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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   22383 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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If losing the competent people means also losing the people who are smart enough to maintain the deep state apparatus as the true power center of DC, then this would be a feature, not a bug.

I do not think that the people whose motivation is to use their civil service positions to influence politics are likely the ones who would jump at the opportunity of a generous retirement package.

In general, running a first world government in a tolerable way requires many more specialists than a running a resource extraction (be it oil, fruits or cocaine). Sure, Trump can put people whose primary qualification is being MAGA believers in every political position, but that is not enough to see his policies enacted. The Dems (and the pre-Trump Reps, to some degree) can draw from a large pool of PMCs who are politically aligned with them, DEI and all that.

By contrast, I doubt that Trump could staff the federal bureaucracy with Trumpers without lowering government efficiency. Sure, there are likely enough people in ICE willing to deport migrants, and the military-industrial complex will also not give him trouble while he stays within the constitutional limits with his orders, but plenty of other agencies will try to resist.

I mean, a majority plurality of voters cast their ballots for Trump 11 weeks ago. It seems like he's got a pretty good sized pool of people to draw from.

More likely it would mean losing the guys who can actually process paperwork, resulting in wait times going to infinity.

In the long term, you route around the problem, spin up a group 10% of the size that does the work twice as fast as the old group ever did.

Of course, that might not work in the government the same way it would in a business because of resistance from within.

It might not work in the government the same way it would in a business because public sector entities have wildly different incentives, constraints, and feedback structures than private sector ones.

When a private company cuts staffing by 90% and discovers that doesn't actually double total productivity, they can reverse course (or more likely just go out of business and get replaced by another firm that didn't blow their own dick off). When the civil service gets handed an impossible directive, they can just keep failing forever while politicians bury their heads in the sand and insist that any minute now the plan will start working.

Good luck attracting 10x bureaucrats to government positions.

I imagine for a certain young idealistic person this would be a good sell. Come help save the US government!

Not everyone is a mercenary. Most people are motivated by a combination of factors. Optimizing to attract mercenaries is a great way to get the worst staff possible. Which is why we have government workers who are protesting by not doing their jobs. Ultimately, they think the point of their job is to deliver money to their bank account, not to serve the American people.

Come help save the US government!

It's a fun marketing line but it'll wear off after you review the thousandth TPS report.

Optimizing to attract mercenaries is a great way to get the worst staff possible.

Hedge funds pay employees stupid amounts of money and the firms make stupid amounts of money. I shudder to think what they could do if they weren't apparently getting the worst staff possible.

Which is why we have government workers who are protesting by not doing their jobs.

They are doing this because they have no fear of getting fired, not because it's all about the money.

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