>Tech companies have a defined purpose, and they’re a vehicle for achieving that purpose. Google wants to organize the world’s information, and turning a gigantic profit while doing so is one of their operating constraints...
>But the U.S. government doesn’t have a defined purpose, just a long list of functions, and those functions aren’t regularly interrogated. It’s uncomfortable for modern Americans to ask what the ultimate goal of the government is.
Aside from the fact that this an "apples to oranges" comparison, I dont think the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution.
>"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
That the Constitution defines it as such is simply a matter of documentation of a purpose. You have to actually internalize a purpose and values system for it to be useful and “real” in the sense that it drives what you do as an organization. This seems a more proper distinction that feels accurate to me in making the author’s point but that is itself a hard point to falsify.
The other way to think about how to steel man the idea would be to think about how the government measures its success which is most likely by whether or not those in power keep staying in power? The bureaucrats who are subordinate to the government have much less (any?) stake in that measure so again it would be tough to think about purpose there.
I've read a ton of these kinds of libertarian pieces and I'm convinced after reading most that the authors are just not very well read.
I know it's daunting and difficult, but you have to read, digest, and have a dialogue with what has been written about government for hundreds (thousands really, but baby steps first...) of years, but I guess it's more fun to just write out fan fiction for Google running the world.
The Constitution is meaningless without a culture that backs it up. For example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm. That's not an argument or a judgement about the state of things, just an observation.
Right now there's a big debate about whether our government is structurally functioning for the purpose of literally murdering black people. To put it lightly, that's a very different function than to "promote the general welfare."
Because the US Gov has had a 60 year ideological assault on its validity and functioning (Goldwater was the first major presenting symptom), leading to practical results of dysfunction.
This is best illustrated by Reagan's phrase:
> “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"
That is to say, if you wage an idea war on the idea of government, you'll have a government which doesn't work.
This is an idea often trotted out in these discussions but then you should ask how regions of the country such as California which for decades now have had essentially none of that assault in meaningful amounts and yet still is a largely dysfunctional entity. Or look at San Francisco.
> Goldwater was the first major presenting symptom
Can you please elaborate? I'm briefly aware on who Goldwater was and his influence on Reagan's election, but this phrase puzzles me. (I'm not from the US, maybe I lack some context)
And it’s not even big tech. It’s like 4 companies with great pr and monopoly-like market power, being judged mostly on the basis of Naive public perception and brand awareness.
Oracle and SAP and Infosys are big tech companies by any reasonable definition of big. You’ll be hard pressed to find technologists who would decscribe those companies as competent. And there are some amazing teams within those orgs that do stuff which is genuinely more impressive than hacking out protobufs from 1030am to 415pm with an hour long lunch, which is just to say that even within tech there’s a lot of PR/brand sentiment shaping opinions of people who should know better.
Uber is big tech, but still loses money hand over fist.
And even if we limit ourselves to the few companies with the most competent PR — the faangs — are they really so competent? Or are they just extracting value from near-monopoly market power?
There are several big tech companies who are not good at anything other than making and managing money. Inertia machines like IBM, Oracle, and probably some other ones you can think of...
Congratulations, you’ve discovered the idea of competition and why it makes the free market better! Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things!
Unlike in government, where failure is often rewarded with an increased budget and a chance to try again next year with more money.
The US government has no incentive to succeed in the way that you or I understand it: i.e. by producing something of value, operating an organization efficiently, or achieving a useful result. I mean, the government as a whole might in some abstract sense, but the individuals that comprise the government certainly do not, and the individuals are the underlying reality here, not words in the Constitution or whatever.
“Success” in the government is defined solely by justifying your continued budget to a bunch of other people who are largely as unaccountable for results as you are. “Great success” is achieving an expansion of your budget. And the best way to achieve an expansion of your budget is to figure out how to blame your past failures on having too small a budget.
As a mentor of mine once said: “The private sector is about cost minimization. The government is about cost justification.”
So the consequence is that “failure” in the government doesn’t really mean you failed to achieve your result. It means you failed to properly document and justify your costs. If you have all the proper documentation and followed all the proper procedures and yet you still failed to achieve a result, that’s okay! It’s obviously not your fault, and since you’re so good at following procedures the government will happily entrust you with more money to fail with next year.
Actually judging whether you’re any good at producing results is way too complicated and subjective for any government funding office to evaluate. And subject to liability and discrimination concerns as well. But it’s easy and unambiguous to verify whether you followed the proper procedures!
I think this weekend is as good as any for people to take time and read the US Founding documents, because it seems like a lot of the philosophy the US was founded seems to be unclear to a lot of people. This article and a lot of comments seem to misunderstand the role and purpose of the US form of Federal Republic government. Its worth reading the lot chronologically IMO.
