So, how long does it take for the State to decay then?

We think this is an interesting little guide:

A private police force has prosecuted 300 shoplifters with a 100 per cent conviction rate after police officers failed to crack down on the thefts.

The company, headed by a former Scotland Yard detective chief inspector, has expanded to cover 19 retail and business districts in central and outer London, where retailers pay for the firm’s detectives to patrol their area, catch shoplifters and then prosecute them.

The firm, TM Eye, guarantees that its plain clothes officers will be on the scene within minutes of a phone or app alert of theft and apprehend the shoplifter. They are prepared to use “reasonable force” under section three of the Criminal Law Act but will only do so if a suspect is aggressive or violent.

Given that the Metropolitan Police were started in 1829 we take it that it takes about two centuries.

Note that this is for a good idea - Bobbies - to go bad. Bad ideas like HS2 actually die sooner even if not soon enough.

This happens to all organisations of course. It’s just that in the private sector we’ve the culling mechanism - bankruptcy. Something that doesn’t happen with the public sector. Which leads us to an interesting and counterintuitive conclusion. In that private sector we do not need to have strong and vicious management, for there’s that culling of failure built into the system. But as we’ve not that killing ground in the public sector then and therefore public sector management needs to be much more ruthless - akin to Genghis Khan. Which isn’t the way it works out now, is it, even as it not only should but needs to.

Exactly because the public sector is the public sector it requires much more ruthless management.