7 ms·

Run for elections or get a job in government. There are 90 thousand government agencies. Local, city, county, state, etc... There are people out there who want

by inerte 6y ago

Run for elections or get a job in government. There are 90 thousand government agencies. Local, city, county, state, etc... There are people out there who wants you to think they are all like the DMV or dysfunctional like the Senate and Congress. Or worse, that the private sector somehow is where the challenge is. Maybe where you can get richer, but look at the department of agriculture or any other major government institution. $150b in budget and 100k employees. You find me a private company with similar size and a mission to feed 380M people. The US needs a renaissance of the importance and virtue of public service. Our best minds are selling ads or consulting to shave off 0.001% of sub-prime derivatives in nanoseconds. The government is us, and it’s huge and slow and careful and conservative and complex. But it needs us inside to change. PS: I got inspired by words from Anand Giridharadas, so bonus points if you recognized any from his interviews.

kelvin0 6y ago
Not to sound too cynic, but unless you have a powerful lobby on your side you won't get much done in government (US, CAN). Moving higher up in the government to have any position of power means that you necessarily 'played' the game and most likely are restrained by the powerful interests who help you along the way. Aside from any type of revolution or catastrophe (none I which I personally advocate), I can't see how you can make deep and lasting changes in the current system of entrenched interests. This is my opinion from observation. I am not an expert. Quite willing to read opposing views.
chosenbreed37 6y ago
> Or worse, that the private sector somehow is where the challenge is. Maybe where you can get richer, but look at the department of agriculture or any other major government institution. $150b in budget and 100k employees. You find me a private company with similar size and a mission to feed 380M people. I'm off on a tangent here...but is it really the responsibility of the department of agriculture to feed 380 million people? What did people do before the creation of the department of agriculture? :-)
- bdavis__ 6y ago
  i don't think they feed that may people directly. they do manage via regulation and research, how the US farmers grow the food that 380 Million people consume. ag dept was created in 1862.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  They listened to the tribal leaders, or their god-king, or their feudal lord, or whomever else held the reins in whichever time period. Until corporations came in and turned money and shareholders into the misguided controllers. Maybe the Department of Agriculture is at least an attempt to help farmers in a less selfish way.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > but is it really the responsibility of the department of agriculture to feed 380 million people? Given that the primary goal of farming is to feed people, why not? USDA was created by President Lincoln and was critical to ensuring food distribution throughout the Great Depression. Which agency is better equipped to handle this responsibility than Ag?
- joslin01 6y ago
  You can read their actual 2018-2022 strategy here: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-strategic-plan-2018-2022.pdf https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-stra...
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
That's inspiring, for sure, and I know from personal experience that there are good people trying to do good in some local government agencies. Some of our best minds are doing good in small ways in the private sector, as well. But there are systemic issues that you need to consider to make fulfilling, effective change. The problem is that without good regulation, might will make right and cheaters will prosper. Elections are decided by a combination of appealing to people by telling them you'll do what they want, by advertising money to get the message out that you're the candidate who matches their interests, and by getting people who will vote for you into the polling place. Recent elections have proven that a candidate who's dishonest, who outspends on advertising, and who manipulates the voting population through voter suppression or gerrymandering can win over an idealistic candidate who's unwilling to engage in those tactics. Those effects don't come into play so much at the local level, but without addressing that 'elephant in the room' a grassroots effort to change government from the bottom up will spend a lot of energy but hit a ceiling on its effectiveness. I see no point in trying to grow grass when I know there's a lawnmower effect that will chop it down.
- phkahler 6y ago
  Without an elephant gun one really has to grow grass. Maybe figure out how to make fertilizer so it grows like a weed everywhere. Doing nothing is really the only option guaranteed to have no effect.
Balgair 6y ago
Well said, thank you! It is much easier than you think. Uncontested races are about half of all elections [0]. Just near me a city election had only 19 people vote in it (covid played a big role though). In front of me right now there is a mail ballot for a local election with half the races being uncontested. Look up what your local elections are like here: https://www.google.com/search?ei=DnGgXrfZJNa5tQbtpKy4DA&q=run+for+local+office+in+zipCode https://www.google.com/search?ei=DnGgXrfZJNa5tQbtpKy4DA&q=ru... For instance in SF here is the page on how to run for office: https://sfethics.org/compliance/campaigns/candidates/running-for-office https://sfethics.org/compliance/campaigns/candidates/running... This takes about a lunch break to get through. Please consider it, democracy only works if you do. [0] https://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov-uncontested-legislative-races.html https://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov-uncontested-l... Per the article, there is a LOT of variation here.
- Talanes 6y ago
