20 ms·

Why is American administrative capacity in decline?

• darth_avocado 4y ago
  How much of this decline is due to the fact we do not measure the efficiency of administration in any form at all. We don’t measure success, we only measure the effort, which inherently creates a more inefficient system.
  • ryathal 4y ago
    A lot of the decline is down to poor incentives. Failure is often seen as a reason to ask for more money rather than stopping a program. In many ways actual success is disincentivised. If a contractor delivers on time and on budget, then they have to bid a new contract rather than extend an existing one. If a program reduces homelessness it no longer needs the same level of funding because there are less homeless. When crime is low it's hard to justify a new SWAT team.
• whatshisface 4y ago
  >In some areas, US administrative capacity remains world-beating, most obviously the military, which enjoys bipartisan and popular support, and vast investments of resources. Haha, the military is not well-administered. It is well-administered for a military, but things go on that would never be allowed in a private company. Remember the two recent naval accidents? The gang they found operating out of a fort? The fact that on-base accidents are the leading cause of casualties?
  • bwb 4y ago
    Which is good in some cases. Goverment, military, education, and health care should not be run like a private company.
    • willcipriano 4y ago
      Yeah, someone with the public purse should have a much higher degree of accountability than someone who is spending their own money. In OP's examples, they were much less accountable.
      • throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        In both public and private organizations the US suffers from people being less careful with other people's money or property than they would their own.
        • bern4444 4y ago
          Is that not true generally of people regardless of where they live?
          • throwaway0a5e 4y ago
            Certain cultures don't seem to be letting it run so out of control as to prevent them from getting anything done.
      • bwb 4y ago
        I think it can be made to have a high degree of accountability. There are a variety of budget approaches that can change the current nightmare. I really like the Singapore model, where government employees are highly compensated, have built a culture of efficiency, and there are repercussions if they don't deliver.
    • stop50 4y ago
      and yet is the us the worst example what happens when healthcare is privatised. higher costs for patients, regardless for insurance; more sick people, because the go less to the doc for an check up and the highest prices for meds, because they are unregulated.
  • jacobolus 4y ago
    He didn’t say it’s “well administered” (how well or poorly administered it is is multifaceted and certainly arguable). He said it has high “administrative capacity”. For example, the US military was able to deliver billions of dollars of equipment to Ukraine in a matter of weeks, sending dozens to hundreds of planeloads every day across an ocean, as part of a complicated worldwide supply chain. They did not need to ask permission for this (except from the President), run public hearings in advance, go through court battles, etc., but could just get started right away.
    • colpabar 4y ago
      Yes, I personally LOVE that the military can do so much without having to ask for permission.
      • robonerd 4y ago
        That didn't happen. They received orders to do all of this from civilian leadership.
      • scarface74 4y ago
        They did get permission from the civilian commander and chief.
        • olddustytrail 4y ago
          The title is "Commander in Chief". It's in the US Constitution. The phrase is a little older: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-chief https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-chief
  • sokoloff 4y ago
    Something is going to be the leading cause of casualties. In peacetime, it doesn't seem outrageous that that would be on-base accidents (especially if that includes automobile accidents and injuries during training exercises).
    • gibolt 4y ago
      Toilets kill ~40 people per year, obviously not all on military bases (I hope). Mundane things are deadly, simply because we use them everyday.
    • InefficientRed 4y ago
      > In peacetime The US was in two wars for nearly 2 decades, to say nothing of various other special operations, and accidents were a leading cause of deaths and permanent disability for a large number of those years. Readiness is important, but IMO, the Army does a ton of unnecessary and unnecessarily dangerous training for capabilities that are almost never needed (jumping, in particular, but also certain types of combat training). Most importantly, this destroys people's physical health for no reason. Secondarily, this also costs the taxpayer enormous sums of money (each permanent disability retirement for a 30 year old is many millions of dollars). The other branches might be more reasonable. Not sure.
      • Juliate 4y ago
        > Readiness is important, but IMO, the Army does a ton of unnecessary and unnecessarily dangerous training for capabilities that are almost never needed. Readiness is precisely about training for things that will almost never happen. Until they do.
        • InefficientRed 4y ago
          That observation doesn't justify all risks. To reduce to absurdity, clearly we shouldn't train for war by running war games in which soldiers actually shoot and kill each other, even though there's a compelling argument that this would probably be a very good way to maximize readiness... IMO, the number of jumps the Army does each year is far in excess of what is necessary for readiness.
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    I like what DoD is doing with companies like Anduril[1]. Basically build first on their own dime, then buy. [1] https://blog.anduril.com/rebooting-the-arsenal-of-democracy-anduril-mission-document-67fdbf442799 https://blog.anduril.com/rebooting-the-arsenal-of-democracy-...
