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Operational effectiveness is highly tied to values, politics, and policy. From federal down to local, every bureaucracy has to deal with changes and interventi

Operational effectiveness is highly tied to values, politics, and policy. From federal down to local, every bureaucracy has to deal with changes and interventions from outside in the form of budget, direction, etc. Bureaucracies are only as effective as the political environment in which they operate, and they are directed at the behest of voters and politicians which tend to change every few years or-so. My point in sharing the reference isn't to say 'oh, I know something you don't know.' It's that I read it, and went, 'oh, I know nothing, this stuff is waaay more complicated than I thought it was, and no wonder nothing gets done.'

jariel 6y ago
Yes of course, I get the point of the reference, it looks super interesting, I wish I could read quickly enough for it to actually make it on my list. I appreciate your point about political change but that's not something I view as being 'outside of government'. The political leadership and the bureaucracy are 'government' - if they are failing even primarily due to arbitrary change in direction ... then we can at least narrow the scope of where we point our fingers, but it doesn't mean that 'building a subway should be impossible' in 2020. The US engaged and defeated the Nazis, and the Japanese, and built the first Nuclear Weapon, along with designing several new weapons and building them at large ... in the term of a single presidential cycle. Without being overly cynical, I do believe that incentives matter, and if the bureaucracy doesn't have to produce much of real value then it just won't.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  We had one, single goal then. Defeat the enemy. We pulled out the stops to confront that particular existential threat. Everything else got put on hold. Everything. People had fuel ration cards, and every single piece of scrap metal was turned into guns and bullets. People planted victory gardens, and bought war bonds. They sent their sons to die across an ocean, and their daughters built war machines in huge factories. But it was a simpler time in terms of policy. We've done so much since then. Hell, when we were fighting WWII, a black person couldn't even use the same drinking fountain as white folks. Monterey Bay was dead from overfishing, the air over Los Angeles was so thick with pollution from incinerators and factories you could barely breathe. Bunker Hill in LA was a slum of flophouses. We didn't even have freeways yet. The modern San Francisco Skyline as we know it didn't exist. Hawaii wasn't a state yet, and neither was Alaska. We're in a different world. Washington has crossed the Delaware and there ain't no going back. Take a random poll of everyone you see walking down Market Street and ask them what our one single goal is and you'll get as many answers, as people you stop and ask. From global warming, to COVID, to public transit, to homelessness, to income inequality, to bicycle lanes, to rent costs, to getting the Republicans out of congress, to getting the Democrats out of congress, to immigration, to domestic spying, to GMOs, to healthcare, to dolphin-safe fishing nets, to high-speed rail, to police reform, to the guy pooping on someone's doorstep, to adding an extra lane on the 5, to wildfires, to legalizing mushrooms, to teaching REGEX to elementary school kids, to spaying an neutering stray cats, to Amy Coney Barrett. Nobody cared about dolphin-safe nets in 1940. Nobody. Nobody cared about homelessness in San Francisco in 1940. Nobody cared about domestic spying, or bike lanes, or rent costs, or wildfires, or drug policy, or whatever. Things are more complicated now because there's more stuff going on. The systems in place are far more complicated. We're pulled in so many directions these days. An institutional bureaucracy is like a big ship in the harbor, and elected politicians/constituent opinions are like the tugboats pulling it out towards the open ocean. But instead of one tugboat, there are like 3,000 tugboats that are all going in different directions, and different tugboats are disappearing and showing up all the time. Look at how we've dealt with the existential threat of COVID as a nation. Divided, arguing, a thousand different opinions on what to do, zero coordination, zero guidance. It's all a mess. I wish we could all sit down and come up with a plan for moving forward to build subways, I really, really wish we could because I'm absolutely sick of our public transit infrastructure. It's nowhere near what it should be. But I look around and I get it. I wish I had a vision for how we could fix it and move forward, but I don't. I can barely wrap my head around the actual complexity of one issue, let along the bajillion I'm confronted with when I look around at all that needs fixing. Flip open the California voter guide this election. You can't with a straight face tell me you have any idea what the deal is with half that stuff in any meaningful level of detail.
  - jariel 6y ago
    We've had democracy for a long time, there were always 'a lot of things to focus on' - and yet someone things got done.
    - phobosanomaly 6y ago
      I mean, we've had dysfunction and corruption for a long time as well. I feel like we're going in circles, which I take as a personal failure, as I was hoping we would both reach some sort of a point of agreement in the middle. Good talking to you though. Appreciate you taking the time to talk over the issue, and if we were in person I'd buy you a beer.

