniently overlook inconvenient facts, well, after all, it’s only common sense to present one’s agenda in the beast possible light.
Those who believe we are being regulated by corrupt, dishonest, or stupid people, are not only wrong, but fooling themselves. Thirty years of dealing with intense regulatory pressure, has proven to me that bureaucrats who rise to the top management levels, are idealistic, dedicated, and smart. They are thinking years into the future, while we are worried about surviving today. When I am the most furious with them, it is usually because they have either led us down the primrose path once again, or forced something through the system, simply because they understood precisely what they could get away with at the given moment.
Believing that you are right on every issue, every time, can produce great confidence to go along with the power. Where fishery managers once moved cautiously with high impact regulation, they now proceed forward without hesitation, secure in the knowledge that they are right, and even if they are not, there will be no consequences for them. Those in our industry who elect to reason with such closed minded people, are destined for a life of utter futility.
Fortunately, we also have some smart, dedicated people in our industry, who recognize that we are no longer dealing with science and economics, but hard core politics. While it may be true that fishermen are too straightforward to be good politicians, and not nearly clever enough for the tricky public relations battles, we do have votes. Across the nation, we must urge our influential industry representatives to concentrate their efforts on the November elections. Political power is the only thing that trumps bureaucratic power, and if we don’t send our friends in the bureaucracy a resounding message this year, then we will be left fighting over the scraps of our once proud industry.