  • chrchang523 4y ago
    Note that "well-administered for a military, but not well-administered in absolute terms" can be a feature rather than a bug, as long as the military is able to attract and utilize better human capital in times of trouble. I agree that our military has room for improvement, but I think it's fine that our most effective generalist administrators tend to be uninterested in the military when there are no dire threats.
  • Juliate 4y ago
    Because that would never happen in private companies? Or, by contrast, that would be _allowed_ in the military? As if, private companies were the pinnacle of human organization? Some assumptions to clear up here.
  • Ensorceled 4y ago
    > The fact that on-base accidents are the leading cause of casualties? Any demographic that is almost entirely young and, by selection, fit, accidents are guaranteed to be the leading cause of death.
    • whatshisface 4y ago
      Unless they're fighting a war.
  • renewiltord 4y ago
    > The fact that on-base accidents are the leading cause of casualties? What exactly do you expect here? You'd be happier if the leading cause were heart disease or warfare? The point is to be so good at everything else and so healthy that the only thing that can hurt you is error. That's success. The rank order of accidents isn't important. Only total quantity.
• jmeister 4y ago
  > An article on the decline of state capacity. Not a mention of affirmative action, disparate impact, or the ability to fire people. Liberals are committed to egalitarianism, simply unable to recognize massive differences in competence between humans. > “we don’t invest in administration, partly due to ideological opposition to the ability of government do its job.” > Yes, people don’t want to invest in government because we’ve seen what kind of people work in it since they unionized and we banned written exams. > “In some areas, US administrative capacity remains world-beating, most obviously the military, which enjoys bipartisan and popular support, and vast investments of resources.” > Yes, and it is the one place that uses IQ tests, and it has a lot of white males at the top. https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1534877165660930049 https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/153487716566093004... There is more on the guys Substack on how abuse of CRA and disparate impact has wrecked public sector competence.
  • Throw6away 4y ago
    That person’s Twitter feed is toxic. Richard Hanania comes across as someone with a definite ace to grind. Homophobic and misogynistic, to boot.
    • jmeister 4y ago
      I agree. But his analysis of CRA abuse is spot on. Check out interview with Gail Heriot, an experienced civil rights lawyer. “The worst person you know just made a good point” etc.
  • troon-lover 4y ago
  • arrosenberg 4y ago
    > Liberals are committed to egalitarianism, simply unable to recognize massive differences in competence between humans. I don't believe this is true at all. Many socialists do vote for the Democratic Party as the lesser of two evils, but liberals are not committed to egalitarianism at all costs. They have used the Federal bureaucracy as a jobs program since the end of the civil war. Similarly, the mitilary tends to be a jobs program for the more conservative parts of the country. Efficiency and performance has rarely ever been the goal, employment has.
• bushbaba 4y ago
  If the Government payed compelling wages they'd get top talent willing to make the change. Personally, why would I want to move from a FAANG to a government job just to deal with more B.S., 50%+ less compensation, and drastically slower career growth that's based on years of service.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • xyzzyz 4y ago
    It’s not only about pay. The government is in fact legally prohibited from trying to get top talent, because the methods to distinguish top talent are typically found to have disparate impact on the non-top talent, and so run afoul of civil rights laws. Indeed, the one branch of government that is distinguished by OP as still somewhat competent and capable, the military, is the only one that’s using IQ tests (ASVAB etc) in hiring.
    • 0xffff2 4y ago
      > "... is the only one that’s using IQ tests (ASVAB etc) in hiring." Do you realize how incredibly low the bar is for the ASVAB? I got very close to the highest possible score back when I was 17. Far higher than the highest requirement for any job in the Army. I am, at best, moderately above average in IQ. IMO the requirement of a college degree for some jobs is a stronger IQ discriminator than the ASVAB.
      • rootusrootus 4y ago
        The best part about getting a perfect score on the ASVAB was how impressed everyone claimed to be. I was thinking "Umm, this is kinda sad, guys."
      • pjscott 4y ago
        They're less concerned with getting top talent among the enlisted men -- that's what officers are for -- and instead want to avoid really dumb soldiers. That's what the minimum cut-off scores are for. There was an experiment during the Vietnam war where they waived these restrictions [1], and the results were a disaster for both the army and the low-scoring people who were let in. [1] https://www.gwern.net/reviews/McNamara https://www.gwern.net/reviews/McNamara
• systemvoltage 4y ago
  I always hear about how we need to tax, but never about how can we do 2x for the same amount of taxes that are already collected. Gov efficiency needs to be questioned and audited. I bet if we just clean up our house, it'd be much bigger than we thought. No newspapers are interested in reporting it, but they'll happily report how we need to tax this or that. I've worked with and in Government agencies. The amount of waste and inefficiencies out competes even the worst of large corporations. When agencies were new (1950-1970), we saw incredible progress and efficiencies. But, there is no one to clean up the crud that's built up over the years. We can't even do six sigma because that itself would become a bureaucratic endeavor. I've seen how six sigma works great in a nimble Japanese manufacturing company, but not so great in American mega corporation. I am not sure what the solution is, perhaps complete abolishment of the agency and starting a new one.