jariel 6y ago

Yes of course, I get the point of the reference, it looks super interesting, I wish I could read quickly enough for it to actually make it on my list. I appreciate your point about political change but that's not something I view as being 'outside of government'. The political leadership and the bureaucracy are 'government' - if they are failing even primarily due to arbitrary change in direction ... then we can at least narrow the scope of where we point our fingers, but it doesn't mean that 'building a subway should be impossible' in 2020. The US engaged and defeated the Nazis, and the Japanese, and built the first Nuclear Weapon, along with designing several new weapons and building them at large ... in the term of a single presidential cycle. Without being overly cynical, I do believe that incentives matter, and if the bureaucracy doesn't have to produce much of real value then it just won't.

phobosanomaly 6y ago
We had one, single goal then. Defeat the enemy. We pulled out the stops to confront that particular existential threat. Everything else got put on hold. Everything. People had fuel ration cards, and every single piece of scrap metal was turned into guns and bullets. People planted victory gardens, and bought war bonds. They sent their sons to die across an ocean, and their daughters built war machines in huge factories. But it was a simpler time in terms of policy. We've done so much since then. Hell, when we were fighting WWII, a black person couldn't even use the same drinking fountain as white folks. Monterey Bay was dead from overfishing, the air over Los Angeles was so thick with pollution from incinerators and factories you could barely breathe. Bunker Hill in LA was a slum of flophouses. We didn't even have freeways yet. The modern San Francisco Skyline as we know it didn't exist. Hawaii wasn't a state yet, and neither was Alaska. We're in a different world. Washington has crossed the Delaware and there ain't no going back. Take a random poll of everyone you see walking down Market Street and ask them what our one single goal is and you'll get as many answers, as people you stop and ask. From global warming, to COVID, to public transit, to homelessness, to income inequality, to bicycle lanes, to rent costs, to getting the Republicans out of congress, to getting the Democrats out of congress, to immigration, to domestic spying, to GMOs, to healthcare, to dolphin-safe fishing nets, to high-speed rail, to police reform, to the guy pooping on someone's doorstep, to adding an extra lane on the 5, to wildfires, to legalizing mushrooms, to teaching REGEX to elementary school kids, to spaying an neutering stray cats, to Amy Coney Barrett. Nobody cared about dolphin-safe nets in 1940. Nobody. Nobody cared about homelessness in San Francisco in 1940. Nobody cared about domestic spying, or bike lanes, or rent costs, or wildfires, or drug policy, or whatever. Things are more complicated now because there's more stuff going on. The systems in place are far more complicated. We're pulled in so many directions these days. An institutional bureaucracy is like a big ship in the harbor, and elected politicians/constituent opinions are like the tugboats pulling it out towards the open ocean. But instead of one tugboat, there are like 3,000 tugboats that are all going in different directions, and different tugboats are disappearing and showing up all the time. Look at how we've dealt with the existential threat of COVID as a nation. Divided, arguing, a thousand different opinions on what to do, zero coordination, zero guidance. It's all a mess. I wish we could all sit down and come up with a plan for moving forward to build subways, I really, really wish we could because I'm absolutely sick of our public transit infrastructure. It's nowhere near what it should be. But I look around and I get it. I wish I had a vision for how we could fix it and move forward, but I don't. I can barely wrap my head around the actual complexity of one issue, let along the bajillion I'm confronted with when I look around at all that needs fixing. Flip open the California voter guide this election. You can't with a straight face tell me you have any idea what the deal is with half that stuff in any meaningful level of detail.
- jariel 6y ago
  We've had democracy for a long time, there were always 'a lot of things to focus on' - and yet someone things got done.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    I mean, we've had dysfunction and corruption for a long time as well. I feel like we're going in circles, which I take as a personal failure, as I was hoping we would both reach some sort of a point of agreement in the middle. Good talking to you though. Appreciate you taking the time to talk over the issue, and if we were in person I'd buy you a beer.