  I agree with your general point, but San Francisco politics is the worst example. The local political scene is huge and all very connected together, and you have a billion options for every seat because people are trying to play the game and just run for any office. We had a dude running for Community College Board last cycle who had never attended any sort of public school.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    True! I've seen first hand the 'issues' with something as small as the a single street's dev. board. Such 'struggle' is even more of a reason to get involved and not shy away. The problems are unlikely to get better without your involvement. I mostly used SF as an example to whet the appetite, as many HNers seem to reside in the Bay Area. I encourage anyone to look up their local races and consider throwing their hat into the ring.
    - Talanes 6y ago
      I would also encourage anyone in the Bay outside of San Francisco to look into your town and county politics too. San Francisco draws a lot of attention in the areas scene, but the outlaying areas are often more suited to quick change. Those actually in the city, get familiar with your local supervisor. Some of them are very accessible, if yours isn't vote them out.
aclsid 6y ago
This, the only way to prevent stuff like this from happening is to actually decouple the system from business interests. These kind of incidents repeat themselves over and over because it is based on a flawed logic where if you help businesses it will have a trickle down effect that ends up helping productive people. Same thing that happened when GM got a whole bunch of money and then they were using their private jets and collecting the nice CEO bonuses. Governments by their very nature, and democratic ones especially, are supposed to be about charging taxes and redistributing that wealth for the better good. There is this big concept about having a powerful middle class which in turns make the extremely poor or the extremely rich a problem for the system to deal with. The SBA could have helped all of those businesses directly through a coordinated effort with the IRS. Through the IRS they will know who is effectively a small business doing real work recently. How hard is it to just phone or email people asking for their bank account and fund the small business directly? If 6% of funding was all that was available at least a public raffle would have been a fairer system. But even this stuff doesn't solve the question of what do you do with people that are out of a job, have a disability, mental issues or in general people that are unable to work like the elderly. Do you just let them die out of starvation out in the streets?
- hi_im_miles 6y ago
  > Governments by their very nature, and democratic ones especially, are supposed to be about charging taxes and redistributing that wealth for the better good. The idea that democracies allocate resources efficiently (as in, "for the greater good") is one that I do not agree with. If a democratic majority conclude that harsh restrictions on immigration is beneficial for them (as they suppress the bargaining power over wages/benefits of those who immigrated illegally anyway), then maintaining these restrictions would be democracy as intended. However, you'd still end up with a significant underclass and thus an inefficient outcome. I think even a cursory analysis of the state would lead you conclude that governments don't efficiently allocate resources in any meaningful sense, but they do allocate resources very well from those who are disadvantaged by its policy to those who are privileged by it, democratic or not.
  - Supermancho 6y ago
w3mmpp 6y ago
> The US needs a renaissance of the importance and virtue of public service. Go check in countries with large public services and let me know what virtues they display... Spoiler: you're gonna be disappointed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- inerte 6y ago
  Who said anything about big government, or increasing its size? Specially it being more virtuous If anything, I have advocated for a culture where the smartest people want to join the public service and help others instead of becoming a product manager for a button on a corner of a stupid app that doesn’t care at all what anyone of us do there as long as we interact with ads. If you’re going to try to be a smart ass, I also have some spoilers for you, drop the attack mode and get better at text comprehension.
  - w3mmpp 6y ago
    I'm gonna reference what you said again: > The US needs a renaissance of the importance and virtue of public service. "importance and virtue of public service". Unless you consider there is such a thing as public service without government, and that your "virtue" here, used along "renaissance" and "importance" doesn't suggest it needs to be more virtuous, I'd argue it's you who needs to be better at explanation. Now, on a more important note, if your vision of the private sector is reduced to people working on online ads, I suggest you look beyond the software industry and consider smart people working in very important industries, in research, energy, medicine, finance, millions of people making our lives possible in ways than no public servant will ever be able to even just dream about. So if anything imo, we don't need more public servants, aren't there enough people telling us how to live our lives? If renaissance we need, is on the importance and virtue of a good day's work as a way to better ourselves and society.
thoway987987 6y ago
Criticisms of bureaucracies are valid in that decisions by groups are difficult. The more consensus required the slower the process. Isn't this just the human manifestation of the CAP theorem? Bureaucracy is a democratically managed database. Anyways. All that to say, it seems valid to work on the system and within. You list local, city, county etc, and to the detriment of the system those are global write locks. > The government is us, and it’s huge and slow and careful and conservative and complex. But it needs us inside to change. I'd like you to consider the government is slow and huge not because of any bad will or conspiracy, but it exists that way due to technical limitations of human organization and achieving consensus. Our government is Encyclopedia Britannica and we're expecting Wikipedia levels of quality and availability. The underlying organizational structure simply cannot support our expectations. I believe a more participatory form of democracy would be for us not to vote for editors, but a protocol that allows agreeable edits to be socially accepted and contentious edits to be ignored.