I object to the notion that Facebook users are Mark Zuckerberg's "constituents." They have no representation in corporate governance, no ownership of the data Facebook appropriates from them, and no rights on the platform aside from the paltry few that are guaranteed (and rarely enforced) by whatever governments they live under. Users of Facebook (and most other large corporate networks) are vassals or subjects, not constituents.
They have the right to not do business with Facebook. This is massively more power than a citizen has over it's government. If I had the right to not pay my taxes if I was unsatisfied with government services (not actually saying this is reasonable) then the government would be a lot more responsive to my needs.
Facebook keeps making its core product worse, probably because of short termism in their corporate goals. Pretty funny to see the article hold them up as an example of good governance.
When it comes to state IT projects, I've got a theory that part of the reason government seems cumbersome is often the state has to serve everyone.
Someone's doesn't speak English? Doesn't have a computer? Doesn't have a phone? Doesn't have an e-mail address? Doesn't have a credit card? Doesn't have a bank account? Doesn't have an address? Is completely deaf? If that means they can't use amazon.com so be it.
But if it means they can't register to vote, or can't get a driving license? That's a different matter.
So state projects IT have to support things like mailing Spanish-language braille-printed letters, when Amazon can just send an e-mail.
It's a grave error to confuse effectiveness with desirability. Hence the irony of the phrase: "At least he made the trains run on time."
Big tech's competence is only an asset as long as their financial interests are aligned with free, democratic society. As the epicenter economic activity increasingly shifts to China, this will eventually stop being true. What then?
Companies can segment their market and offer different products to different people based for different prices based on all kinds of aspects. They can even reject customers and block them from doing business at all.
Governments are supposed to serve 100% of their citizens. They can't pick and choose. In some contexts, they can't even prioritize.
That alone radically changes how they have to approach everything.
memetic immune system and hormesis are cool metaphors to use for institutions, but probably just metaphors -- not sure how to use these as specific prescriptions for change
'lack of a driving purpose' rings false -- amazon was a book company, that doesn't connect to buying whole foods or owning all of e-commerce. companies and governments both adapt and take on new projects when they're working.
US government leadership dulled hanlon's razor this spring by achieving high marks in both malice and incompetence
create cultural change by replacing stale process and leaders constantly
There's no one simple reason, but a big contributor is compensation. Government pay for high skill professions like computer programmer, mechanical, electrical, and aerospace engineers, etc is far below what good people in those fields can make working in private industry. Often people in those fields work on government contracts, where the US Govt will pay 3x or more than their already high total compensation for the privilege of their time.
I should know, I'm one of those professionals. I started out working for the government, then eventually became a contractor (doing the exact same job in the exact same building that I had done for the government! for 30% more money!)
It was hard to not take that offer of the additional money, especially when the government would go out of its way to infantilize its employees.
As a sibling comment pointed out there are different forms of accountability. Voting and protesting are forms we're familiar with in the US and Europe, but there are other ways too.
In Singapore, you can more easily submit written feedback to the government, I've heard that things like potholes actually get fixed faster this route than in the US where you might have to string some activism to put pressure on the city.
From my point of view, government is far less accountable than a typical private corporation. Voting is occasional and highly manipulatable. The same people shuffle around different posts. It can compel revenue through pointing guns at people and locking them up in cages.
It's not like a business that has to meet payroll to survive by attracting customers. That's accountability.
Comparing governments to companies is like comparing sports teams to referees. Referees have scored zero points since the inception of the game. They must suck!!!
I wouldnt go that far. How often do you hear product managers talk about 'scope creep', 'minimum viable product', 'launch first and fix bugs later'. The government's job is literally bug fixing and maintaining legacy code base. Big tech are not good a this, you can't rewrite social institutions via roadmap.
".. for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the Nation is quite considerable." - Charles Wilson, CEO of GM, testifying before Congress in 1953.
[+] [-] banads|5 years ago|reply
>But the U.S. government doesn’t have a defined purpose, just a long list of functions, and those functions aren’t regularly interrogated. It’s uncomfortable for modern Americans to ask what the ultimate goal of the government is.
Aside from the fact that this an "apples to oranges" comparison, I dont think the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution.
>"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
[+] [-] creddit|5 years ago|reply
The other way to think about how to steel man the idea would be to think about how the government measures its success which is most likely by whether or not those in power keep staying in power? The bureaucrats who are subordinate to the government have much less (any?) stake in that measure so again it would be tough to think about purpose there.
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|5 years ago|reply
When you read the Preamble to the Constitution, does it strike you as specific or generic?
[+] [-] radicaldreamer|5 years ago|reply
I know it's daunting and difficult, but you have to read, digest, and have a dialogue with what has been written about government for hundreds (thousands really, but baby steps first...) of years, but I guess it's more fun to just write out fan fiction for Google running the world.
[+] [-] Consultant32452|5 years ago|reply
Right now there's a big debate about whether our government is structurally functioning for the purpose of literally murdering black people. To put it lightly, that's a very different function than to "promote the general welfare."
