A new report by The New York Times has revealed that while DOGE did fire lots of federal workers, slash budgets, and cancel grants and programs, the end result not only didn't save the $1 trillion Musk promised -- federal spending actually went up.
Even if DOGE was acting in good faith (it wasn’t), saving money for any organisation is really hard.
It’s obvious hubris to assume that everyone who has been managing something before you is an idiot and that you have some special ability to solve problems (which you don’t understand) more cost effectively.
Regardless, in government you can easily “down size” by firing everyone and hiring consultants which are way more expensive. Usually it’s politicians wives who own the shares in the companies providing the consultants.
Sadly, while you can cancel Tariffs, take Trump’s name off things, and even demolish the Epstein Ballroom, the damage that DOGE did probably can’t be reversed in any sensible timeframe.
The type of hubris that creates these situations seems far from obvious to the average person. Voters, over and over, want an outsider because the experienced and knowledgeable people are viewed as idiots. The wave of states enacting term limits in the 90s died down as data came out showing they were unhelpful at best and in some circumstances harmful to the legislative process, but legislative term limits still poll as hugely popular with American voters.
At my work, we have a seemingly endless parade of managers and consultants who have to repeatedly learn why our long-running challenges are, well, challenging. And they all try to apply the same 6sigma, lean, etc. tools. And the corporate managers keep buying new people selling them the same solutions that have repeatedly been shown to not fit our specific problems.
It’s something inherent to human psychology. My hope for mitigating it with elections is ranked choice voting. Not the part at the polling station specifically, but the way it changes the incentives for campaign strategies I believe promotes more thoughtful and less fear- and hate- driven messaging. If we aren’t constantly being bombarded with ads about how awful our politicians are, I think we would be less eager to jump on the anti-intellectual bandwagons.
At my work, we have a seemingly endless parade of managers and consultants who have to repeatedly learn why our long-running challenges are, well, challenging. And they all try to apply the same 6sigma, lean, etc. tools. And the corporate managers keep buying new people selling them the same solutions that have repeatedly been shown to not fit our specific problems.
That sounds depressingly similar to the last place I worked.
I’m not “a coder” in a professional sense but I’ve derived great joy from playing around with code in my spare time over many years. When I come back to a project I’ve created over many hours, but several years in the past, such that I’ve forgotten why I’ve done things the way I’ve done them, there’s a very strong desire to just discard everything and start over. As though this time around I’ll be able to find perfect solutions to problems where last time it was all kludges hacks and work arounds.
I’ll acknowledge that yes, each iteration of a thing one builds is an incremental improvement on the last. However, I don’t think that really explains whats going on here.
My best guess at an explanation is that the process of building or creating or implementing something is far less mentally taxing, or perhaps more rewarding, than the process of trying to understand something.
I agree what you brought up of bigger rewarding feelings from new things compared to maintaining existing things is a significant component. Politicians are more reliably elected by running on a new highway, new strip mall, new water treatment plant, etc, even when that money would provide more service to more people if spent keeping up existing infrastructure instead.
Even if DOGE was acting in good faith (it wasn’t), saving money for any organisation is really hard.
It’s obvious hubris to assume that everyone who has been managing something before you is an idiot and that you have some special ability to solve problems (which you don’t understand) more cost effectively.
Regardless, in government you can easily “down size” by firing everyone and hiring consultants which are way more expensive. Usually it’s politicians wives who own the shares in the companies providing the consultants.
Sadly, while you can cancel Tariffs, take Trump’s name off things, and even demolish the Epstein Ballroom, the damage that DOGE did probably can’t be reversed in any sensible timeframe.
The type of hubris that creates these situations seems far from obvious to the average person. Voters, over and over, want an outsider because the experienced and knowledgeable people are viewed as idiots. The wave of states enacting term limits in the 90s died down as data came out showing they were unhelpful at best and in some circumstances harmful to the legislative process, but legislative term limits still poll as hugely popular with American voters.
At my work, we have a seemingly endless parade of managers and consultants who have to repeatedly learn why our long-running challenges are, well, challenging. And they all try to apply the same 6sigma, lean, etc. tools. And the corporate managers keep buying new people selling them the same solutions that have repeatedly been shown to not fit our specific problems.
It’s something inherent to human psychology. My hope for mitigating it with elections is ranked choice voting. Not the part at the polling station specifically, but the way it changes the incentives for campaign strategies I believe promotes more thoughtful and less fear- and hate- driven messaging. If we aren’t constantly being bombarded with ads about how awful our politicians are, I think we would be less eager to jump on the anti-intellectual bandwagons.
That sounds depressingly similar to the last place I worked.
I agree that it’s inherent to human psychology.
I’m not “a coder” in a professional sense but I’ve derived great joy from playing around with code in my spare time over many years. When I come back to a project I’ve created over many hours, but several years in the past, such that I’ve forgotten why I’ve done things the way I’ve done them, there’s a very strong desire to just discard everything and start over. As though this time around I’ll be able to find perfect solutions to problems where last time it was all kludges hacks and work arounds.
I’ll acknowledge that yes, each iteration of a thing one builds is an incremental improvement on the last. However, I don’t think that really explains whats going on here.
My best guess at an explanation is that the process of building or creating or implementing something is far less mentally taxing, or perhaps more rewarding, than the process of trying to understand something.
I agree what you brought up of bigger rewarding feelings from new things compared to maintaining existing things is a significant component. Politicians are more reliably elected by running on a new highway, new strip mall, new water treatment plant, etc, even when that money would provide more service to more people if spent keeping up existing infrastructure instead.