It's actually a pretty-well documented phenomenon. (My familiarity with it stems from having served as editor in chief of one of the primary administrative law journals.) I will try to dig up some articles to provide as sources, but many are behind hard paywalls (e.g., on Westlaw subscriptions, etc.). If it's not already there, put your email in your HN profile and I'll do my best to send some to you.
How would your educated self respond to “the voices in our heads are real and the secret state is thought control, of which all sides are pawns in games none understand.”
This applies to all these other misaligned comments about corruption coming from the top rather than bottom of the “pyramid.”
Ordinary people are doing what the voices in their heads cause them to (often without awareness, though truly intelligent people know they are there, without further comprehension.) The pyramid scheme is not of ordinary bureaucrats, it is of those disembodied men who control the voices in their heads.
Mr. Kennedy knows something of these. Who will share their stories of what has been going on in their own minds?