by inerte 6y ago

kelvin0 6y ago

Not to sound too cynic, but unless you have a powerful lobby on your side you won't get much done in government (US, CAN). Moving higher up in the government to have any position of power means that you necessarily 'played' the game and most likely are restrained by the powerful interests who help you along the way. Aside from any type of revolution or catastrophe (none I which I personally advocate), I can't see how you can make deep and lasting changes in the current system of entrenched interests. This is my opinion from observation. I am not an expert. Quite willing to read opposing views.

chosenbreed37 6y ago

> Or worse, that the private sector somehow is where the challenge is. Maybe where you can get richer, but look at the department of agriculture or any other major government institution. $150b in budget and 100k employees. You find me a private company with similar size and a mission to feed 380M people. I'm off on a tangent here...but is it really the responsibility of the department of agriculture to feed 380 million people? What did people do before the creation of the department of agriculture? :-)

bdavis__ 6y ago
i don't think they feed that may people directly. they do manage via regulation and research, how the US farmers grow the food that 380 Million people consume. ag dept was created in 1862.
zentiggr 6y ago
They listened to the tribal leaders, or their god-king, or their feudal lord, or whomever else held the reins in whichever time period. Until corporations came in and turned money and shareholders into the misguided controllers. Maybe the Department of Agriculture is at least an attempt to help farmers in a less selfish way.
save_ferris 6y ago
> but is it really the responsibility of the department of agriculture to feed 380 million people? Given that the primary goal of farming is to feed people, why not? USDA was created by President Lincoln and was critical to ensuring food distribution throughout the Great Depression. Which agency is better equipped to handle this responsibility than Ag?
joslin01 6y ago
You can read their actual 2018-2022 strategy here: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-strategic-plan-2018-2022.pdf https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-stra...

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

That's inspiring, for sure, and I know from personal experience that there are good people trying to do good in some local government agencies. Some of our best minds are doing good in small ways in the private sector, as well. But there are systemic issues that you need to consider to make fulfilling, effective change. The problem is that without good regulation, might will make right and cheaters will prosper. Elections are decided by a combination of appealing to people by telling them you'll do what they want, by advertising money to get the message out that you're the candidate who matches their interests, and by getting people who will vote for you into the polling place. Recent elections have proven that a candidate who's dishonest, who outspends on advertising, and who manipulates the voting population through voter suppression or gerrymandering can win over an idealistic candidate who's unwilling to engage in those tactics. Those effects don't come into play so much at the local level, but without addressing that 'elephant in the room' a grassroots effort to change government from the bottom up will spend a lot of energy but hit a ceiling on its effectiveness. I see no point in trying to grow grass when I know there's a lawnmower effect that will chop it down.

phkahler 6y ago
Without an elephant gun one really has to grow grass. Maybe figure out how to make fertilizer so it grows like a weed everywhere. Doing nothing is really the only option guaranteed to have no effect.

Balgair 6y ago

Well said, thank you! It is much easier than you think. Uncontested races are about half of all elections [0]. Just near me a city election had only 19 people vote in it (covid played a big role though). In front of me right now there is a mail ballot for a local election with half the races being uncontested. Look up what your local elections are like here: https://www.google.com/search?ei=DnGgXrfZJNa5tQbtpKy4DA&q=run+for+local+office+in+zipCode https://www.google.com/search?ei=DnGgXrfZJNa5tQbtpKy4DA&q=ru... For instance in SF here is the page on how to run for office: https://sfethics.org/compliance/campaigns/candidates/running-for-office https://sfethics.org/compliance/campaigns/candidates/running... This takes about a lunch break to get through. Please consider it, democracy only works if you do. [0] https://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov-uncontested-legislative-races.html https://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov-uncontested-l... Per the article, there is a LOT of variation here.