  • groby_b 4y ago
    Your theory falls apart in light of the fact that there are long running government agencies outside the US that are efficient. So, "crud buildup" isn't it, not by itself. There is, however, a good case to be made that the increasing politicization makes the job inherently harder. Statements like "I bet if we just clean our house" are exactly that - it is not a proposal that's in any way actionable, but if enough people say it, there will be increased pressure to justify actions, which creates more bureaucracy. Mind, I'm not saying there shouldn't be accountability. But we must move this discussion away from "Just do <simple slogan>" towards actual analysis, or the side effects of a populist discussion mean that administrative efforts drown in layers and layers of useless ass covering, just to shield from that pressure. Starting from scratch doesn't really solve - or even discover - the underlying problem either. It might be a tool to address issues, but we don't know until we concretely investigate what the problems and root causes are. Alas, that requires serious investment. And I really don't see a political climate where any effort to invest large amounts into rebuilding administrative capacity is successful. We're currently very much in a feedback loop. How to break that is, at least to me, ultimately a question of societal stability.
  • jltsiren 4y ago
    Efficiency is expensive in the short term. It usually requires investments, hiring new people, and spending some time changing the ways things are done. You will only see the benefits in the long term. Politicians often don't get this, and they may even deliberately choose not to get it. In the public sector, "efficiency" is usually a codeword for slashing budgets and assuming that agencies will magically get their work done with fewer resources.
• foolfoolz 4y ago
  i think this all comes down to pensions government jobs are low pay but people will take them for the lifetime pension after they retire. this incentivizes slow moving, long tenured, employees who have little motivation to do things differently. it attracts these people i think we would be in a better place without pensions and instead paying people better rates
  • bmitc 4y ago
    That’s true to a degree, but I lament the loss of pensions. People should be able to have that kind of security plus incentives to do a good job. I think an even worse problem is unions in the government. There, you have people that literally do nothing and yet are untouchable because of their union.
    • corrral 4y ago
      The nice thing about pensions is you can't redirect the money to increasing your competitiveness for scarce goods or advantages now, instead of saving it. "But isn't that a reduction of choice, so, a bad thing?" it would be, except that if enough of your peers also don't have that option, it means they can't outcompete you by harming their own retirement, so you don't need to do that in order to simply not fall behind. No more getting outcompeted for housing in good school districts because your peers are willing to live paycheck-to-paycheck and live on cat food in retirement, and you're not. And so on.
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      > I think an even worse problem is unions in the government. This sounds good, but my mother worked for the local government and it changed my mind. Public employees have the most capricious employer in existence -- voters. The union helps mitigate that. My mother would have had her pension cut to nothing after years with no cost-of-living wage adjustments if it were simply up to the voters.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• bhauer 4y ago
  > In some areas, US administrative capacity remains world-beating, most obviously the military, which enjoys bipartisan and popular support, and vast investments of resources. I think this claim requires support. Yes, military spending is high and has bipartisan support, but I don't particularly agree that it is a hallmark of highly capable administration. Funding does not equal capacity.
  • ethanbond 4y ago
    Uhhhh... being able to conduct two wars on the other side of the planet for decades and then having people so ignorant of the costs and complexity that they think it's not clearly a miracle of state capacity? That's obscene state capacity.
  • dodobirdlord 4y ago
    The US military supplies and operates bases all over the world, manages huge R&D and equipment pipelines, directly employs more people in the US than Walmart or Amazon, and is capable of incredible organizational and logistics feats like evacuating Afghanistan in a week and dumping an army’s worth of equipment into Ukraine in a month. The administrative capacity of the US military is very high, to the point that organizational and administrative issues are rarely a limiting factor in conducting operations.
• deleted 4y ago
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• dougmwne 4y ago
  I am fairly sure that decades of undermining trust in the federal government will at some point reach a tipping point where multiple states will no longer be interested in having a federal government. Just like Brexit, if you keep pointing at the feds as the source of all ill, eventually people will take you seriously and want out. And as with Brexit, states that find themselves on their own will be insignificant on the world stage, but with a surplus of sovereignty.
  • throwawaymanbot 4y ago
  • tootallgavin 4y ago
    Unlike Brexit, the first American civil war has set precedent to prevent secession. The first state to attempt secession will be labeled a word (like insurrectionist, fascist, racist, etc.) and then, like Ukraine, invaded.
