…Hopefully DOGE learns: nothing will happen without fast purges, like Twitter in week 1. And government is a SYSTEMS problem: it’s people, ideas, institutions and tools in that order but executed together.
Some places need rebuilding, some places need closing, some things need startups. E.g do not try to ‘reform’ USAF to do drones properly, incentives force the senior people to sabotage intelligent action – set up a new Drone Force outside USAF with new legal authority and totally outside existing procurement, HR, budget etc rules, with incentives to focus on engineering and saving $$, not DEI and cost-plus rackets for Boeing!
The core disaster in western states is the creation of PERMANENT BUREAUCRACIES — as Palmerston said to Queen Victoria in 1830s, this alien European system would be a disaster in England, making responsibility of ministers FAKE.
That’s what we have: FAKE meritocracy, FAKE responsibility, FAKE Cabinet government
But a vibe shift is coming fast across the west – covid & Ukraine & the old system’s pathological failures are pushing people to face fundamental change is needed. SW1 is being forced to confront the Vote Leave agenda coming to DC because the old regime is imploding everywhere…
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A few observations
There is bureaucracy and then there is bureaucracy – the governing class. The former is used as the pejorative for an administrative apparatus that is both necessary for business and government; you don’t get anything done without people to carry out instructions. However it needs to be aggressively pruned every 5 to 7 years, that’s just the way life is.
Cummings writes a lot from the British perspective where the bureaucracy grew out of the governing class; top people from Oxford and Cambridge went into the civil service. These compose the top rung of the bureaucracy. As a side note, Christopher Clark pointed out that before WW I British Foreign Secretary Grey fought against the ministry’s civil servants to stop the drift in policy toward an anti-German stance. He was not successful.
The top rung of the federal civil service is the target, not just because of the bureaucratic empire building and resources they suck up to run their offices but because they expand heir empire into the private sector. Until Chevron was struck down by the Supreme Court this year, the administrative state had enormous leeway to interpret legislation through the rule-making process in order to interfere in the private sector; look at the EPA with the Clean Air Act or Justice with Title IX. Also Pelosi’s famous quip that in regard to Obamacare that they had to pass it to figure out what was in it; that’s because the law would only take shape once the various bureaucracies wrote the rules to implement it.
John Marini’s “Unmasking Administrative State” is an excellent read in this regard. Marini was one of the first in this country to actually analyze how the AS works.
Solutions? Like I said Chevron is struck down so that’s a start. Immediately I would implement Schedule F procedures and strip the top layers of the bureaucracy of their civil service protection, that would place them on their back foot. I would also put another layer of political appointees in just to aggressively pursue.
I would also pick my battles. Beyond some initial shock and awe the real target is not reducing overall head count in the short and medium term, it would be nice but what are you going to gain? The feds spend about $250 billion on employees per year/ Let’s say you cut that 25%, you get $50 billion in savings – out of $6 trillion+ budget? It’s nice and should be pursued but there are better targets specifically the cost the bureaucracy places on the economy if you are going after 20% of the workforce go for the right 20% which is the high level civil service.
As far as reducing headcount, I would be willing as a final offer to spend another $50 billion to just to keep those people employed but locked up in their offices playing Tetris and away from doing anything– the point is to get them out of the way
Top level of the civil service is your target
To his example of a drone force.
Nice idea, let’s create another bureaucracy. Basically the Pentagpn is built around weapons programs and now other programs like DEI; your career gets advanced as your program doesn’t get cut. I doubt that’s going to change medium to long-term, that’s going to be the natural equilibrium of the system That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go after that corrupt, incestuous mess just understand what’s involved.
New innovative programs are driven by the political appointees who provide the necessary drive and cover, your deputy and assistant secretaries. They need to come on board with 3 to 4 top priorities and drive them home. A good example of this was the development of tactical overhead surveillance systems in 2017-2018 when top-level appointees provided the necessary political fire support to shield the programs in their infancy.
