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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   4747 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 18, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, how does a "boss" deal with an organization full of hostile, recalcitrant subordinates actively opposed to his goals, and working to stymie and sabotage all his efforts, when the HR department actively works to make firing employees as difficult as possible?

He looks for a better job.

Or he picks better goals. “Never give an order that won’t be obeyed,” after all.

He looks for a better job.

So the permanent bureaucracy gets to decide who is or isn't an "acceptable" president, regardless of who the voters elect?

Never give an order that won’t be obeyed

So the permanent bureaucracy gets to decide which policies are and aren't "acceptable," regardless of what the electorate voted for?

"You can get the Model T in any color you want, as long as you want it in black," and all that. And people get on my case for saying "Our Democracy" is nothing of the sort.

If the game is simply that rigged against the right, what reason do we really have not to just flip the board?

A boss can only do as much as the owner permits. In this case, Congress (who writes the rules) needs to repeal a bunch of "civil service protection" laws so Trump can just go full Andrew Jackson on the bureaucracy. Everything the dems are doing now to "secure" the bureaucracy is being done purely through the executive, so theoretically Trump could poof it all out of existence on January 21, 2025, but really cleaning house will require Congress.

The bigger issue, which we saw in Trump's first term, is that the Left's stranglehold over the universities, civil service, and other institutions means that there simply aren't enough Republicans competent or interested enough in being a petty bureaucrat to fill the gaps in the short-to-medium-term (particularly if Trump wants to fill the bureaucracy with MAGA-types rather than the centrists and libertarians who currently make up most of the Right's governing class and currently work in the think tanks Trump would need to pull from for staff). This is even more true when you account for the fact that working in Trump's last administration was an absolute shit show and a lot of the people around last time have no interest in returning).

Even explicitly political right-wing nonprofits that are allowed to openly discriminate based on political views struggle to fill out their support roles with ideologically committed fellow travelers.

The only path to victory I can see would be Trump firing as many people as he can at the federal level and devolving their responsibilities to the states. That doesn't solve the root problem with the Left's stranglehold over education, and the state-level bureaucrats are still likely to be at least somewhat hostile to a roght-wing agenda, but it's a hell of a lot easier to find right-wing staff willing to institute your agenda in Talahassee or Cheyenne than in DC.

The only path to victory I can see would be Trump firing as many people as he can at the federal level and devolving their responsibilities to the states. hat doesn't solve the root problem with the Left's stranglehold over education,

I can think of alternative paths, but first, I'm not particularly confident of their odds of working (but then, I don't think the path you've outlined here is at all likely to work either), and second, I'm not sure I'm allowed to lay them out here.

It would make sense to move as many departments away from DC as possible.

In the 21st century, there's zero reason to have Department of Agriculture be based in DC. Better to move it to Kansas City or Des Moines.

Try to move as many departments away from DC as possible, and remove the possibility of remote work. It would save money, and it would revitalize economically underdeveloped areas.

It would make sense to move as many departments away from DC as possible.

I've proposed relocating the CDC from Atlanta to here in Alaska… specifically Attu island. Claim it's about being better-positioned for future COVID-like outbreaks from China, possible Russian bioterror, re-emergence of diseases from permafrost due to climate change…

I like this idea.

I’d actually underestimated how many were concentrated in the DC metroplex. The CDC is in Atlanta, and that’s…almost it.

A priori, that seems like a really weird and surprising situation, I would start by asking why are they doing that and see if maybe you're doing something wrong or can win them over somehow.

or can win them over somehow.

And if you can't?

maybe you're doing something wrong

If by "something wrong" you mean having a different vision for the organization, different goals, different terminal values…?

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