Human behavior being what it is, should a revolution occur due to government oppression, the picture would be complex, not a simple game of numbers. Using the original American revolution as an example, the game stacks up as follows: less than one third of the populace would be revolutionaries (including many military personnel, who would bring some of the high tech systems with them); about one third would side with the government, though many would be useless in a fight; the remaining third would try to stay out of the fight, and just try to survive. Not exponents, but fractions.

Yes, the statist problem we face today in a mixed society of part freedom and part controls is due to the degree of ideas of altruism, collectivism and irrationalism driving government policy and popularly accepted in society. That is why government is failing us.

Ayn Rand did not think or write in terms of superficial numerical laws arbitrarily pronounced along with arbitrary numbers, all of which is no better than numerology and which does not address the nature of the decline of this country. Our rights are based on the requirement that the individual use his reason to choose and act for his values in freedom in order to live, which may be squelched whether one or ten bureaucrats are doing it. There is no such thing as an "exponent problem" explaining this. You are free to think and live for yourself or not; it's not about bureaucratic complexity. The level of totalitarianism, when it gets to that, is only a matter of degree. "It's complicated" is not the essence.

Living in freedom and thinking for yourself is the moral-practical way; it is conservatives who argue that we should have economic freedom because economic decisions are too complicated for government -- as if that would be ok if government could find a way to make effective economic decisions, doing our thinking for us. And with their acceptance of altruism in ethics, they have no concept of the morality of individual choices and thinking for oneself, only morality as one relates to others.

Government does mean "ruling" us: protecting our rights, to the extent that we still have that in the mixture with statism, is not a form of "rule" over people. Neither is the time-varying statist impact uniform across the population. How the statism affects each of us as individuals depends on what we are doing in our lives as individuals and the nature and extent of the policies affecting that, not arbitrary averages counting "rulers" and "ruled" pretending to measure the complexity.

Political freedom depends on government formed to protect our right to think and act for ourselves as a moral principle, not anarchy or a-philosophical libertarian anti-government slogans blaming our problems on arbitrary numbers and a pseudo-scientific alleged "exponent problem" arbitrarily claimed to measure an undefined mathematical complexity -- while ignoring the requirement to think and act for yourself and the intellectual causes of the course of a nation.

Dissection of the exponent problem demonstrates that it is impossible for a centrally planned economy or state to work it won't stop them from trying. The bureaucrats really believe they can change the world by deciding what is the best for others and justify their job by trying to prove it true, they will even believe the lies when they can observe the failures of their efforts.
The leaders at the top are employing them to make slaves of all the rest, the leaders have no illusion that it won't work for the individual their goal is to make it work to enslave and enrich themselves at the expense of others. What makes this conspiracy work is that only a few at the very top will be involved in the conspiracy while employing the millions who when ordered will kill their fellow countrymen to ensure that 'the law' is obeyed and that we all have 'free health care, schools, hospitals & etc., believing that society is better off because of the work of the minions enforcing the law and even creating more regulations to ensure its application.

I did 3...daughter cost me all my hair...

I thought raising one was tough!

This exponent theory perfectly explains why governments must pegeonhole subjects into groups.

Government is supposed to be the codification and protection of the accepted norms and social mores agreed upon by a group of people.

It's a 2 fold acceptance. We accept that what we have is worth keeping, and that others may want to challenge that. We must define it and defend it.

The LEFT, for their part have attacked it's foundation. They have changed the definitions of everything from Immigrant, to marriage to gender, to rights, to "Justice" to Violence and to Speech.

Then, they have attacked the ability to DEFEND what it means to be American as:
- Racist
- Xenophobic
- Wrong-headed
- Intolerant

and also weakend our ability to defend our country. New standards for Rangers so Women can make the team. Now taking Transgender people in the military, or those who want the surgery in the future, with government benefits. (I don't have a problem with Women as long as we don't lower the standard we had set forever, and the issue with Transgender people is that I don't believe they are there for the right reasons, and I believe it does NOT make our military stronger, which is the real litmus test)

It's all theatre now...

BTW, I used to believe that there were 535 people with the ultimate power, and that you could just wipe them out in some kind of massacre. But the realization is that the DEEP State exists as an infrastructure for our government. Who we elect would not longer have an effect until the swamp is drained!

I don't know Robert...the extra "cube" factor for raising a child may not be enough...lol...

The exponent problem plagues governments because they are trying to run people's lives, using coercive force. The way around the exponent problem, as I said in my article, is to allow people to run their own lives, i.e. freedom and its concomittant--capitalism. As you note, private, voluntary, market-driven systems can be amazingly complex and self-sustaining. I won't go into all the ways that voluntary interaction is superior, more adaptive, and a far better means of dealing with reality than command and control; it would take books. However, you've got a handle on it and you are right, in such systems there is no exponent problem.

The exponent problem is presented as a hypothesis with no evidence or
justification.
A more plausible hypothesis is that administrative complexity follows a
logarithmic law with declining complexity per unit of size.
Consider the example of the industrial revolution. Compared with previous
economic activity there was big investment up front, very big use of labor and
materials, and very large production.
The result was a vast reduction of per unit costs.
There is no exponent problem.

Yeah, our forefathers didn't give government much to do because they set up We The People to be our own rulers.
But, gee, what an antiquated horse and buggy days concept that has become! Just ask King Barry, Crying Chucky or $hillary The Evil Hag.
Or any ole' corrupt for a craven career RINO in The Swamp for that matter.

Thanks.

Ah Ha!...but rulers rarely, govern their own lives, that's why they are corrupt and perverse and why I call them parasites; and your observation, an adept and brilliant one at that, is why our forefathers didn't give government much to do.
Governments, as I am sure you know, are only good at one thing...initiatory force so the only valid purpose for government is protection only.

Unfortunately, government has taken that to a whole new level and your "Exponent" has exponentially expanded beyond imagined mathematical limits...