I just got a text from Captain Republican. “I am shocked, shocked that the White House is using Autopens.”

Oops! Now I have a text from the Wizard of Woke: “Pay no attention to the male-identifying person behind the curtain.”

Look, never mind that Joe Biden was basically incapable of performing the office of President of the United States, probably from the moment they fixed the South Carolina primary for him in 2020 to keep Bernie Sanders off the Democratic ticket.

And forget that it wasn’t till well into 2024 that the lapdog media was almost ready to yap in annoying chorus -- as annoying lapdogs will do -- that Houston We Have a Problem.

But who is kidding whom? The whole point of the administrative state is that the President doesn’t really have executive power. The educated administrative bureaucracy wisely develops policy according to expert-agreed science, and the President signs off on it.

Only, of course, the science on administrative bureaucracy is, per Hayek, that administrative hierarchy cannot work, because it lacks bandwidth, big time. Only a market economy with prices, per Mises, has the bandwidth for that.

The Germans were first to recognize the problem after World War I, when their all-hands review of the war conducted by General Hans von Seeckt determined that war could only work if responsibility were pushed down the military hierarchy as far as possible. Generals and colonels were specifically ordered to issue general orders so that the subordinates could fill in the details. The idea, wrote Seeckt, was

to make of each individual member of the army a soldier who, in character, capability, and knowledge, is self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful in taking responsibility [verantwortungsfreudig] as a man and a soldier.

Yes, I am sure you have noticed that today’s educated, evolved bureaucracy is full of “self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful” responsible men and soldiers. Not.

But there’s more.

It’s George Stigler’s science about “regulatory capture.” The science states that government regulation inevitably fails because its regulatory activity gets captured by the special interests.

And all the world knows that the Biden administration was a double-blind social science experiment -- conducted by Ivy League academics on their off days between training pro-Palestine mostly peaceful protesters -- to confirm Hayek’s science about bureaucracy and Stigler’s science about “regulatory capture.” That’s what the flap about Biden and the Autopen is about. Anyone except a media lapdog could see with their scientific eyes that Joseph Robinette Biden, born into the working class of Scranton, PA, was not physically fit enough to sign executive orders, let alone mentally fit enough to understand what he was signing.

Now, according to the Federal Register, President Trump has signed 157 executive orders as of May 23, 2025. You think he knows the details of each executive order that he signed? Of course not. His Golden Age crew did all the work, and prepared the executive orders and briefed him on the major points so he could deal with the yaps of the lapdog media lapdogs. In other words, the Trump administration is acting just like Hans von Seeckt said to do, with a crew of “self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated” MAGAs that are “joyful in taking responsibility.” I dare say that makes Trump Literally Hitler.

But we wise ones have a deeper, wider worldview than the rather limited view of the world available to the average lightweight lapdog reduced to a life sniffing at the heels of former administration officials. We see that we humans must get beyond the conceit of the administrative state beloved of progressives, commies, and wokies. We can see that the administrative state is all very well for a jolly old world war, or the nightmare of a global pandemic, or world-ending climate change. We see that, below the surface, the administrative state is a remorseless engine of corruption, injustice, and decay. And in the hands of our liberal friends it has collapsed into a catfight of mewing Allies pretending to fight for the Oppressed Peoples du jour against the eternal White Oppressors.

We wise ones know that the future must be worked out in the usual messy way of humans somewhere between the warrior culture of the tech bros that fight in the chaotic arena of startups and venture capitalists and the social culture of the ordinary middle class that yearns for stability enough to work and marry and raise a family. Isn’t it amazing that God has put on one side of the stage the crazy Elon to evoke the crazy chaos of the startup arena and on the other the impossible Donald Trump to promise a Golden Age of stability and growth?

Autopens aren’t really the problem. The problem is the conceit that administrative government is a benefit to humanity, rather than just the usual conceit of a ruling class.

I wonder what Bugs Bunny would say about Autopens.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Grok