6 ms·

Yes, this exactly. Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda. Govt is just people, and people are flawed and have competing incentive

Yes, this exactly. Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda. Govt is just people, and people are flawed and have competing incentives. I've worked in massive companies that have incredibly dumb inefficiencies.

mexicocitinluez 2y ago
> Govt is just peoples Which is the original definition of the "Deep state" until it was hijacked by conspiracy theorists and Republicans who do bad shit.
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Reagan or not, what you can see clearly in the comments here and many other places is that what would be considered fairly extreme libertarian talking points have become common parlance these days. Taxation as "theft", the necessity of the threat of termination and other economic deprivation in order to coerce people to doing good work, the assumption that profit inevitably produces more efficiency, and that efficiency (as defined monetarily) is the ultimate goal. These are defensible positions based on various world views, but they should not be accepted automatically. But I see here and other places people speaking as if this is just "obvious fact." This was not the case in the past. Civic duty, the need for a functioning civil service, the notion of a commonwealth and/or social contract, etc are all foundational notions coming out of the enlightenment and were at least formerly mainstream. The Ayn Rand types have always been around. And they're welcome to their positions. I'm concerned about how we get here now that this is a default position for people to take in North American society. I certainly don't agree with it. And I suspect if you force the majority of "mainstream" people to go through the arguments piece by piece, they wouldn't either. I'd also argue that decades of corroding the public service's effectiveness through economic and ideological warfare has in fact made the public service look like exactly the thing its enemies claim it is. If you make the civil sector into a partisan battle, and play games with its funding, and spread cynicism about its motives... surprise you're going to get a partisan, inefficient, and cynical public service.
- mopsi 2y ago
  The Ayn Rand types deserve to be reminded that she spent her final years on welfare.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    which just proves that we shouldn't have any welfare if it supported that hack! /s
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. "Gotcha" hypocrisy arguments about personal behaviour I don't think are great taken from either left nor right.
    - surgical_fire 2y ago
      > I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. Which, perhaps ironically, shows that welfare works as intended, even for morons that want to see it dismantled.
  - TimJRobinson 2y ago
    This is the same gotcha as "If you like government so much why don't YOU pay more taxes?" Nobody refuses free government help even if they hate the government, just as no one pays extra taxes even if they love the government. The point is always to distribute their belief more widely so that everyone has to live with it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  > Civic duty I remember when this was considered essential to being an American Citizen. We had classes on this in K-12. Sometime in the last decade or so, it's become synonymous with "communist." Which is pretty rich, considering what's going on, these days. Both Abe Lincoln and Joe McCarthy are doing 3200 RPM, right now. That's pretty crazy.
trentnix 2y ago
> Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda I (and many others) have worked for, contracted for, interacted with, and/or closely observed government for decades. The only “reflexive” thing here is your argument that people who disagree with the you are the victims of propaganda. You can certainly quibble with the details on how to deliver government efficiency (and I highly encourage people to sincerely scrutinize any efforts to do so - it should produce better results), but there are good and valid reality-based reasons that the “DOGE” mission has broad support.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  There's no denying that there's bloat, but going in with a chainsaw is not a conducive or efficient way to reduce bloat in an organization. If you want to use the "private sector lense" (which I do not think is valid for a govenenent bureaucracy), there's a reason why when I've participated in M&A events, we would spend a year doing due diligence and understanding the organizational and financial structure before initiating an event. By haphazardly doing these kinds of initiatives without even understanding regulations and laws means any potential savings will be burnt in litigation and cleaning up messes.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Indeed. The chainsaw approach will only produce an even less effective civil service, and one in constant crisis. If you want to actually improve governance (and we really should because it is in fact often quite dysfunctional), you don't come in with the notion that it is intrinsically rotten to the core and the very idea of governance is flawed by nature. You start by motivating people to improve. Which you don't do by accusing them of graft, corruption and incompetence. It's all very disingenuous.
    - blactuary 2y ago
      Every accusation is a confession. Elon and his band of criminals know that if they were in government they would try to get a make work job and grift, direct money to their own businesses and friends, etc, so they assume that all civil servants are like that
csense 2y ago
> Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda. Looking at federal spending as a percentage of GDP [1] it seems we've been hovering around 20% for most of post-WW2. There was a huge spike for COVID and a smaller spike for the GFC. (It was pretty surprising this chart doesn't also show a huge spike for the response to 9/11.) Pre-2020 spending was ~20% of GDP, pre-2018 was more like ~18% - 19%. There's definitely more government spending than there used to be. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S

mexicocitinluez 2y ago

> Govt is just peoples Which is the original definition of the "Deep state" until it was hijacked by conspiracy theorists and Republicans who do bad shit.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