    • gowld 4y ago
      Brexit was a pre-agreed process for secession. That's why it's different. US has anti-Federalists, though who can work to legally diminish the power of the central government.
      • arethuza 4y ago
        Also worth noting that the UK itself has been perfectly reasonable (at least so far) about constituent countries that want to consider leaving - Scotland had an independence referendum and Northern Ireland has as a part of the Good Friday Agreement a possibility for uniting with the Republic.
      • generalizations 4y ago
        Which IMHO would be a healthy counterbalance to the federalists who successfully increased the power of the central government during the 20th century.
• freecodyx 4y ago
  Accountability is the main issue. Private sector is much more lucrative. The public sector need people with high morals
  • hansel_der 4y ago
    are you saying that having morals puts one at a disadvantage or that jobs requiring accountability should not pay good because otherwise you'll mostly get people without morals?
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    I haven't seen a lot of evidence to support public employees having a moral problem. Unless you are referring to politicians, in which case I wholeheartedly agree. But these are who you are voting into office.
• corrral 4y ago
  This is a lot of words to say "the Constitution kinda sucks for a modern state & economy, civil law is kinda simply better than common law in at least this one particular way, and also the TL;DR answer to the headline, despite all that, is 'Republicans refuse to fully staff agencies'" The stuff about progressives at the top is weird. I don't know how they even found a large enough data set of enacted progressive policies to draw a conclusion about whether they're too policy-focused rather than admin-focused. Then the rest of the article is largely about how Republicans won't staff agencies properly, so how could it possibly matter how admin-focused progressives are? Progressives don't even control the democratic party, let alone have control of government, so I don't know what the point of the opening section was. [EDIT] That first bit's me summarizing the article's points, by the way, not just throwing in my own take, as several top-level posters seem to have decided to do. Admittedly, connecting the civil/common law divide to the courts section is mine, but considering that comes up over and over again in analyses of this problem, and that section's largely describing the exact effect that those others have also noticed, I think that's fair.
• pzone 4y ago
  A friend of mine who started working IT for a city government says: “There’s 50 government departments and like a dozen teams in the IT department who all handle different stuff. Each department uses their own niche software. Extremely clunky and confusing.” How do you fix management problems in situations like this? How do you create accountability where there is none?
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    Sounds like pretty much every large long-lived organization then.
  • moistly 4y ago
    What you don’t do is try to move them all into on system, like Canada did with its disastrous Phoenix pay system boondoggle. Here’s an article… and years later it is still not working right. https://globalnews.ca/news/3269011/phoenix-fiasco-one-year-public-service-pay/ https://globalnews.ca/news/3269011/phoenix-fiasco-one-year-p...
• munk-a 4y ago
  Imagine if everyone spent the last forty years watching half of the politicians talk about how awesome it is when you can one-up the government and how ineffective they are... and then being surprised that there is very little good will left towards the government. It's expensive for the government to do things because 1. Everyone knows the government wastes money on everything so why not charge them a higher price. 2. Nobody feels any guilt out of keeping as much money out of the government's hands as possible (since you can spend that money more efficiently!) 3. One political party gains points whenever they make inefficient spending decisions since it reinforces their narrative about the government being inefficient. Number 3 is often solely blamed but I think it's faded somewhat compared to 1 & 2. I don't think many GOP politicians intentionally make bad financial decisions with the hope of making the government look bad - but when they make mistakes the blame they receive is generally outweighed by the general malaise over inefficient government which supports their platform. Cheating the government is so popular and widely endorsed that Trump essentially ran for president on it.
• alfor 4y ago
  It’s funny that he use the empire state building and then talk about federal government. The government didn’t build the empire state building, a private corporation did. Now there is so much regulation that it would be impossible to get through the permit in 5 years. It’s the same here in Canada, all the infrastructure, building, farms, road that were built around 1900 are no longer possible with the level of regulation. We are getting into a kafkaesque state where the technology is super productive but the regulations swallow every improvement and them some. Well, who is John Galt?
• stickyricky 4y ago
  This is not a uniform problem. States like Washington has really great administrative capacity. Florida, Illinois, and Tennessee... not so much.
  • selectodude 4y ago
    Illinois has excellent administrative capacity. They just pay very dearly for it.
    • stickyricky 4y ago
      It is not comparable to Washington. Much less corruption. Must shorter waits. Much more trust in the system. And, as you mention, much less expensive.
  • gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
    What makes you say Florida lacks capacity?
    • stickyricky 4y ago
      Living there.
