“The individual has little reason to fear any general laws which the majority may pass, but he has much reason to fear the rulers it may put over him to implement its directions. It is not the powers which democratic assemblies can effectively wield but the powers which they hand over to the administrators charged with the achievement of particular goals that constitute the danger to individual freedom today. Having agreed that the majority should prescribe rules which we will obey in pursuit of our individual aims, we find ourselves more and more subjected to the orders and the arbitrary will of its agents. Significantly enough, we find not only that most of the supporters of unlimited democracy soon become defenders of arbitrariness and of the view that we should trust experts to decide what is good for the community, but that the most enthusiastic supporters of such unlimited powers of the majority are often those very administrators who know best that, once such powers are assumed, it will be they and not the majority who will in fact exercise them. If anything has been demonstrated by modern experience in these matters, it is that, once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies. If the latter do not themselves determine the means to be employed, the decisions of their agents will be more or less arbitrary.”

Excerpt From: F. A. Hayek & Ronald Hamowy. “The Constitution of Liberty.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-constitution-of-liberty/id568083914

HKO

This is a good explanation of the dangers of an administrative state.  Their power extends beyond the execution of general laws, and the means often become the ends,  uncontrollable by a democracy or the majority.

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