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IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are

by eecc 2y ago

IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are always tainted and currently championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart these collective machines. Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible.

glutamate 2y ago
Didn't know Max Weber was lurking on HN.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  It's true if you're ignoring the no-true-scottman fallacy. Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the worst exploitative behavior. But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.
  - analog31 2y ago
    So far all of the bad things I've heard about our system, such as the economic unsustainability and now this, are effects that will happen in the perpetual future.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      You have to think about who you’re listening too. The economic sustainability of the actions Trump has taken so far is a pittance: * The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980 on a per capita basis. It’s not the largest per capita it’s ever been. > The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap. > Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal budget while a complete government collapse for a number of reasons including that the government won’t have anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes. [1] * The largest discretionary spending area is the military at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the government’s spend each year. Even [2] which is a right wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and just hand-waves the pension improvement as “significant”. But cuts aren’t focusing on the biggest employer within the government like the military. * The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who haven’t been on the job long enough to have protections. This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost certainly across the lowest bands since the government pays based on seniority. This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you think the actions he’s taking, because they’re highly visible, are solving the problem when in fact he’s not actually making any meaningful dent. That’s why he made a big show about the deportation flights but not talking about how the places he’s sending them to aren’t the places the people are from - he’s bullied Costa Rica into accepting whoever he send [3]. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref... [2] https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/fiscal-effects-of-reducing-the-federal-workforce/ https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/fi... [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-deportation-flight-costa-rica-asian-migrants-san-jose-rcna192902 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-deportation-fl...
  - Gormo 2y ago
    > Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human intentions and choices, just like every other organizational model in society. Attributing specific moral inclinations to an organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions than printed ones.
potato3732842 2y ago
[flagged]
- squigz 2y ago
  > They're positioned to make money hand over fist no matter how things go. This is why they tend to move toward other things, like ... dismantling the US government.
- Gerardo1 2y ago
  > who are pushing things in dumb directions because their careers and wealth are tied to what they do for work so they advocated for those things to be advanced to the point of absurdity and everyone on their coat tails cheers for it because they benefit too. Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there? Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example. Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on. It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them. But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is. If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.
justin66 2y ago
> IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems They're just firing people at random, they haven't discovered any innovative new way to make systems more efficient. ("at random" is a bit generous and ignores the retaliation against political adversaries)
- mrayycombi 2y ago
  He's going to fill the empty slots with loyal cronies he can fire at will. This is, I think, just "stage 1"
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    Changing the rules so gov employees can be fired "at will" is an explicit goal of Project 2025
- theshrike79 2y ago
  It's not "at random". Every shuttered department had been investigating one of Elmo's properties...
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > It's not "at random". Every shuttered department had been investigating one of Elmo's properties... ¿Porque no los dos? Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons: * https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federal-916e6819104f04f44c345b7dde4904d5 https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa... Firing the folks dealing with bird flu: * https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-fdd6495cbe44c96d471ae8c6cf4dd0a8 https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-... Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA (including maintenance mechanics) even though it's already short staffed: * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo Random and spiteful (?).
  - Chronoyes 2y ago
    [flagged]
bdd8f1df777b 2y ago
Bureaucracy is always risk averse. Without outside intervention, they will always try to operate as before.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  This is the point: A well functioning bureaucracy allows for repeatable predictable outcomes
- alistairSH 2y ago
  But is that a problem? Or is that functioning as intended? Generally speaking, I want my government to be stable, predictable, and consistent over fairly long time horizons.
  - DAGdug 2y ago
    Depends on how they weigh the cost of a false positive versus false negative decision. The former seems to often be the key focus of a bureaucracy, slowing down the rate of diffusion of new technologies even among willing adopters.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Every human knows that governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way. It's been mocked since the dawn of times. The issue is that you don't toy around with big legacy systems like you do with twitter. To satisfy their little immaturity and get political points on their fans they start ripping off everything without enough time. If they started real medium term efforts to analyze, organize and then migrate it would be different. Plus there are other factors due to human group and political time that will come back later and muddy things up again when someone feels like fixing elon's patch.
  - jjav 2y ago
    > governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way Also, what's important to understand is that inefficiency in a corporation is a bug, but inefficiency in government is a feature. Government needs to have checks and balances at every stage, which by definition is inefficient. Which in the case of government is a wonderful thing. There is a word for a perfectly efficient government: dictatorship
sanderjd 2y ago
Not always. Both the Digital Service and 18F appear to be (to have been...) good faith efforts to apply state of the art system engineering to the federal bureaucracy, and quite successfully. This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame where blame is deserved.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  I don't think it's just one, unfortunately. It's not even much of a co-opt; more just an inevitable progression of the ideology that was held by that administration since the beginning.
  - JohnHaugeland 2y ago
    Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress, so he took an existing department, removed all the people, switched it to do a different job, moved it to a different state, and replaced its name. It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.
    - cowboylowrez 2y ago
      yeah from what I understand the original focus of the department was to make the software better serve its customers. its obvious that trump doesn't like congress, judicials, laws. heh cutting government waste is actually a good cause but you need skilled no nonsense auditors and well I think by inspecting trump's resume and reputation, I bet he REALLY doesn't like auditors haha
