Samuel Colt invented the revolver and a slogan to go with it. “God created men, Col. Colt made them equal”. The revolver was ‘the great equalizer’. Anyone could learn to shoot. That levelled the playing field for those otherwise preyed upon. 

You might think Colt’s slogan a relic. But there’s a modern analogue. Think about a different kind of power asymmetry. One that’s bureaucratic rather than ballistic, persistent rather than point-blank, and seemingly impossible to break.  

Bureaus usually have an information advantage over their Ministers.  

A Minister’s office has a handful of staff. A Ministry has hundreds, or sometimes thousands.  

Ministers come and go. Officials stay. 

Ministers face deadlines. Officials can play to the timetable.  

A Minister can direct officials to produce legislation that achieves a specified outcome. Officials know the legislative schedule. They can deliver hundreds of pages of legislation, right at the deadline, and claim it does the job. At that point, it is too late for the Minister to do much about it if it doesn’t. 

Public choice economists have wrestled with this principal-agent problem for decades. Can the legislature really control the bureaucracy? 

It’s a hard problem. But there’s a new equalizer in town. 

It’s something any Minister could use right now.  

Get a subscription to the best frontier AI model. On the most recent data, their capabilities double about every four months. That pace will accelerate as today’s best models help build the next generation of models. But even the current ones are excellent. 

For less than five hundred dollars per month, any Minister can have a very capable assistant that can parse hundreds of pages of draft legislation in minutes.  

It can test whether the draft does what was asked, or whether officials have gone off on their own adventure.  

It can suggest questions to put to officials.  

It can even provide a first cut at legislative drafting, so a Minister can provide officials with a starting point. 

A frontier-model subscription is a great equalizer, of a sort. Ministers will know a lot more about their area than most people. And having that kind of domain knowledge is necessary – just like knowing how to aim a Colt.  

And like revolvers, it’s a bit of an arms race. Officials will also use it.  

Ministers should not go unarmed if they want to hit their targets.