• onphonenow 4y ago
  A couple of things. * Govt is not so much about helping get things done (think of older projects like interstate highway systems) and is more focused on stopping things (5+ years of environmental reports to do anything meaningful). That's one big shift for better or worse depending on perspective. * Govt is graded HEAVILY on non-performance objectives - so things like compliance, equity, etc etc are critical issues, and the actual performance of programs which is much harder to measure is not a focus. I've helped on that stuff, it can make your head spin. You'll be trying to do a reading program for kids and in San Francisco need to train staff on the McBride Principles for Northern Ireland and much more. * Major focus on getting folks in trouble vs saying "good job" internally to govt systems. So many folks learn to keep their heads down, the tall grass gets cut. I have great sympathy for ALL line / front end staff in these systems (think teachers, police etc) trying to get stuff done. There are now 100 ways to be punished and somewhat fewer ways to be celebrated.
  • advisedwang 4y ago
    > Govt is not so much about helping get things done (think of older projects like interstate highway systems) and is more focused on stopping things (5+ years of environmental reports to do anything meaningful). That's one big shift for better or worse depending on perspective. This is a political choice (or I guess, an outcome of political environment). Strategizing how to return to a politics of getting this done for citizens is probably more use than any culture war stuff going on now.
• asciimov 4y ago
  Our administrative capacity is in decline by design. The American people were long ago sold on the idea that the government was just too big and their lives would be better if less of their tax dollars went to fund all this unnecessary government. For more than 50 years the Republican party has been actively trying to shrink the government. Some of their plans, such as starving government programs for money have been so effective that their Democrat counterparts had to also downsize departments in order to keep them alive. Some examples of this starvation are the burdens placed on the USPS to fully fund future pensions, and the continual under-funding of the IRS.
  • MadSudaca 4y ago
    Maybe if it wasn’t for the republican party things would be even worse. In my view a smaller state should be easier to administer.
  • throw8383833jj 4y ago
    And yet, govt spending as percentage of GDP is the biggest it's ever been! AT a whopping 44% total: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spending-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spendi... Just federal alone is 30%! just google: "govt spend as percentage of GDP" I think the american public has been sold on the idea that govt should be bigger and bigger and more bloated than ever. Most people either approve or just don't care.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      The vast majority of that spending is in one of three categories: Social Security, Medicare, and the Military. Yet that isn't what is being cut in the name of "Government too big!". In fact, those categories only seem to be growing in cost with no apparent measures by the GOP to curb them.
      • rootusrootus 4y ago
        > Social Security, Medicare, and the Military. Three areas of government that have broad bipartisan support. The right wants smaller government, in theory, but they also want to "keep the government out of my Medicare!" So the spending isn't ever going to down, only up.
• swearwolf 4y ago
  I have a theory about this: the idea that, as Reagan put it, "The nine most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" have become so deeply embedded in our national consciousness that almost nobody, on the left or right, really believes that the government can be a force for good anymore. Because it's so deeply embedded, I think it's become self fulfilling prophecy.
  • themitigating 4y ago
    I also think we need to look at why that is. Is it because of personal experience, unreasonable expectations, and/or people pushing the idea for their own goals
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    The right assumes the government is incompetent, and then crafts policy to kneecap government at every opportunity. The left assumes the government could be competent, but only if everyone tries to make it so, and they know what the right is doing (all of this policy is completely aboveboard and public). Net result, everyone can safely assume the government is incompetent. It is much easier to prevent it from working than to make it work. We'd have to have bipartisan interest in making it work effectively, and we do not have that.
    • tcmart14 4y ago
      Or another way to put it, it actually requires effort to make it work, but it requires no effort to not make it work. Its about like saying "hey that kid is drowning! I could swim and go save him, but instead I am going to go get a Slurpee."
      • kansface 4y ago
        No, in my estimate, its more like, you have to be willing to piss some people off to make stuff go. Perhaps better wording would be that you can't accomplish things without sacrifice. We aren't willing to do that. You can't have CA's environmental review process and timely/cost effective construction. You can't have SF's discretionary review process and ... any construction, really. You can't solve the housing crisis without building housing, but to do that, you'd actually have to build housing. The cost of that housing is multiples of the public sectors budget, so you'd need to first of all, admit that, and then allow the private sector to do it. The private sector only does stuff that makes a profit... so we'd just rather not build housing than change regulations. Now, we get to say we like affordable housing and protecting the environment when our policies don't result in affordable housing and we push people out of environmentally efficient cities into the suburbs/exurbs/wilderness. Fundamentally, if you want to be able to build stuff in CA, you have to get rid of all of the universal, asymmetric vetoes that allow any person to spend $200 to cause millions in costs via review processes.
• MockObject 4y ago
  • tylerrobinson 4y ago
    How would you, as an elected government official, build a project outside of government?