    - skissane 2y ago
      > Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress, When was he “slapped down by congress”? He signed the executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day - obviously his transition team’s lawyers had drafted it for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional authorities for DOGE. But it wasn’t like he asked Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they said ‘no’ - he planned to bypass them all along. Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
croes 2y ago
The government's system should mainly be secure, relibale and durable. State-of-the-art is seldom all three of them.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  > all three of them or even one
- acdha 2y ago
  That’s just a question of how you define “state-of-the-art”. The term doesn’t preclude secure or reliable - prior to the “move fast and break things” era where adtech dominated the tech industry, those used be considered a requirement.
ideashower 2y ago
Bureaucracies are a “common good” because of their human element: the ability to exercise discretion, recognize unique circumstances, and be held accountable to the public they serve. The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.
- dionian 2y ago
  I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. Try the "shoe on the other foot" principle: Imagine if Trump put lifetime leaders in those agencies and they fought against the next Progressive president.
  - KittenInABox 2y ago
    Unelected bureaucrats don't have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. The power to remove them arbitrarily is simply not a power that the leaders should have. Ideally, Trump's lifetime leaders in those agencies would have been installed by committee between both parties and so are apolitical whose sole focus is their job duties and serving the people, and can fight against the next Progressive president purely on that basis.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive should have minimal power over them. The president's job is to implement the laws of the legislature.
  - acdha 2y ago
    They don’t have more power. Whoever is telling you that has been lying to you, starting with the idea that these are lifetime jobs or lack accountability. The American system of government is based on checks and balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements them. In many cases, the high level positions are presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules governing what they’re allowed to do and how they do it, as well as oversight and transparency for their actions. What we’re seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans deciding that following the law is too hard and creating conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply that the people charged with protecting that data do not have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this hasn’t been a problem because people just waited a few weeks to get clearances. Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector generals it isn’t that there’s no way for him to do that, he just didn’t feel like giving Congress 30 days notice. In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real disagreement about how one of the independent agencies operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.
sebastianconcpt 2y ago
[flagged]
powerofmAnNnyYy 2y ago
[flagged]
JohnHaugeland 2y ago
Efficiency efforts are common. It's just that the abusers are the only ones who make an effort to talk about it, because talking about it provides them cover. Otherwise it's a regular part of the daily job.
kmlx 2y ago
> Bureaucracies are a common good never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting automation and as such efficiency.
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  Even if this was true, breaking things with reckless abandon has real human costs today and will until they’re fixed. That’s part of the reason government is ‘inefficient’ is the responsibility to serve everyone and get as close to zero downtime as possible.
  - kmlx 2y ago
    yours is a stability-over-change argument: bureaucracy exists to prevent reckless, harmful disruptions. you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits, or business licenses? you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private companies can process global transactions in seconds, why does it take months to approve basic permits? if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare mismanagement don’t scream 'zero downtime'. in reality, bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient. other industries use automation and streamlined processes to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'. why should government be any different?
    - mikeyouse 2y ago
      I'm framing these specific DOGE initiatives where they're firing people at random as reckless. Because they are and there are real human costs that are just being glazed over. I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take / the approvals required and make things as streamlined as possible. But if those things are small fires, having the current Republican majority with DOGE in support is asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed to all government spending, the infra will never be improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of employees that are maintaining the current system to save costs.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission. But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging. There is already a government agency who has been working to overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't even talking to them. The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.
Gormo 2y ago
> Bureaucracies are a common good Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society. They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them. Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives, and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites" you're complaining about (and such language indicates a conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error). Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations without proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and corruption. In this situation, I think that neither the established federal bureaucracy nor DOGE and the current administration have interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an unfavorable one.
- whymeogod 2y ago
  > Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but they are different. The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good. Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
  - Gormo 2y ago
    > No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all situations, and while different scenarios lead to those biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the same underlying substance. > The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good. No, the main attraction of government work is the ability to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on society (except to convince themselves of the importance of their work, as we all do). A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully advancing their own particular normative ideology.) > Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force. No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as participating in it here. None of the parties involved have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again, there's a chance that things will work out in the balance.
mempko 2y ago
You do realize one of the first users of private computers was the IRS. You miss the other side of the coin when it comes to efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is a large bureaucracy. There is no possible way the IRS could do it's work today without computers. The rules are too complex, and computers made it possible to have such complex rules.
sebastianconcpt 2y ago
Bureoucracies are invariably the most efficient way to concentrate corruption efforts. There is no better spot to corrupt and make elite unelected decisions. Revolutionaries love to infiltrate these because they can covertly use their profession to move promote designs and budget flows that exlusively forward their mission hidden in complexity. Is a system and everyone here knows what Moore's Law is.
- sebastianconcpt 2y ago
  Yes, I meant Murphy's Law.

