FLASHBACK: Sorting for Stupidity? Thoughts on the state of the federal government. “Thus, my hypothesis is that these factors produced a new kind of sorting among the bureaucrats, in which the brighter ones were more likely to leave meaning that, over time, the people staffing the agencies would become, on average, dumber.  And note the double whammy – the agencies are becoming dumber because they were more powerful, since that produced the lobbying dynamic that made the smarter people more likely to leave.”