    • MockObject 4y ago
      NGOs would. Government might provide funding, under the awareness that it was temporary, and could be cut by the next Republican administration. (On the other hand, Republicans at their peak weren't willing to totally defund the NEA under Gingrich, so legends of red pencils slashing willy nilly may be exaggerated.)
  • sky-kedge0749 4y ago
• j_walter 4y ago
  We have seen issues with those in government not wanting to do what is best overall and instead think they can do better themselves. Oregon has many great examples of that...the biggest being the Cover Oregon mishap. Hundreds of millions were spent to setup their own Obamacare website instead of using the Feds...and it was completely mishandled. Months late, over budget, missing information, not able to process the volume needed...and at the end of the day they just pointed the finger at Oracle...despite tons of documents provided that showed poor oversight by the government. After multiple lawsuits Oregon got $100M back of the $240M they paid...but that's was a stupid number of dollars to be spent in the first place providing a place that ultimately targeted just a few hundred thousand people (at most...for 2022 it was 147K). You can research their COVID unemployment debacle as another fumble in administrative capacity.
  • alfalfasprout 4y ago
    The same could be said about healthcare.gov in the first place though. The reality is most user-facing government software is horribly designed. This problem isn't unique to software actually, it boils down to how government contracting works and how even after someone gets the contract it's very much requirements driven with little room for flexibility and A LOT of overhead.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    > the Cover Oregon mishap This should be a strong counterargument, at least in Oregon, any time some schmuck says something dumb like "Ya don't get fired for choosing Oracle." It should, in fact, be grounds for immediate termination. Cisco, too.
• morninglight 4y ago
  Assuming that one cannot administer their way out of ignorance, there is not much remaining to administer. .
• kansface 4y ago
  This was a pretty disappointing take in my estimate. It mostly seems to spend its time scapegoating republicans while ignoring the elephant in the room. CA is building a 100 billion train from Bakersfield (379,879) to Merced (84,081). SF, specifically, is perhaps the most dysfunctional city in the country... spending outrageous sums of money accomplishing very little, and there are ~no~ only 8% devious republicans in sight! The 2 mile Van Ness ~light rail~ bus line took approximately 2 decades to complete! Some specifics: > Does anyone seriously doubt that a federal UI system would be better run than the state-run versions that collapsed during the pandemic? Yes, I do (seriously doubt that)! The last time the federal government took on something like this, it was a train wreck which relied on the industry taking on tours of duty to fix it. The notion that the Federal Government is more competent than the states is belied by the series of articles being written in the first place! Is it better for the feds to something once than for the states to do it 50 times - that's a different question altogether. > There are simply fewer federal government employees relative to the tasks we ask of them. As a percentage of the population, the federal workforce was 1.13 percent in 1967 but shrank to 0.64 percent by 2018. We see a similar decline with the IRS... We didn't have computers in 1967. Did human productivity not increase more than 2x in the last 51 years? Why do we need more humans? Did complexity in tax code outpace gains in productivity? Has the IRS not modernized (spending money elsewhere)? I feel like this stat is totally irrelevant to any understanding of the problem and moreover, the suggested solution is perfectly in line with the fundamental problem the author is trying to solve (lets throw money at ineffective governance because that's what we do). > If my interpretation is right, the Republicans who are creating administrative dysfunction described above are also contributing to declining state capacity by picking judges inherently suspicious of administrative power. This is not strictly Republicans' doing. We continuously cheered as Trump policies were stricken by the courts. As a society as a whole, we've continually pushed administration into the judicial branch - out of cowardice and opportunity alike.
  • baggy_trough 4y ago
    The Van Ness lane is not light rail. It's simply a bus lane. The expense was, they say, due to utilities under the road.
• jmyeet 4y ago
  This article touches on the key point here: the government exists to represent the interests of the capital-owning class. This isn't a Republican or Democrat issue. There's really no difference when it comes to that. Additionally, since the Reagan era, government institutions have been defunded, attacked and undermined by successive (primarily Republican) adminstrations. The inevitable ineffectiveness that results is then used as an argument for further defunding. But here's the one mistake the article makes: it's confusing Democrats with progressives and fundamentally mischaracterizes Democratic Party motivations. There are like maybe 4 actual progressives in the Democratic Party at the Federal level. The Democratic Party hates actual progressives. Just look at the primary in the Texas 28th just recently. Pelosi and Clyburn went out of their way to campaign for Henry Cuellar who is pro-gun and the only anti-abortion Democrat in Congress over the actual progressive Cisneros. The Democrats (including Biden) were architects of the 1994 Crime Bill that is perhaps the biggest factor in mass incarceration in the US. Not so fun fact: the US is ~3% of the world population but has ~25% of the world's prisoners. The entire purpose of the Democratic Party is to say "look at how terrible the Republicans are" and use that for fundraising. In any European country the Democrats would be considered a conservative (probably center right) party. So it's not that the Democrats are too focused on policy rather than administrative capacity (as the article argues) but rather they're focused entirely on aesthetics. The Democratic Party loves nothing more than appearing to do something without having to do anything. Let me add something to the specific example of the Fifth Circuit: > A very good example of this comes in the form of a recent 5th Circuit decision that essentially gutted the ability of the SEC to do much of its job. In Jarkesy v. Securities and Exchange Commission, the court ruled that the SEC’s use of administrative hearings violated the right to a jury trial, and therefore was unconstitutional. This is a major break from almost a century of precedent that accepted that the SEC could employ administrative hearings and administrative law judges. What people need to realize here is that courts aren't apolitical polymaths presiding in a vacuum. Courts (including the Supreme Court) are and have always been political. If you look at the 5th Circuit appeals court judges [1], 12 are appointed by Republicans, 5 by Democrats. Undermining institutions like the SEC is not an accident. It's by design. It's part of a system that doesn't want the capital-owning class regulated. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Fifth_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...
