Focusing on the US seems like a mistake, since Dominic Cummings worked in the UK, yet the situation seems to be substantially worse, despite, eg, there being no separation of powers.
How to find workers that will do with Dominic Cummings wants? He found it quite easy to recruit from people already employed by the Department. He didn’t need a lot. He couldn’t manage a lot. If the masses had ignored him, it would have been fine, but they actively sabotaged. And lots of people he found productive left because it was too difficult.
Maybe. I know relatively little about the functioning of the UK government, so I focused on areas where I thought I had some useful contributions to share.
I will note Jennifer Palkha has primarily been involved with the US government and bureaucracy, and in any case Martin has talked about bureaucracy topics in the context of the US before here on LW. So there is still some value in figuring out what is going on in America.
You say he “found it quite easy to recruit from people already employed by the Department.” That doesn’t seem do have been true for Musk when he tried to get DOGE to work in the US, in my understanding (he brought in young workers and programmers from the private sector).
Britain seems to be suffering from serious economic sclerosis in a way similar to most of Europe (though perhaps more intense), while the complete opposite seems to be true for the US. Nevertheless, bureaucracy, inefficiency, and red tape are still critical constraints on abundance, infrastructure building, state capacity, renewable energy acquisition, etc. This signals the fundamental nature of the problem may be very different across the Atlantic.
As per the discussion in Martin’s previous post, much of bureaucratic inefficiency in other countries is direct corruption and flows from it, to a significant extent. This does not appear to be the case in the US.
There are many other points to be raised. And I certainly do believe that what I mentioned with respect to the US has wide applicability and reflects important arguments that need to be kept in mind regardless of where the country we’re discussing is located. But I think the fundamental nature of the problems is quite different in different states, and we need to be cognizant of that instead of painting with too broad a brushstroke. Answers unique to America may (and, I claim, do) well explain why the situation in America is as it is, and why it differs from what goes on in other places.
I don’t know how the US system works at all, and have only a shallow understanding of the UK one (mostly from watching Yes Minister), but I think in the US a lot of posts that in the UK would be civil service are instead political posts. For example, I think US politicians directly pick which ambassadors to send, which is not the UK system.
As a New Zealander we see the same general problems, unaccountable and sclerotic bureaucracy that politicians are finding that they have less and less actual executive control over due to all sorts of inserted regulatory and other mechanisms to restrict govt ability to control them, as well as internal cultures that venerate the in-group bureaucrats consensus on How Things Should Be™ and practice subtle and unsubtle methods of resistance against any outside agency that seeks to change that policy. What Cummings et al call ‘the blob’, the US call ‘deep state’.
NZ public sector has increased in size by 100% in last 25 years, with population growth of 50% and typical white collar productivity increases around 50% it would be reasonable to expect that same level of government function could be accomplished with around half the current numbers. Most private sector people I associate with would not say that governance has improved in last 25 years, in fact in many easily viewable metrics it has clearly deteriorated with worse performance in health and education, higher regulatory burdens etc. The cost and lost-productivity costs on NZ (and lost revenue that would arise from those workers paying tax in productive jobs rather than spending it as civil servants) amount to a few % of GDP, and would probably be the difference between the deficits we currently run and having no deficits—a big drain on our future prosperity.
It’s not a new problem, having been an issue ever since the city-state came into being, bureaucrats and people in positions of power will almost always care more about maintaining and growing their power than about providing any utility to others. UK “Yes Minister” comedy series lampooned it in the 1980′s, Parkinson wrote a best selling book on in the 1950′s: Parkinson’s Law And Other Studies in Administration and Parkinson’s Law: Or The Pursuit of Progress, and we even have the term ‘Byzantian’ to describe excessive bureaucracy from an empire dead for 1000 years.
I would concur that it is absolutely a function of lack of accountability and inability to effectively censure poor performance or subtle intransigence/sabotage of political masters in the public service, and has grown worse with the growth of a distinct self-reinforcing in-group civil service tribalistic identity, perhaps stoked by the homogeneity of elitist educational backgrounds of those that seek government jobs with beliefs that don’t mirror or even respect those of the general public they effectively rule over. And it is creating an extreme crisis in governance in democracies around the world, potentially to the point of violence in Europe as populations get incensed at their electorally signaled preferences being ignored by civil servants with growing social problems that seems to be rising as a result.
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing”—Thomas Sowell
Focusing on the US seems like a mistake, since Dominic Cummings worked in the UK, yet the situation seems to be substantially worse, despite, eg, there being no separation of powers.