Reagan or not, what you can see clearly in the comments here and many other places is that what would be considered fairly extreme libertarian talking points have become common parlance these days. Taxation as "theft", the necessity of the threat of termination and other economic deprivation in order to coerce people to doing good work, the assumption that profit inevitably produces more efficiency, and that efficiency (as defined monetarily) is the ultimate goal. These are defensible positions based on various world views, but they should not be accepted automatically. But I see here and other places people speaking as if this is just "obvious fact." This was not the case in the past. Civic duty, the need for a functioning civil service, the notion of a commonwealth and/or social contract, etc are all foundational notions coming out of the enlightenment and were at least formerly mainstream. The Ayn Rand types have always been around. And they're welcome to their positions. I'm concerned about how we get here now that this is a default position for people to take in North American society. I certainly don't agree with it. And I suspect if you force the majority of "mainstream" people to go through the arguments piece by piece, they wouldn't either. I'd also argue that decades of corroding the public service's effectiveness through economic and ideological warfare has in fact made the public service look like exactly the thing its enemies claim it is. If you make the civil sector into a partisan battle, and play games with its funding, and spread cynicism about its motives... surprise you're going to get a partisan, inefficient, and cynical public service.

mopsi 2y ago
The Ayn Rand types deserve to be reminded that she spent her final years on welfare.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  which just proves that we shouldn't have any welfare if it supported that hack! /s
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. "Gotcha" hypocrisy arguments about personal behaviour I don't think are great taken from either left nor right.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    > I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. Which, perhaps ironically, shows that welfare works as intended, even for morons that want to see it dismantled.
- TimJRobinson 2y ago
  This is the same gotcha as "If you like government so much why don't YOU pay more taxes?" Nobody refuses free government help even if they hate the government, just as no one pays extra taxes even if they love the government. The point is always to distribute their belief more widely so that everyone has to live with it.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
> Civic duty I remember when this was considered essential to being an American Citizen. We had classes on this in K-12. Sometime in the last decade or so, it's become synonymous with "communist." Which is pretty rich, considering what's going on, these days. Both Abe Lincoln and Joe McCarthy are doing 3200 RPM, right now. That's pretty crazy.

trentnix 2y ago

> Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda I (and many others) have worked for, contracted for, interacted with, and/or closely observed government for decades. The only “reflexive” thing here is your argument that people who disagree with the you are the victims of propaganda. You can certainly quibble with the details on how to deliver government efficiency (and I highly encourage people to sincerely scrutinize any efforts to do so - it should produce better results), but there are good and valid reality-based reasons that the “DOGE” mission has broad support.

alephnerd 2y ago
There's no denying that there's bloat, but going in with a chainsaw is not a conducive or efficient way to reduce bloat in an organization. If you want to use the "private sector lense" (which I do not think is valid for a govenenent bureaucracy), there's a reason why when I've participated in M&A events, we would spend a year doing due diligence and understanding the organizational and financial structure before initiating an event. By haphazardly doing these kinds of initiatives without even understanding regulations and laws means any potential savings will be burnt in litigation and cleaning up messes.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Indeed. The chainsaw approach will only produce an even less effective civil service, and one in constant crisis. If you want to actually improve governance (and we really should because it is in fact often quite dysfunctional), you don't come in with the notion that it is intrinsically rotten to the core and the very idea of governance is flawed by nature. You start by motivating people to improve. Which you don't do by accusing them of graft, corruption and incompetence. It's all very disingenuous.
  - blactuary 2y ago
    Every accusation is a confession. Elon and his band of criminals know that if they were in government they would try to get a make work job and grift, direct money to their own businesses and friends, etc, so they assume that all civil servants are like that

csense 2y ago

> Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda. Looking at federal spending as a percentage of GDP [1] it seems we've been hovering around 20% for most of post-WW2. There was a huge spike for COVID and a smaller spike for the GFC. (It was pretty surprising this chart doesn't also show a huge spike for the response to 9/11.) Pre-2020 spending was ~20% of GDP, pre-2018 was more like ~18% - 19%. There's definitely more government spending than there used to be. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S