• rewgs 4y ago
  To directly answer the title of the post: because human beings are horrible at grappling with The Prisoner's Dilemma. It is a psychological blindspot that (I have no data but anecdotes to back this up, but I'm still quite sure of it) I would wager humans fail often enough that, at scale, it acts as a sort of expression of entropy.
  • elmomle 4y ago
    Most of the problems of this world come down to us being engaged in scads of massive Prisoner's Dilemmas with (generally) fairly fast memory decay. NIMBYism, Realpolitik, etc. all come down to Prisoner's Dilemma--most people want a better world but nobody wants to be taken advantage of by others' selfish actions.
    • rewgs 4y ago
      Precisely. Not sure why my comment is getting downvoted, but it’s nice to hear from someone else who sees things similarly.
• twblalock 4y ago
  It comes down to voter expectations. For example, if a European government or the government of Japan had allowed their public transit system to become even close to as bad as the systems we have in the USA, that government would not be re-elected. People in the UK love to complain about their train system, even though it is better than anything people in the USA can dream of. American voters have resigned themselves to the idea that government is going to fail to provide certain things, so they aren't surprised or outraged when that turns out to be the case, so our politicians don't fear for their jobs. Nothing will change unless politicians know they won't get re-elected if the government fails to execute.
• Spooky23 4y ago
  I’ve worked in government, small and large corporate in many capacities over a period of years. Most of this is bunk. The government is really good at operations and incredible at capital spending and management. In general, operations in larger government entities are documented, audited and executed to a standard only found in regulated industries. Even then, companies suck too - look at Bank of America losing millions in cash due to incompetence and poor controls as an example. The government’s key weaknesses are around change, which is difficult, and governance, which limits the ability of professional managers to run their business. At the Federal level, Congress tightly controls appropriations and sets priorities. Sometimes that means that the full resources of the US are deployed at a target, other times that means that a critical problem goes unsolved because the program is starved of resources. Witnessing how COVID response was managed in different states was both horrifying and inspiring. You get the government you want. All of that was enabled by the massive mobilization of Federal resources. The Trump administration, which suffered from many self-inflicted crises and issue with ability to execute, was able to leverage the bureaucracy to get the response going. In short, the US government accomplished something incredible through the pandemic. The capability is there, but the politics drive inaction.
  • ryathal 4y ago
    In my experience with government for every great example there is another where huge amounts of time an money are wasted on paperwork and audits to prove money isn't being wasted or misspent. Government is also great at creating the appearance of work or progress, but rarely delivery of true value.
  • carapace 4y ago
    I wish I could upvote this comment twice. People are assuming the hypothesis but I don't think it stands up in the first place. Here in SF we just replaced a bridge and are in the middle of diggin a big ol' tunnel but you still find people complaining that "we don't build". We build. We have also already built most of the stuff we need (e.g. SF Bay Area has all the bridges we need already.) And also things are more complex now, and we know more about the consequences of our actions, so we're more cautious (e.g. environmental reviews, etc.) There are some progressives who seem to put ideology above effective action but they don't last (e.g the DA who just got recalled. He did some good work but he couldn't get the daily job done so he's out.)
• tejtm 4y ago
  Because they eat their young?
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  “ New IRS spending would more than pay for itself, and yet Republicans routinely call to further gut it.” The IRS admitting to ‘targeting’ republican groups was a disaster. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-aggressive-scrutiny-of-conservative-groups https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-... This is still referenced in republican circles.
  • nitwit005 4y ago
    That problem was related to the lack of budget though. Congress demanded they perform a complex evaluation of who should be eligible for tax exemption, with little staff. Unsurprisingly they resorted to shortcut methods like searching for groups with political terms in their names. As that article notes, they did also target liberal groups in the same way. The hearings they held basically found they were doing a poor job generally. There's this pattern of cutting funding, and then using the disasters caused by the funding cuts as "proof" the government can't do anything right.