How to find workers that will do with Dominic Cummings wants? He found it quite easy to recruit from people already employed by the Department. He didn’t need a lot. He couldn’t manage a lot. If the masses had ignored him, it would have been fine, but they actively sabotaged. And lots of people he found productive left because it was too difficult.
Maybe. I know relatively little about the functioning of the UK government, so I focused on areas where I thought I had some useful contributions to share.
I will note Jennifer Palkha has primarily been involved with the US government and bureaucracy, and in any case Martin has talked about bureaucracy topics in the context of the US before here on LW. So there is still some value in figuring out what is going on in America.
There is value figuring out what is going on in America. But since the same thing is going on elsewhere, answers unique to America are incorrect.
Is the same thing going on elsewhere?
You say he “found it quite easy to recruit from people already employed by the Department.” That doesn’t seem do have been true for Musk when he tried to get DOGE to work in the US, in my understanding (he brought in young workers and programmers from the private sector).
Britain seems to be suffering from serious economic sclerosis in a way similar to most of Europe (though perhaps more intense), while the complete opposite seems to be true for the US. Nevertheless, bureaucracy, inefficiency, and red tape are still critical constraints on abundance, infrastructure building, state capacity, renewable energy acquisition, etc. This signals the fundamental nature of the problem may be very different across the Atlantic.
As per the discussion in Martin’s previous post, much of bureaucratic inefficiency in other countries is direct corruption and flows from it, to a significant extent. This does not appear to be the case in the US.
There are many other points to be raised. And I certainly do believe that what I mentioned with respect to the US has wide applicability and reflects important arguments that need to be kept in mind regardless of where the country we’re discussing is located. But I think the fundamental nature of the problems is quite different in different states, and we need to be cognizant of that instead of painting with too broad a brushstroke. Answers unique to America may (and, I claim, do) well explain why the situation in America is as it is, and why it differs from what goes on in other places.
I don’t know how the US system works at all, and have only a shallow understanding of the UK one (mostly from watching Yes Minister), but I think in the US a lot of posts that in the UK would be civil service are instead political posts. For example, I think US politicians directly pick which ambassadors to send, which is not the UK system.
They are probably very different systems.
As a New Zealander we see the same general problems, unaccountable and sclerotic bureaucracy that politicians are finding that they have less and less actual executive control over due to all sorts of inserted regulatory and other mechanisms to restrict govt ability to control them, as well as internal cultures that venerate the in-group bureaucrats consensus on How Things Should Be™ and practice subtle and unsubtle methods of resistance against any outside agency that seeks to change that policy. What Cummings et al call ‘the blob’, the US call ‘deep state’.
NZ public sector has increased in size by 100% in last 25 years, with population growth of 50% and typical white collar productivity increases around 50% it would be reasonable to expect that same level of government function could be accomplished with around half the current numbers. Most private sector people I associate with would not say that governance has improved in last 25 years, in fact in many easily viewable metrics it has clearly deteriorated with worse performance in health and education, higher regulatory burdens etc. The cost and lost-productivity costs on NZ (and lost revenue that would arise from those workers paying tax in productive jobs rather than spending it as civil servants) amount to a few % of GDP, and would probably be the difference between the deficits we currently run and having no deficits—a big drain on our future prosperity.
It’s not a new problem, having been an issue ever since the city-state came into being, bureaucrats and people in positions of power will almost always care more about maintaining and growing their power than about providing any utility to others. UK “Yes Minister” comedy series lampooned it in the 1980′s, Parkinson wrote a best selling book on in the 1950′s: Parkinson’s Law And Other Studies in Administration and Parkinson’s Law: Or The Pursuit of Progress, and we even have the term ‘Byzantian’ to describe excessive bureaucracy from an empire dead for 1000 years.
I would concur that it is absolutely a function of lack of accountability and inability to effectively censure poor performance or subtle intransigence/sabotage of political masters in the public service, and has grown worse with the growth of a distinct self-reinforcing in-group civil service tribalistic identity, perhaps stoked by the homogeneity of elitist educational backgrounds of those that seek government jobs with beliefs that don’t mirror or even respect those of the general public they effectively rule over. And it is creating an extreme crisis in governance in democracies around the world, potentially to the point of violence in Europe as populations get incensed at their electorally signaled preferences being ignored by civil servants with growing social problems that seems to be rising as a result.
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing”—Thomas Sowell