Trump - Clown Genius

[Chad]

The best article on a massive failure for the Trump presidency. It also demonstrates how complicated government actually is and why operating on an ideological basis doesn't serve us. It's long, but well worth it.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/ ... hael-lewis

[blackbird]

Chad, that article is unnerving. Not just for the DOE, but think of smaller, lesser known agencies that probably were ignored to a higher degree. Reading that last bit about the ground tanks,... yikes.

[jennypenny]

The article is worth taking the time to read. Lewis is a great writer.

The one thing he doesn't touch on in the article is how to pay for everything. I can think of a thousand programs worth funding, but the money has to come from somewhere. I'm not arguing that we should slash the DoE budget. I'm only pointing out the reality of the situation. I honestly don't know if it's possible to prioritize programs and establish long-term funding when the political climate shifts every 4-8 years. Some civil institutions may need to be removed entirely from the political appointee system for continuity. Of course, they would still need funding and since Congress doesn't seem that concerned about getting a budget done anymore I don't know how that would work either.


There are still lots of empty desks in other institutions as well. Some projects sit idle, half-finished, the staff gone -- even though they still have funding.

[TheWanderingScholar]

^This. A massive problem with tying such instituitions into the political process is that some project are continuous work and in general should not be messed with via changing of political appointments.

[bryan]

Yeah... that article should be enough to make anyone a doomer!

On what page did we come to consensus that Trump was only a clown, no genius? Is it really the Russians that were the geniuses? Are there folks behind the curtain completely giddy right now (Trump lasting in office past April)? What does a first-world coup look like?

Of course "Trump" is just a symptom.. (and I'm sure someone in the last 85 pages has said it in more detail).

I'm just hoping that all of this has a positive unintended consequence for the future.

[BRUTE]

The one thing he doesn't touch on in the article is how to pay for everything. I can think of a thousand programs worth funding, but the money has to come from somewhere.funding.

the basis of libertarianism: shit costs money. feel-good rhetoric is just that. shit still costs money.

[Chad]

@Blackbird
Very unnerving. I'm sure a lot of unsexy government organizations were overlooked.

The one thing he doesn't touch on in the article is how to pay for everything. I can think of a thousand programs worth funding, but the money has to come from somewhere. I'm not arguing that we should slash the DoE budget. I'm only pointing out the reality of the situation. I honestly don't know if it's possible to prioritize programs and establish long-term funding when the political climate shifts every 4-8 years. Some civil institutions may need to be removed entirely from the political appointee system for continuity. Of course, they would still need funding and since Congress doesn't seem that concerned about getting a budget done anymore I don't know how that would work either.

This is why when someone starts with, "we need to cut taxes" I just tune them out, as they are usually the same people complaining about the debt. It's not a valid argument until you start pairing it with what you are going to cut and they almost never do. They definitely don't do it realistically. Half the time it's the tried and true "welfare cuts", which never amount to anything near the actual lost revenue in tax cuts.

Something needs to change. We are operating a 21st century country on a 19th century premise. A lot of what the government does is extremely complicated and very gray, which means it's difficult to identify the goal/win/achievement. This is why I hate it when people say it needs to be run more like a business. What 98% of businesses do is basic arithmetic compared to these government projects. The Fortune 500 companies I have worked for have well defined goals and they are still varying degrees of messy, so it's no surprise the government with bigger, more difficult, and sometimes less defined goals is too. Then throw in Congress screwing with how organizations function naturally (e.g., The NIH director only controls some of the specific health institutes under NIH. Institutes such as Cancer get their funding directly from Congress, thus no control by the director. Makes it hard to steer the ship.). It's just humans being humans. Sorry for the rant, this is a peeve of mine.

Is the issue with 4-8 years? Or, is it because people don't bother even getting a cursory knowledge of anything, which allows politicians to talk down to them and play on ideologies and platitudes. Maybe it's both, and more. Most people aren't even equipped with the skills to select experts to listen too, so we get stuff like completely ignoring Moniz.

The bigger issues are probably Congress becoming polarized and, I'm sure this will look biased since I obviously fall to the left of center, the Republicans sabotaging certain programs because it's politically difficult to cut them and the idea that government is always evil/useless. Of course, the Democrats need to work with them, but no sane person would have gotten involved with the current ACA circus until it ran out of steam, which may have happened last night.

[Dragline]

This is why I hate it when people say it needs to be run more like a business. What 98% of businesses do is basic arithmetic compared to these government projects.