• jyounker 4y ago
  The disassembly of American administrative capacity isn't a failure of policy or imagination. It's the Republican party's greatest policy success. In the words of Grover Norquist, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
  • ARandumGuy 4y ago
    That's my opinion as well. Since Regan, the Republicans have done everything they can to diminish government capability, and increase corporate power. The Democrats have been unable to stop them, unwilling to stop them, or actively helping them accomplish this. The why and how is far more then can be adequately explained in an internet comment. But broadly, the US government is capable of doing things to help people, but a lot of time and money has been spent to make sure they're not allowed to help people.
    • pjscott 4y ago
      I'm not sure how this explanation fits with California: it's a very blue state, about 77% of the senators are Democrats, it has one of the highest per-capita tax revenues in the country -- and it's famous for being an administrative trash fire. Is California just a weird outlier? Because I don't think we can blame the Republicans for this one.
      • jyounker 4y ago
        California is far less liberal than you imagine. This is the state of Ronald Regan and B-1 Bob Dornan. Conservatives got to have it their way in California long before, and they left their mark on the state. The single greatest accomplishment was Proposition-13. It caps property increases to a level that is lower than inflation, with the end result that property tax bases are more-or-less continually shrinking. This leads to all sorts of effects: * Local governments are poor. In particular, local governments can't afford to pay for their own schools, shifting education to the state level. * It increases NIMBYism because there is no downside to property value increase. * Municipalities strongly prefer high-end development. * Government revenues come primarily from sales tax and income tax. These sources are highly sensitive to economic disruptions, so when the economy tanks, the state becomes extremely poor. * It gives entrenched businesses and landlords some advantages over new ones, as their fixed expenses decline over time. To give you an idea of the scale that we're talking about: In the early 2000's the city of San Francisco had a shortfall of $100 million one year. If the Transamerica building's property taxes had increased along with its value, it would have been paying an additional $50 million in taxes that year. That's was half the city's shortfall. [As an aside, anyone who tells you that California has high taxes probably knows nothing about how property taxes work there.] Also, don't let me get started on the recall systems and the proposition systems. Learn from California. Direct democracy sucks.
• tmaly 4y ago
  This article seems to forget how this country was started and how the federal government was formed. There has always been this argument over states rights and strong central government.
• fritigern 4y ago
  Chinese leaders are usually from STEM fields: engineers, scientists... As a result Chinese administration runs pretty smoothly. American leaders are usually lawyers, pol sci majors and similar folk. No wonder things are not running smoothly.
  • barsonme 4y ago
    I mean, they’re also, uh, slightly different styles of government.
    • fritigern 4y ago
      You are right of course. But I think the different backgrounds of the governing elites is just as important.
  • sky-kedge0749 4y ago
    You want lawyers writing, implementing and judging under the law if rule of law is important. They're the experts, by definition. My understanding of Chinese government is that the law as written is, let's say, more flexible.
    • fritigern 4y ago
      I don't agree. You want lawyers to write the laws, but not in deciding what laws to legislate.
      • sky-kedge0749 4y ago
        The law is pretty technical. Having people who don't understand law as legislators is like having a product manager or stakeholder for a tech product that doesn't understand tech. It's not impossible but requires some extra work and moves a lot of influence into the lawyer's/tech person's hands anyway. It happens where lobbyists sometimes literally write bills that gets passed into law.
        • 4y ago
• m0llusk 4y ago
  Some robust metrics for administrative capacity and performance would be good, but it is not obvious how that would work. It is bothersome that much of this analysis ends up being layers of questionable conclusions. For example, the idea that the US has trouble with subways is often justified by reference to the LA subway and the NYC Second Avenue subway. Closer inspection, though, reveals that the LA subway was put off for so long in part because it was known that it would require much tunneling through rock which would be very expensive. In the case of the NYC Second Avenue subway the initial proposal was made roughly one hundred years ago and was rejected as unreasonably expensive to attempt because of the extensive complications. The subway plan was raised again and again over the years each time being rejected as unrealistically expensive. Then recently it was decided that improvements to tunneling technology would finally make the Second Avenue subway possible, but unfortunately when completed it turned out to have been unreasonably expensive to build. Instead of taking into account the context and nearly one hundred years of analysis concluding that the Second Avenue subway could not be practically built people instead conclude that the cost overruns are part of some mysterious malaise that has settled on all infrastructure construction work. It could easily be the case that American administrative capacity is not in decline, but society has become more complex. Certainly the move from paper records to digital media has greatly improved administrative capacity across almost all commercial industry and government.