[rayiner]

> Your comment suggests you think cronyism was in some part responsible for America's rise as a global power.

Not at all. My comment was that America’s good run began a century before the 20th century practice of administration through independent experts. Thus, such administration cannot be a necessary condition for America’s “good run” as OP suggested.

[runako]

Worth noting that the period you indicate is a an example of an America largely deploying inventions from the UK (e.g. the steam engine, steam locomotive, etc.).

The latter part of the 20th century and first part of this century is a story more of the US driving invention and deploying those inventions.

The techniques needed to go from lesser power to leading power are different from those needed to advance as a leading power. For Lebron to stay on top, he has to do different things than any of us would need to do to get into the NBA.

Different circumstances & different goals require different strategies.

[jaredklewis]

That's fair, but I think your original comment could be much more clearly written.

"There was a spoils system in the late 1800s. It sure would be great if we could go back to that time." Technically these can be interpreted as unrelated statements (as apparently the statements are in your original comment), but most people would infer from that they were related and that the reason it would be nice to rollback to the earlier time was the aforementioned spoils system.

[rayiner]

> but most people would infer from that they were related and that the reason it would be nice to rollback to the earlier time was the aforementioned spoils system

Except I explicitly referred to “[r]olling the government back,” specifically “the modern administrative state.” The two systems being compared are the old system where the executive branch was politically accountable (but suffered from patronage jobs), and the new system presided over by experts (but who are insulated from political signals).

My point is that the old system, with its shortcomings, empirically produced good results, as good as the new system, with its shortcomings. That’s not an argument that the spoils system was great in isolation. But it’s possible that political appointees aren’t as incompetent as you assume. Or credentialed experts aren’t as competent as you assume. Or that the gains from more administrative competence are outweighed by the loss of responsiveness to political signals.