Talanes 6y ago
I agree with your general point, but San Francisco politics is the worst example. The local political scene is huge and all very connected together, and you have a billion options for every seat because people are trying to play the game and just run for any office. We had a dude running for Community College Board last cycle who had never attended any sort of public school.
- Balgair 6y ago
  True! I've seen first hand the 'issues' with something as small as the a single street's dev. board. Such 'struggle' is even more of a reason to get involved and not shy away. The problems are unlikely to get better without your involvement. I mostly used SF as an example to whet the appetite, as many HNers seem to reside in the Bay Area. I encourage anyone to look up their local races and consider throwing their hat into the ring.
  - Talanes 6y ago
    I would also encourage anyone in the Bay outside of San Francisco to look into your town and county politics too. San Francisco draws a lot of attention in the areas scene, but the outlaying areas are often more suited to quick change. Those actually in the city, get familiar with your local supervisor. Some of them are very accessible, if yours isn't vote them out.

aclsid 6y ago

This, the only way to prevent stuff like this from happening is to actually decouple the system from business interests. These kind of incidents repeat themselves over and over because it is based on a flawed logic where if you help businesses it will have a trickle down effect that ends up helping productive people. Same thing that happened when GM got a whole bunch of money and then they were using their private jets and collecting the nice CEO bonuses. Governments by their very nature, and democratic ones especially, are supposed to be about charging taxes and redistributing that wealth for the better good. There is this big concept about having a powerful middle class which in turns make the extremely poor or the extremely rich a problem for the system to deal with. The SBA could have helped all of those businesses directly through a coordinated effort with the IRS. Through the IRS they will know who is effectively a small business doing real work recently. How hard is it to just phone or email people asking for their bank account and fund the small business directly? If 6% of funding was all that was available at least a public raffle would have been a fairer system. But even this stuff doesn't solve the question of what do you do with people that are out of a job, have a disability, mental issues or in general people that are unable to work like the elderly. Do you just let them die out of starvation out in the streets?

hi_im_miles 6y ago
> Governments by their very nature, and democratic ones especially, are supposed to be about charging taxes and redistributing that wealth for the better good. The idea that democracies allocate resources efficiently (as in, "for the greater good") is one that I do not agree with. If a democratic majority conclude that harsh restrictions on immigration is beneficial for them (as they suppress the bargaining power over wages/benefits of those who immigrated illegally anyway), then maintaining these restrictions would be democracy as intended. However, you'd still end up with a significant underclass and thus an inefficient outcome. I think even a cursory analysis of the state would lead you conclude that governments don't efficiently allocate resources in any meaningful sense, but they do allocate resources very well from those who are disadvantaged by its policy to those who are privileged by it, democratic or not.
- Supermancho 6y ago

w3mmpp 6y ago

> The US needs a renaissance of the importance and virtue of public service. Go check in countries with large public services and let me know what virtues they display... Spoiler: you're gonna be disappointed.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
inerte 6y ago
Who said anything about big government, or increasing its size? Specially it being more virtuous If anything, I have advocated for a culture where the smartest people want to join the public service and help others instead of becoming a product manager for a button on a corner of a stupid app that doesn’t care at all what anyone of us do there as long as we interact with ads. If you’re going to try to be a smart ass, I also have some spoilers for you, drop the attack mode and get better at text comprehension.
- w3mmpp 6y ago
  I'm gonna reference what you said again: > The US needs a renaissance of the importance and virtue of public service. "importance and virtue of public service". Unless you consider there is such a thing as public service without government, and that your "virtue" here, used along "renaissance" and "importance" doesn't suggest it needs to be more virtuous, I'd argue it's you who needs to be better at explanation. Now, on a more important note, if your vision of the private sector is reduced to people working on online ads, I suggest you look beyond the software industry and consider smart people working in very important industries, in research, energy, medicine, finance, millions of people making our lives possible in ways than no public servant will ever be able to even just dream about. So if anything imo, we don't need more public servants, aren't there enough people telling us how to live our lives? If renaissance we need, is on the importance and virtue of a good day's work as a way to better ourselves and society.

thoway987987 6y ago

Criticisms of bureaucracies are valid in that decisions by groups are difficult. The more consensus required the slower the process. Isn't this just the human manifestation of the CAP theorem? Bureaucracy is a democratically managed database. Anyways. All that to say, it seems valid to work on the system and within. You list local, city, county etc, and to the detriment of the system those are global write locks. > The government is us, and it’s huge and slow and careful and conservative and complex. But it needs us inside to change. I'd like you to consider the government is slow and huge not because of any bad will or conspiracy, but it exists that way due to technical limitations of human organization and achieving consensus. Our government is Encyclopedia Britannica and we're expecting Wikipedia levels of quality and availability. The underlying organizational structure simply cannot support our expectations. I believe a more participatory form of democracy would be for us not to vote for editors, but a protocol that allows agreeable edits to be socially accepted and contentious edits to be ignored.