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There's a weird standard established in this post: you're either a bureaucrat or an "innovator," with the implication being that only innovators do "real" engin

There's a weird standard established in this post: you're either a bureaucrat or an "innovator," with the implication being that only innovators do "real" engineering. I don't know of any engineering profession in the real world that adheres to this standard: the gold standard for actual engineering is consistency within operational margins: building the cheapest and strongest bridge that doesn't collapse given the traffic allowed to go over it, airplanes that don't fall out of the sky, software systems that can reproduce their results, &c.

nxobject 3y ago
On top of that, the implicit assumptions about how to identify a bureaucrat, and the historical claims about what they've accomplish, get a wee bit expansive at the end: > There are widespread popular revolts against the evil bureaucratic pyramids: Milei, yellow vests, the recent Dutch elections, the Trucker revolt in Canada, the Bukele revolution in El Salvador; even Elon buying X and firing 75% of the head count. This will continue to spread as long as the bureaucrat remains unaccountable. Bureaucratic reform is the defining problem of our time. Bureaucrats and their NPC enablers have ruined much of what made Western Civilization worthwhile. They’ve corrupted the scientific process, technological development, subverted governments, ruined health, created conditions of anarcho-tyranny in the cities and have generally wrecked most of what they’ve touched. Their proliferation is slowly strangling everything, just as a proliferation of intestinal parasites will weaken and ultimately kill if unchecked. Parasites have no natural predators. You need some kind of medicine to get rid of them. We can study the work of successful bureaucratic reformers; Lee Kuan Yew, St. Peter Damian, Napoleon, Park Chung Hee, Deng Xiaoping, Putin, Marius, St. Ignatius of Loyola: also the unsuccessful would-be reformers such as Nixon. The most important first step, though, is recognizing the bureaucrat. That being said, it's probably because I don't know what an NPC means in this context. Maybe it's because I'm one myself.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I hadn't made it that far. That veers firmly from "stupid chest-puffing about real engineering" to "reactionary dogwhistling." When I search for the author, one of the only other sources I can find for him is bylines in a neo-Nazi-affiliated magazine[1][2]. [1]: https://www.takimag.com/contributor/ScottLocklin/161/ https://www.takimag.com/contributor/ScottLocklin/161/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taki%27s_Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taki%27s_Magazine
- tough 3y ago
  NPC's come from gaming/internet meme culture. Non-playable character
  - plorkyeran 3y ago
    The relevant context is that there's a right-wing meme of calling people who disagree with you NPCs with the implication that they're just regurgitating talking points that they've heard, similar to how video game NPCs tend to have a small fixed set of lines that they say.
o11c 3y ago
Also, there's an important ability: to be able to come up with new or modified procedures.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Certainly! My goal wasn't to claim an equally ridiculous opposite position, only to observe that a lot of very good engineering is completely indistinguishable from what the author sneeringly calls bureaucracy.
qball 3y ago
>There's a weird standard established in this post This post is just restating Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, but in way too many words and with a bit more of a polemic bent that makes it slightly less accurate than it could have been. The trick is separating "people there to drive an organization's goals forward" (or 'innovator') and "people there to advance the power of the organization" (or 'bureaucrat'). You need to protect the first group of people from the second group of people- the more protected they are, the more productive your nation... to a point. There have been many attempts at this- this is the key insight behind Marxist thought, after all (the fact that it ends in complete ideological capture 100% of the time is positive proof that the optimal amount of "parasitic load" on a society is not zero, and that you actually need competent leaders else you get taken over by unremovable, unaccountable grifters). Recent examples of this class's parasitic excess and non-accountability are left as an exercise for the reader. Of course, the post is also wrong in another way: these parasites actually do have a weakness. They get fed to a conquering society by the productive if they perceive the parasitic load the enemy would impose on them is less than the one imposed by the domestic parasites. The fact that societies capable of conquering any Western nation are in short supply doesn't change the fact that, historically (and even still today, in some parts of the world) this is how it has always been.

nxobject 3y ago

On top of that, the implicit assumptions about how to identify a bureaucrat, and the historical claims about what they've accomplish, get a wee bit expansive at the end: > There are widespread popular revolts against the evil bureaucratic pyramids: Milei, yellow vests, the recent Dutch elections, the Trucker revolt in Canada, the Bukele revolution in El Salvador; even Elon buying X and firing 75% of the head count. This will continue to spread as long as the bureaucrat remains unaccountable. Bureaucratic reform is the defining problem of our time. Bureaucrats and their NPC enablers have ruined much of what made Western Civilization worthwhile. They’ve corrupted the scientific process, technological development, subverted governments, ruined health, created conditions of anarcho-tyranny in the cities and have generally wrecked most of what they’ve touched. Their proliferation is slowly strangling everything, just as a proliferation of intestinal parasites will weaken and ultimately kill if unchecked. Parasites have no natural predators. You need some kind of medicine to get rid of them. We can study the work of successful bureaucratic reformers; Lee Kuan Yew, St. Peter Damian, Napoleon, Park Chung Hee, Deng Xiaoping, Putin, Marius, St. Ignatius of Loyola: also the unsuccessful would-be reformers such as Nixon. The most important first step, though, is recognizing the bureaucrat. That being said, it's probably because I don't know what an NPC means in this context. Maybe it's because I'm one myself.

woodruffw 3y ago
I hadn't made it that far. That veers firmly from "stupid chest-puffing about real engineering" to "reactionary dogwhistling." When I search for the author, one of the only other sources I can find for him is bylines in a neo-Nazi-affiliated magazine[1][2]. [1]: https://www.takimag.com/contributor/ScottLocklin/161/ https://www.takimag.com/contributor/ScottLocklin/161/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taki%27s_Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taki%27s_Magazine
tough 3y ago
NPC's come from gaming/internet meme culture. Non-playable character
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  The relevant context is that there's a right-wing meme of calling people who disagree with you NPCs with the implication that they're just regurgitating talking points that they've heard, similar to how video game NPCs tend to have a small fixed set of lines that they say.

o11c 3y ago

Also, there's an important ability: to be able to come up with new or modified procedures.

woodruffw 3y ago
Certainly! My goal wasn't to claim an equally ridiculous opposite position, only to observe that a lot of very good engineering is completely indistinguishable from what the author sneeringly calls bureaucracy.

qball 3y ago

>There's a weird standard established in this post This post is just restating Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, but in way too many words and with a bit more of a polemic bent that makes it slightly less accurate than it could have been. The trick is separating "people there to drive an organization's goals forward" (or 'innovator') and "people there to advance the power of the organization" (or 'bureaucrat'). You need to protect the first group of people from the second group of people- the more protected they are, the more productive your nation... to a point. There have been many attempts at this- this is the key insight behind Marxist thought, after all (the fact that it ends in complete ideological capture 100% of the time is positive proof that the optimal amount of "parasitic load" on a society is not zero, and that you actually need competent leaders else you get taken over by unremovable, unaccountable grifters). Recent examples of this class's parasitic excess and non-accountability are left as an exercise for the reader. Of course, the post is also wrong in another way: these parasites actually do have a weakness. They get fed to a conquering society by the productive if they perceive the parasitic load the enemy would impose on them is less than the one imposed by the domestic parasites. The fact that societies capable of conquering any Western nation are in short supply doesn't change the fact that, historically (and even still today, in some parts of the world) this is how it has always been.