When you shoot from the hip at a tech company, the bad outcome is that a lot of money gets wasted and people lose their jobs. When the federal government shoots from the hip, trust in the institution erodes and people die.
Not that there is no room for streamlining and reducing bureaucratic and IT bloat, but it is very important to remember that the government is not a business, and in many ways should be run very differently from a business.
It probably seems like I'm defending their actions, I genuinely don't know if their actions are correct and I'm not defending them. I'm just acknowledging it seems like many US institutions haven't been appropriately evolving, and now the US as a whole is between a rock and a hard place.
If I'm going to spend time thinking about these things (that I have virtually no control over), I would prefer to do it in a curious and mostly emotionally detached way.
The old system could well have been, like, scraping against the guard rails, flattening them gradually over time. The solution to that is not to remove the rails and aim directly for the cliff.
Unless you're an accelerationist. Accelerationists are people who view bad times as inevitable, and want them to come as quickly as possible so we can get through to the other side (where times are good again) as quickly as possible, instead of prolonging the collapse by doing it more slowly. Does that describe you?
If you are actually interested in what's going on, I think what they are talking about is a big important piece of the puzzle.
I have also witnessed first hand how new terminology can have very different meanings to different people. Ask 100 product leaders to define what a "customer need" is and you will probably get dozens of different answers. Ask 100 CIOs to define what a "data mesh" is, and you will probably get dozens of different answers.
I think that when an environment is changing at an accelerating pace, its necessary for the organisms living in the environment to adapt at a similar pace in order to survive/thrive. I also believe that our environment is changing at an accelerating pace.
I suspect that you think I have reverse the metaphor because you have been paying more close attention to recent rage-baiting news, and I have spent a longer time paying closer attention to "boring" economic analysis. My model of the situation includes many historical examples of hyperinflation and what led to them, the consequences of Muammar Gaddafi dropping the petrodollar, the impact of citizens united on the military industrial complex, the exploding web of "NGOs" meddling in world affairs, how technology is an extremely deflationary force and how regulatory capture shifts economic benefits of new technology from the consumer to industry incumbents, how the Bretton-woods era started and ended, and how the neoliberal era started (and was ending regardless of political party), etc, etc.
Despite all this perspective I mentioned, I feel as though I know a tiny % of what is important to know in order to judge the situation accurately. The more I learn the more it seems like I don't know, and the more curious I get. Color me in the Dunning Kruger "valley of despair".
So no, I don't think the simplistic blanket decision making protocol you defined describes me.
Do you agree that these processes need to evolve over time?
And if so, what if they haven't been evolving as fast as the rest of the world and have fallen behind?
What is a leader to do, when many processes no longer are in anyone's best interest other than the people who maintain them and those have learned to exploit them?
The government doesn't seem like a machine to me, more like society's nervous system. It's a very scary idea that it has become so rigid and so outdated that a massive overhaul is necessary. It does seem like an opening for extremism (fascism, tyranny), which I'm sure we both fear. I just find it very hard to tell whether disrupting the system or letting it continue will lead to a better outcome for Americans.
You may not put much stock in another billionaire's opinion, but personally I think he's been engaged with our system enough to have a good perspective on things.
That doesn't mean every government operations are 90% efficient, but I'd rather walk the side of slowness and bureaucracy than graft and corruption, let alone Trump's outright fascism.
And by the way, my father worked at a federal manufacturing plant so I've heard plenty of stories, good and bad.