[+] [-] pnathan|5 years ago|reply
This is best illustrated by Reagan's phrase:
> “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"
That is to say, if you wage an idea war on the idea of government, you'll have a government which doesn't work.
[+] [-] creddit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|5 years ago|reply
Can you please elaborate? I'm briefly aware on who Goldwater was and his influence on Reagan's election, but this phrase puzzles me. (I'm not from the US, maybe I lack some context)
[+] [-] isoskeles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|5 years ago|reply
So we ignore all the failures to get to that point and then declare them better?
Isn't this like asking why the Super Bowl champs are always good at football?
[+] [-] throwawaygh|5 years ago|reply
Oracle and SAP and Infosys are big tech companies by any reasonable definition of big. You’ll be hard pressed to find technologists who would decscribe those companies as competent. And there are some amazing teams within those orgs that do stuff which is genuinely more impressive than hacking out protobufs from 1030am to 415pm with an hour long lunch, which is just to say that even within tech there’s a lot of PR/brand sentiment shaping opinions of people who should know better.
Uber is big tech, but still loses money hand over fist.
And even if we limit ourselves to the few companies with the most competent PR — the faangs — are they really so competent? Or are they just extracting value from near-monopoly market power?
[+] [-] robbyt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avalys|5 years ago|reply
Unlike in government, where failure is often rewarded with an increased budget and a chance to try again next year with more money.
[+] [-] avalys|5 years ago|reply
“Success” in the government is defined solely by justifying your continued budget to a bunch of other people who are largely as unaccountable for results as you are. “Great success” is achieving an expansion of your budget. And the best way to achieve an expansion of your budget is to figure out how to blame your past failures on having too small a budget.
As a mentor of mine once said: “The private sector is about cost minimization. The government is about cost justification.”
So the consequence is that “failure” in the government doesn’t really mean you failed to achieve your result. It means you failed to properly document and justify your costs. If you have all the proper documentation and followed all the proper procedures and yet you still failed to achieve a result, that’s okay! It’s obviously not your fault, and since you’re so good at following procedures the government will happily entrust you with more money to fail with next year.
Actually judging whether you’re any good at producing results is way too complicated and subjective for any government funding office to evaluate. And subject to liability and discrimination concerns as well. But it’s easy and unambiguous to verify whether you followed the proper procedures!
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|5 years ago|reply
Declaration of Independence (1776): https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...
Articles of Confederation (1781): https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp
US Constitution (1787):https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution
Federalist Papers (1787 - 1788): https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text
US Constitutional Amendments 1-12 (Bill of Rights) (1789): https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transc...
[+] [-] bhupy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdauriemma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] travisoneill1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostdog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelt|5 years ago|reply
Someone's doesn't speak English? Doesn't have a computer? Doesn't have a phone? Doesn't have an e-mail address? Doesn't have a credit card? Doesn't have a bank account? Doesn't have an address? Is completely deaf? If that means they can't use amazon.com so be it.
But if it means they can't register to vote, or can't get a driving license? That's a different matter.
So state projects IT have to support things like mailing Spanish-language braille-printed letters, when Amazon can just send an e-mail.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|5 years ago|reply
Big tech's competence is only an asset as long as their financial interests are aligned with free, democratic society. As the epicenter economic activity increasingly shifts to China, this will eventually stop being true. What then?
[+] [-] caseysoftware|5 years ago|reply
Governments are supposed to serve 100% of their citizens. They can't pick and choose. In some contexts, they can't even prioritize.
That alone radically changes how they have to approach everything.
[+] [-] awinter-py|5 years ago|reply
'lack of a driving purpose' rings false -- amazon was a book company, that doesn't connect to buying whole foods or owning all of e-commerce. companies and governments both adapt and take on new projects when they're working.
US government leadership dulled hanlon's razor this spring by achieving high marks in both malice and incompetence
create cultural change by replacing stale process and leaders constantly
[+] [-] euler_angles|5 years ago|reply
I should know, I'm one of those professionals. I started out working for the government, then eventually became a contractor (doing the exact same job in the exact same building that I had done for the government! for 30% more money!)
It was hard to not take that offer of the additional money, especially when the government would go out of its way to infantilize its employees.
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
...but the reason we have government is for accountability.
I can't vote for a new national search engine, or a new smartphone maker, so when we all have complaints about their abuse of power, we are SoL.
[+] [-] chillacy|5 years ago|reply
In Singapore, you can more easily submit written feedback to the government, I've heard that things like potholes actually get fixed faster this route than in the US where you might have to string some activism to put pressure on the city.
[+] [-] baggy_trough|5 years ago|reply
It's not like a business that has to meet payroll to survive by attracting customers. That's accountability.
[+] [-] rubyn00bie|5 years ago|reply
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