Yes, this makes no sense. Businesses are run as dictatorships or oligarchies. The Constitution intentionally designs the government NOT to run like a business. To say government should be run like a business is to say what you really want is a dictator.

This is an ancient debate going back to Greek and Roman politics and the various forms of government they experimented with. The dictator model was actually the more successful model for agrarian societies if they wanted to become large and powerful. Large-scale democratic/power sharing societies only became possible with the industrial revolution, and only became the de facto preferred model post-WW2, and really only in the developed West.

[Campitor]

I'm a fiscal conservative and when I say I want government needs to run like a business, I'm not talking about its political hierarchical structure but how it manages OUR money. A company's ultimate check in the marketplace is its ability to use its money efficiently and make a profit otherwise it would go out of business or pushed out of business by a competitor. The government has no such check in place - please spare me the "voter-booth" platitudes since the average voter keeps electing morons whose priorities do not align with the constituents who elected them or with the general public who are neither left or right but middle of the road.

Government needs to be limited in regards to the revenue it can collect, lend, and borrow. This forces the government to make the necessary hard choices in regards to its policies and departmental budgets. There are tons of governmental programs (state and federal) that use public funds inefficiently. And there is no accountability for terminating programs that are not delivering the outcomes they were tasked with at their creation. Everyone is happy how Government spends their money when its their party and/or candidate in office but decry the wastefulness and illogic of government when the opposing party takes power. At the heart of power is money - limit money and you limit the power of government.

[jennypenny]

I've generally been a small government person but I've changed my mind quite a bit over the last 10 years or so. The world has changed. It's running up against hard limits on a number of resources. The current economic model is undercutting most people's financial stability, all while technology is making those people irrelevant. 'The market' isn't going to fix up the environment or reinvent standardized schooling or replace outdated infrastructure or develop cohesive plans for dealing with regional or global crises (public health, natural disasters, environmental, etc). The problems are too big now for piecemeal solutions even by those with the best intentions -- the government is going to have to step into the breach.

It's not what I want and I personally find it too intrusive ... but as a nation it's where we are.

[Dragline]

@Campitor -- the government doesn't actually need your money. It can print its own, which it does quite regularly. And gets away with it because of the demand elsewhere in the world for that money. This is another fundamental difference between a government and a business.

This is also why you will not be able to limit the power of the government by reducing taxes. Federal tax rates went down substantially during the 80s, for instance, while government power expanded. Same thing happened in the 2000s with a new government agency, Homeland Security, and a new war AND tax cuts. In a fiat money system where the US holds the reserve currency, there is little or no causal connection between government power and taxes. Note, the same is not true for your local government, but really only because it can't print its own money.

Governments more resemble churches, educational institutions and other non-profits than they do businesses. But with largely unlimited coffers (at the federal level).

And yes, the politicians don't answer so much to the voters, because they have a very short attention spans, at least the ones that are likely to change their minds from election to election. They answer to their donor bases mostly, and their various industry or association lobbying organizations. And gerrymander most voting issues away whenever possible.

[Campitor]

@ Dragline

Printing "extra" money would be one of those things that I think should be limited. Our debt is already 104.7% of our GDP.

[Chad]

I'm a fiscal conservative and when I say I want government needs to run like a business, I'm not talking about its political hierarchical structure but how it manages OUR money.

I'm only talking partly about hierarchy. I'm also suggesting that a lot of what they do, as demonstrated in the Lewis article is not the nice tidy and focused problems 98% of businesses work on. This makes running it "like a business" very difficult or not even the right model.

I'm also suggesting that the larger the human organization the better the story is on "terrible" inefficiencies, as the larger the organization the larger the numbers in any inefficiency. However, this doesn't mean it's wildly inefficient just that the larger the organization the larger the numbers and the government is way bigger than the next largest business.

This also ties into the fact that humans are terrible at evaluating massive numbers, size, etc. https://the-sieve.com/2013/11/06/human- ... e-numbers/

I'm not suggesting there aren't inefficiencies that need to be addressed (managers need to be better trained and better instructed on how to fire people). There are and always will be inefficiencies given the size of the organization and the types of problems it tries to solve. It's just not the continuous giant dumpster fire it is always described to be.

[IlliniDave]

... the government doesn't actually need your money.

I wish they'd let me keep more of it then. Of course in the minds of some it's all the government's money anyway and any residual a person gets to keep after taxes is just a government subsidy.

