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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   21604 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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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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