by eecc 2y ago

glutamate 2y ago

Didn't know Max Weber was lurking on HN.

ffsm8 2y ago
It's true if you're ignoring the no-true-scottman fallacy. Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the worst exploitative behavior. But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.
- analog31 2y ago
  So far all of the bad things I've heard about our system, such as the economic unsustainability and now this, are effects that will happen in the perpetual future.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    You have to think about who you’re listening too. The economic sustainability of the actions Trump has taken so far is a pittance: * The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980 on a per capita basis. It’s not the largest per capita it’s ever been. > The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap. > Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal budget while a complete government collapse for a number of reasons including that the government won’t have anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes. [1] * The largest discretionary spending area is the military at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the government’s spend each year. Even [2] which is a right wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and just hand-waves the pension improvement as “significant”. But cuts aren’t focusing on the biggest employer within the government like the military. * The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who haven’t been on the job long enough to have protections. This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost certainly across the lowest bands since the government pays based on seniority. This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you think the actions he’s taking, because they’re highly visible, are solving the problem when in fact he’s not actually making any meaningful dent. That’s why he made a big show about the deportation flights but not talking about how the places he’s sending them to aren’t the places the people are from - he’s bullied Costa Rica into accepting whoever he send [3]. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref... [2] https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/fiscal-effects-of-reducing-the-federal-workforce/ https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/fi... [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-deportation-flight-costa-rica-asian-migrants-san-jose-rcna192902 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-deportation-fl...
- Gormo 2y ago
  > Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human intentions and choices, just like every other organizational model in society. Attributing specific moral inclinations to an organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions than printed ones.

potato3732842 2y ago

[flagged]

squigz 2y ago
> They're positioned to make money hand over fist no matter how things go. This is why they tend to move toward other things, like ... dismantling the US government.
Gerardo1 2y ago
> who are pushing things in dumb directions because their careers and wealth are tied to what they do for work so they advocated for those things to be advanced to the point of absurdity and everyone on their coat tails cheers for it because they benefit too. Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
- potato3732842 2y ago
  >Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there? Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example. Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on. It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them. But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is. If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.

