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This has been a 50 year problem in the making, and whether it's for better or worse should be more carefully studied. Through WW2 and the proliferating age of

This has been a 50 year problem in the making, and whether it's for better or worse should be more carefully studied. Through WW2 and the proliferating age of defense contractors, the government (mostly defense department, but also civilian agencies) stood almost on equal footing with contractors in their ability to design, scope, and evaluate big projects. You would see scientists and in-house advisers at these departments able to expertly evaluate proposals/designs by contractors with sufficient background knowledge and tools to do so. They even worked closely with contractors to lay out the requirements and designs for systems, or products. But, through the decades, a couple factors eroded this equal footing of the government / regulatory experts: -- Shrinking of government budgets for (or unwillingness of the public to stomach) the ranks of Washington "bureaucrats" who represented this expert class of people (what harm is there in cutting "fat" from public servants who don't seem to produce anything tangible?) -- More attractive pay, career potential, prestige, etc. of working in the private sector -- Political distaste for being seen as working too closely with contractors So what happened is that gradually but surely, government lost the tools to do these things themselves, and by sheer need to still have things approved, shifted the work onto industry. What can you do when industry comes to you with new complicated designs for things, and you have no one who can assess (and no budget to pay for assessments of) whether those designs are safe? You ask the person proposing to critique themselves, and in many cases, they seem to know more than you anyway. Of course, what in part probably led to our current situation. As a society, my question is, how do we make it possible to choose to do these things in the way that produces the right outcome? For a start, I think we need to stop asking everyone to make uninformed votes about things we don't understand, yet rely on every day.

burfog 8y ago
Most government agencies are incapable of having a good workforce. There are strict rules for hiring, paying, and firing. These rules involve all sorts of political nonsense unrelated to job performance, such as veteran status and seniority. The high-performing workers will go where they will be appreciated and rewarded, and where they won't be surrounded by useless and awful people. Absent a politically impossible change to the way the government handles employment, trimming the ranks is the only way to get rid of the harmful parasites that infest the typical government agency.

burfog 8y ago

Most government agencies are incapable of having a good workforce. There are strict rules for hiring, paying, and firing. These rules involve all sorts of political nonsense unrelated to job performance, such as veteran status and seniority. The high-performing workers will go where they will be appreciated and rewarded, and where they won't be surrounded by useless and awful people. Absent a politically impossible change to the way the government handles employment, trimming the ranks is the only way to get rid of the harmful parasites that infest the typical government agency.