Riffing on that idea, the government will just keep growing no matter what, ultimately requiring more wealth than the nation can provide to feed itself at which point it will just print money until it destroys the nations' wealth (and ultimately itself). The only thing we can possibly do is delay the inevitable slightly by allowing them to seize more private wealth in the short-term.

If I keep hanging around here I'll wind up a prepper yet!

[subgard]

It's just not the continuous giant dumpster fire it is always described to be.

This is a big cause of our current problem. For the most part, the US government is quite efficient and effective. "It doesn't work anyway, so we might as well elect a crazy person to tear it all down and start over" is one of the most terrifying memes in our society today.

[Dragline]

... the government doesn't actually need your money.

Riffing on that idea, the government will just keep growing no matter what, ultimately requiring more wealth than the nation can provide to feed itself at which point it will just print money until it destroys the nations' wealth (and ultimately itself).

Yup, but we'll all be dead by then. And our grandchildren will probably be dead, too. Rome wasn't built in a day and did not collapse in a century, although it devalued its currency for hundreds of years. Other problems caught up with it first -- mostly the bane of all empires, which is too much military might for the economy to support.

The same thing befell Britain more recently, but the country did not disappear. It just took a reeeeally long time to pay off that debt and paid it in a fiat currency instead of the hard one it was issued in: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/09/uk-fina ... war-i.html

Don't be surprised if the US does not start issuing 100 year notes at some point to finance its wars.

[jennypenny]

I'd hate to be the person in charge of ordering business cards in this white house.

[Riggerjack]

It's just not the continuous giant dumpster fire it is always described to be.

Citation needed.

For the most part, the US government is quite efficient and effective.

Either we are using different definitions, or you need to back up that statement.

I'm also suggesting that the larger the human organization the better the story is on "terrible" inefficiencies, as the larger the organization the larger the numbers in any inefficiency. However, this doesn't mean it's wildly inefficient just that the larger the organization the larger the numbers and the government is way bigger than the next largest business.

This is a good start for describing the problem, scale. Beyond this, look at the individual incentives. The larger the scale, the less individual incentives will align with the organization's goals. And the bigger the organization, the less capable it is in realigning incentives to goals. This applies to all human organizations, from churches to business to government. centralization only improves the center, by removing feedback and giving a more direct line of command. Look to the military to see this in action.

The world has changed. It's running up against hard limits on a number of resources. The current economic model is undercutting most people's financial stability, all while technology is making those people irrelevant. 'The market' isn't going to fix up the environment or reinvent standardized schooling or replace outdated infrastructure or develop cohesive plans for dealing with regional or global crises (public health, natural disasters, environmental, etc). The problems are too big now for piecemeal solutions even by those with the best intentions -- the government is going to have to step into the breach.

While I am sure that is a comforting idea, it seems like it would be hard to match to the real world. Please, give me an example of this stepping into the breach, that worked for the people who occupied said breach.

Don't get me and my libertarian tendencies wrong. I do believe that good people are in these organizations, trying to make good things happen. But I also believe they are as good at it as Dilbert is at making great software.

The purpose of organizations is always the organization, with superficial effort going to a display of purpose.

[Riggerjack]

Something needs to change. We are operating a 21st century country on a 19th century premise. A lot of what the government does is extremely complicated and very gray, which means it's difficult to identify the goal/win/achievement. This is why I hate it when people say it needs to be run more like a business. What 98% of businesses do is basic arithmetic compared to these government projects. The Fortune 500 companies I have worked for have well defined goals and they are still varying degrees of messy, so it's no surprise the government with bigger, more difficult, and sometimes less defined goals is too. Then throw in Congress screwing with how organizations function naturally (e.g., The NIH director only controls some of the specific health institutes under NIH. Institutes such as Cancer get their funding directly from Congress, thus no control by the director. Makes it hard to steer the ship.). It's just humans being humans.

If this is correct, maybe combining nearly unlimited funds and poorly defined goals could be recognized as a problem by a rational, neutral observer, rather than a messy solution.

The thing is, I want science to be funded. I want cancer to be researched, I want roads to be maintained, I even want people on welfare to have food and shelter. And I don't mind paying for it.

What I object to, is oversight of oversight. The HR costs of having an HR department dedicated to the needs of the HR department. Continuing with a project that is directly contradictory to the other projects currently running, because it is both funded and approved. All of this is the reality of government today.

[IlliniDave]

The purpose of organizations is always the organization, with superficial effort going to a display of purpose.

Yep, at a certain point the organization will begin to function like an organism, and when the organizations charter becomes a source of stress for the organism, the organism's response is predictable.