justin66 2y ago

> IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems They're just firing people at random, they haven't discovered any innovative new way to make systems more efficient. ("at random" is a bit generous and ignores the retaliation against political adversaries)

mrayycombi 2y ago
He's going to fill the empty slots with loyal cronies he can fire at will. This is, I think, just "stage 1"
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Changing the rules so gov employees can be fired "at will" is an explicit goal of Project 2025
theshrike79 2y ago
It's not "at random". Every shuttered department had been investigating one of Elmo's properties...
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > It's not "at random". Every shuttered department had been investigating one of Elmo's properties... ¿Porque no los dos? Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons: * https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federal-916e6819104f04f44c345b7dde4904d5 https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa... Firing the folks dealing with bird flu: * https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-fdd6495cbe44c96d471ae8c6cf4dd0a8 https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-... Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA (including maintenance mechanics) even though it's already short staffed: * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo Random and spiteful (?).
- Chronoyes 2y ago
  [flagged]

bdd8f1df777b 2y ago

Bureaucracy is always risk averse. Without outside intervention, they will always try to operate as before.

datadrivenangel 2y ago
This is the point: A well functioning bureaucracy allows for repeatable predictable outcomes
alistairSH 2y ago
But is that a problem? Or is that functioning as intended? Generally speaking, I want my government to be stable, predictable, and consistent over fairly long time horizons.
- DAGdug 2y ago
  Depends on how they weigh the cost of a false positive versus false negative decision. The former seems to often be the key focus of a bureaucracy, slowing down the rate of diffusion of new technologies even among willing adopters.
agumonkey 2y ago
Every human knows that governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way. It's been mocked since the dawn of times. The issue is that you don't toy around with big legacy systems like you do with twitter. To satisfy their little immaturity and get political points on their fans they start ripping off everything without enough time. If they started real medium term efforts to analyze, organize and then migrate it would be different. Plus there are other factors due to human group and political time that will come back later and muddy things up again when someone feels like fixing elon's patch.
- jjav 2y ago
  > governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way Also, what's important to understand is that inefficiency in a corporation is a bug, but inefficiency in government is a feature. Government needs to have checks and balances at every stage, which by definition is inefficient. Which in the case of government is a wonderful thing. There is a word for a perfectly efficient government: dictatorship

sanderjd 2y ago

Not always. Both the Digital Service and 18F appear to be (to have been...) good faith efforts to apply state of the art system engineering to the federal bureaucracy, and quite successfully. This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame where blame is deserved.

lenerdenator 2y ago
I don't think it's just one, unfortunately. It's not even much of a co-opt; more just an inevitable progression of the ideology that was held by that administration since the beginning.
- JohnHaugeland 2y ago
  Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress, so he took an existing department, removed all the people, switched it to do a different job, moved it to a different state, and replaced its name. It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.
  - cowboylowrez 2y ago
    yeah from what I understand the original focus of the department was to make the software better serve its customers. its obvious that trump doesn't like congress, judicials, laws. heh cutting government waste is actually a good cause but you need skilled no nonsense auditors and well I think by inspecting trump's resume and reputation, I bet he REALLY doesn't like auditors haha
  - skissane 2y ago
    > Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress, When was he “slapped down by congress”? He signed the executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day - obviously his transition team’s lawyers had drafted it for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional authorities for DOGE. But it wasn’t like he asked Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they said ‘no’ - he planned to bypass them all along. Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along

croes 2y ago

The government's system should mainly be secure, relibale and durable. State-of-the-art is seldom all three of them.

rrr_oh_man 2y ago
> all three of them or even one
acdha 2y ago
That’s just a question of how you define “state-of-the-art”. The term doesn’t preclude secure or reliable - prior to the “move fast and break things” era where adtech dominated the tech industry, those used be considered a requirement.

ideashower 2y ago

Bureaucracies are a “common good” because of their human element: the ability to exercise discretion, recognize unique circumstances, and be held accountable to the public they serve. The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.

