Fixing the federal bureaucracy is critical to the future health of our government and of our nation, so I hope DOGE succeeds. But Musk might discover that it’s easier to start a colony on Mar…
Our current federal government is a construct of the Roosevelt New Deal era. And as the country grew, so did the government. But our country has done more than just grow over the last 100 years — it has also evolved, from an agrarian to an industrial to a technology and information economy. Critically, the government never changed with it.
So the fundamental structure of the federal government hasn’t changed since at least 1924, but also the current structure of the federal governments is the result of the New Deal which started in 1933. Math!
He’s missing two important aspects of bureaucratic reform. One, simply observing redundancies/overlaps/byzantine jurisdictions isn’t the same thing as creating a streamlined replacement. To make sure everything still works at least as well as it did before requires deep diving into the structure and a careful balancing game in the re-organization. And, surprise surprise, that process often reveals that, once you get past the generalized critiques, there actually are good reasons why seemingly similar functions on the surface need to be divvied up between different agencies, especially when there are conflict of interest issues.
Second, these “reforms” typically end up being a shuffling of the bureaucratic deck rather than actually streamlining anything. Great, you moved a function from the Army Corps of Engineers to DOT, but if it’s the same bureaucratic approval processes and checkboxes, there’s no efficiency gained. And often the shuffling just creates confusion in the bureaucracy as to where the responsible party is now which just makes things less efficient, not more.
Not to mention that a lot of what the USACE does is informed by their military engineering experience. The DOT doesn't have that experience and would need to transfer people from the USACE to get it done, or collaborate with them for their experience. Way to make the government efficient, you just added another level of abstraction to the existing process.
Yeah governments are actually surprisingly efficient given what they do. There's not usually a lot of actual waste. It's just that government is hard and expensive. Libertarian fuckwits like eLoN can't stand it.
There are a few ways the government could actually be sped up. Automating and standardising tasks, eliminating arcane barriers (mostly designed to make the life of the poor and disabled as hard as possible) or improving documentation practices so that it is easier for different parts of the government to cooperate.
Unfortunately, all of these changes will only really improve the quality of government services rather than presenting an opportunity to cut them away. So they are out.
So the fundamental structure of the federal government hasn’t changed since at least 1924, but also the current structure of the federal governments is the result of the New Deal which started in 1933. Math!
He’s missing two important aspects of bureaucratic reform. One, simply observing redundancies/overlaps/byzantine jurisdictions isn’t the same thing as creating a streamlined replacement. To make sure everything still works at least as well as it did before requires deep diving into the structure and a careful balancing game in the re-organization. And, surprise surprise, that process often reveals that, once you get past the generalized critiques, there actually are good reasons why seemingly similar functions on the surface need to be divvied up between different agencies, especially when there are conflict of interest issues.
Second, these “reforms” typically end up being a shuffling of the bureaucratic deck rather than actually streamlining anything. Great, you moved a function from the Army Corps of Engineers to DOT, but if it’s the same bureaucratic approval processes and checkboxes, there’s no efficiency gained. And often the shuffling just creates confusion in the bureaucracy as to where the responsible party is now which just makes things less efficient, not more.
Not to mention that a lot of what the USACE does is informed by their military engineering experience. The DOT doesn't have that experience and would need to transfer people from the USACE to get it done, or collaborate with them for their experience. Way to make the government efficient, you just added another level of abstraction to the existing process.
Perfect example of “There’s a reason it’s structured that way.”
Yeah governments are actually surprisingly efficient given what they do. There's not usually a lot of actual waste. It's just that government is hard and expensive. Libertarian fuckwits like eLoN can't stand it.
There are a few ways the government could actually be sped up. Automating and standardising tasks, eliminating arcane barriers (mostly designed to make the life of the poor and disabled as hard as possible) or improving documentation practices so that it is easier for different parts of the government to cooperate.
Unfortunately, all of these changes will only really improve the quality of government services rather than presenting an opportunity to cut them away. So they are out.
Yeah amazing how reducing means testing is never discussed as a way to make government more efficient.