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> Is it too much to ask for a government that both governs and is actually competent? Evidently yes. They can barely govern let alone manage technical infrastr

> Is it too much to ask for a government that both governs and is actually competent? Evidently yes. They can barely govern let alone manage technical infrastructure. Just look at the abysmal vaccine roll-out. 9 months to plan for it; that's an eternity in the software development world where we're constantly faced with logical and logistical issues on the daily. We can have millions of people streaming gigabytes of data all at once, millions of people submitting their tax returns, millions of packages being delivered every hour and yet we couldn't pull this off in 9 freakin months? I don't buy any of their excuses. It's just sheer incompetence and it makes me so mad. That's not to say they don't have challenges. Outdated systems, obsolete programs, hell even outdated employees; I know so many rejects that end up managing government systems because they couldn't cut it in corporate. One of them is a good friend of mine. He got let go when he tried to replace a modern web-app with a WinForms app. He's actually a very good person and intelligent, but a horrible dev and I've no idea how he ever got into software development, but the government gig he has loves him. EDIT: here's another user post in this thread that somewhat echoes my last paragraph: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25586066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25586066

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> We can have millions of people streaming gigabytes of data all at once, millions of people submitting their tax returns, millions of packages being delivered every hour and yet we couldn't pull this off in 9 freakin months? That streaming wasn't rolled out instantly. It took years of building network infrastructure to get to this point. You might say that rolling out the vaccine is trivial in comparison. But the vaccine requires building a minus-80-degree cold chain. That's... not a trivial task.
- _trampeltier 6y ago
  They new it since January https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25334140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25334140
- y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
  > That streaming wasn't rolled out instantly. It took years of building network infrastructure to get to this point. In its inception yes, because that was new. It's much much quicker now and certainly far quicker than 9 months. Vaccinating people is not new and the technology to assist in making that process smooth is also not new. What's new is the restrictions upon which the vaccine can be stored at certain temps and the scale at which they can produce the vaccines. Neither of which are really logistical problems, at least not in the areas they're currently falling short on. Which brings me to: > the vaccine requires building a minus-80-degree cold chain. That's... not a trivial task. That's not where it's failing though. They knew that part well ahead of time and knew where to distribute them. The failure is occurring at other junctions along the way. In fact at Stanford, one of the biggest issues was a software algorithm (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stanford-apologizes-doctors-after-protests-erupt-over-botched-vaccine-rollout-n1251777 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stanford-apologizes-doc...)
threatofrain 6y ago
In a functioning democracy the top bosses are ultimately the voters. The voters are free to reject the next slate of incumbents coming up for re-election and choose individuals that express technical command of policy.
- InTheArena 6y ago
  Not really. The only elections that really matter are the primaries. In California and CO, once you have that locked up, the party machinery will make sure that no other canonicate gets elected.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

> We can have millions of people streaming gigabytes of data all at once, millions of people submitting their tax returns, millions of packages being delivered every hour and yet we couldn't pull this off in 9 freakin months? That streaming wasn't rolled out instantly. It took years of building network infrastructure to get to this point. You might say that rolling out the vaccine is trivial in comparison. But the vaccine requires building a minus-80-degree cold chain. That's... not a trivial task.

_trampeltier 6y ago
They new it since January https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25334140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25334140
y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
> That streaming wasn't rolled out instantly. It took years of building network infrastructure to get to this point. In its inception yes, because that was new. It's much much quicker now and certainly far quicker than 9 months. Vaccinating people is not new and the technology to assist in making that process smooth is also not new. What's new is the restrictions upon which the vaccine can be stored at certain temps and the scale at which they can produce the vaccines. Neither of which are really logistical problems, at least not in the areas they're currently falling short on. Which brings me to: > the vaccine requires building a minus-80-degree cold chain. That's... not a trivial task. That's not where it's failing though. They knew that part well ahead of time and knew where to distribute them. The failure is occurring at other junctions along the way. In fact at Stanford, one of the biggest issues was a software algorithm (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stanford-apologizes-doctors-after-protests-erupt-over-botched-vaccine-rollout-n1251777 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stanford-apologizes-doc...)

threatofrain 6y ago

In a functioning democracy the top bosses are ultimately the voters. The voters are free to reject the next slate of incumbents coming up for re-election and choose individuals that express technical command of policy.

InTheArena 6y ago
Not really. The only elections that really matter are the primaries. In California and CO, once you have that locked up, the party machinery will make sure that no other canonicate gets elected.