dionian 2y ago
I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. Try the "shoe on the other foot" principle: Imagine if Trump put lifetime leaders in those agencies and they fought against the next Progressive president.
- KittenInABox 2y ago
  Unelected bureaucrats don't have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. The power to remove them arbitrarily is simply not a power that the leaders should have. Ideally, Trump's lifetime leaders in those agencies would have been installed by committee between both parties and so are apolitical whose sole focus is their job duties and serving the people, and can fight against the next Progressive president purely on that basis.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive should have minimal power over them. The president's job is to implement the laws of the legislature.
- acdha 2y ago
  They don’t have more power. Whoever is telling you that has been lying to you, starting with the idea that these are lifetime jobs or lack accountability. The American system of government is based on checks and balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements them. In many cases, the high level positions are presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules governing what they’re allowed to do and how they do it, as well as oversight and transparency for their actions. What we’re seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans deciding that following the law is too hard and creating conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply that the people charged with protecting that data do not have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this hasn’t been a problem because people just waited a few weeks to get clearances. Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector generals it isn’t that there’s no way for him to do that, he just didn’t feel like giving Congress 30 days notice. In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real disagreement about how one of the independent agencies operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.

sebastianconcpt 2y ago

[flagged]

powerofmAnNnyYy 2y ago

[flagged]

JohnHaugeland 2y ago

Efficiency efforts are common. It's just that the abusers are the only ones who make an effort to talk about it, because talking about it provides them cover. Otherwise it's a regular part of the daily job.

kmlx 2y ago

> Bureaucracies are a common good never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting automation and as such efficiency.

mikeyouse 2y ago
Even if this was true, breaking things with reckless abandon has real human costs today and will until they’re fixed. That’s part of the reason government is ‘inefficient’ is the responsibility to serve everyone and get as close to zero downtime as possible.
- kmlx 2y ago
  yours is a stability-over-change argument: bureaucracy exists to prevent reckless, harmful disruptions. you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits, or business licenses? you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private companies can process global transactions in seconds, why does it take months to approve basic permits? if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare mismanagement don’t scream 'zero downtime'. in reality, bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient. other industries use automation and streamlined processes to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'. why should government be any different?
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
    I'm framing these specific DOGE initiatives where they're firing people at random as reckless. Because they are and there are real human costs that are just being glazed over. I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take / the approvals required and make things as streamlined as possible. But if those things are small fires, having the current Republican majority with DOGE in support is asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed to all government spending, the infra will never be improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of employees that are maintaining the current system to save costs.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission. But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging. There is already a government agency who has been working to overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't even talking to them. The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.

Gormo 2y ago

> Bureaucracies are a common good Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society. They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them. Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives, and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites" you're complaining about (and such language indicates a conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error). Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations without proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and corruption. In this situation, I think that neither the established federal bureaucracy nor DOGE and the current administration have interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an unfavorable one.

whymeogod 2y ago
> Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but they are different. The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good. Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
- Gormo 2y ago
  > No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all situations, and while different scenarios lead to those biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the same underlying substance. > The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good. No, the main attraction of government work is the ability to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on society (except to convince themselves of the importance of their work, as we all do). A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully advancing their own particular normative ideology.) > Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force. No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as participating in it here. None of the parties involved have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again, there's a chance that things will work out in the balance.

mempko 2y ago

You do realize one of the first users of private computers was the IRS. You miss the other side of the coin when it comes to efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is a large bureaucracy. There is no possible way the IRS could do it's work today without computers. The rules are too complex, and computers made it possible to have such complex rules.

sebastianconcpt 2y ago

Bureoucracies are invariably the most efficient way to concentrate corruption efforts. There is no better spot to corrupt and make elite unelected decisions. Revolutionaries love to infiltrate these because they can covertly use their profession to move promote designs and budget flows that exlusively forward their mission hidden in complexity. Is a system and everyone here knows what Moore's Law is.

sebastianconcpt 2y ago
Yes, I meant Murphy's Law.