More than just creating new agencies is the need to stop hiring in the Pentagon from within; no more retired generals or people with experience in arms industry (unless they have formally renounced their past) We are in the trouble we are now because nobody has paid attention to Defense. Obama never consulted his secretaries let alone helped them fight bureaucratic battles, Trump was whipsawed by his hiring Mattis (sigh) and Esper. Biden? He (or more accurately his handlers) hired Austin because he was both from the system (retired 4-star and Raytheon board) and was a non-entity. I mean he disappeared for the better part of a week earlier this year and nobody missed him. He was picked for the sole reason to not rock the boat
Strategies?
Defense, instate the plucking board and start going after the flag ranks; then reform the promotion boards. Then once you got them on the run get Hesgeth or more likely his deputies to start pushing technologies. Finally get the feds to start investing in R&D like we did in the 70s and 80s.
The rest? Pick your battles. Reducing headcount is great, every little bit helps However the impact is not the money they take from the budget (250 billion or so) but the money they take off of the economy through being regulatory leeches. Yes start firing people, but make sure they are the right people. Firing a field agent or the janitor at the Hoover building isn’t going to get it done.
One final thing….
Back when I advised people looking at “reforming” government, I told them in very blunt terms that the world was not invented yesterday and they weren’t the first ones to think of these things. DOGE should be to answer, either explicitly or implicitly in strategy
1) What didn’t work before
2) What you are going to differently
3) What are your top priorities
A good strategist always analyzes the past in order to empathetic. These guys are dug in tighter than an Alabama tick or if you like kudzu.
Great comment
The ‘shadow cost’ imposed on people & companies interacting w government activities is surely much greater, in most cases, than the direct cost of those activities.
re getting things done quickly–such as drones and similar systems–it may be worthwhile to look at the history of the USAF ballistic missile program and its leader, General Bernard Schriever:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/24503.html
Takeaways:
–Schriever was a strong leader who didn’t bow to political intimidation
–He did not give a traditional airframe manufacturer, such as Convair, the overall responsibility for design and manufacturing, but chose a new and relatively small company, Ramo-Woodridge (later TRW) for the overall systems integration.
–There was enough fear of the Soviet Union and its missile capabilities–greatly intensified by Sputnik–to help give Schriever the room to do what needed to be done, and do it fast.
A reminder that there are degrees of government dysfunction and things could be worse:
https://nypost.com/2024/11/23/world-news/philippine-vice-president-publicly-threatens-to-have-the-president-assassinated/
Cummngs come from the perspective as the eminence gris of brexit, he was quickly pinned as a Russian agent, (say what) because independence from the EU apparat is obviously bad, he also dissented from Boris Johnson’s ill considered lockdown policies, suggested by Ferguson of Imperial College and Matt Hancock,
Expansion on David’s point. Hyman Rickover’s development of nuclear submarines followed a similar course.
The 1950’s also saw the development of the B-52 and F-4 with a long succession of more and sometimes much more dangerous and much less successful aircraft as well. Yet, even those programs that produced poor results could come to the point in a coupe of years rather than decades.
I can remember a passage from Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty just before WWI when he sat down with the First Sea Lord to decide whether they would build two or three battleships the next year. Not start, but build and commission, that year.
A more contemporary and important example is how SpaceX has managed, very nearly, to develop two completely different rocket platforms while NASA has failed twice to develop a single workable rocket. At the same time, rendering every existing platform both obsolete and impossibly uneconomic. For proof, China is already copying:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/chinas-long-term-lunar-plans-now-depend-on-developing-its-own-starship/
One of SpaceX’s secrets is embracing failure in pursuing success. To say this is fraught with risk would be an understatement. It requires a very good judgement of exactly which failures to contemplate and to what extent yet still come out at the end with success. Not something I would want to entrust to the average government drone. NASA on the other hand is spending billions and billions, (more than 2.6 and counting just on the tractor to haul the SLS to the launch pad) avoiding any hint of failure while the program as a whole becomes ever less plausible. Also avoiding any real progress with goals and missions disappearing into the far future. This is especially ironic considering the whole inception of the SLS was to save money by making use of left over Shuttle hardware. Is there anything as expensive as the government trying to save money?
What’s so different now versus the ’50’s?