Jens Heycke Explains to Francis Fukuyama how to make government more efficient:
Suppose you could do anything to create the most efficient government possible. You might raise orphans from early childhood, giving them the best possible education and carefully refining their skills over many years. You would have them live together, fostering a sense of cohesion. Then you would use a meritocratic system of tests to place the brightest and most talented ones at the highest levels of government. Workers who did less well would take lower positions in the bureaucracy. Without parents or families, these govt. workers' only loyalty would be to the state. There would be restrictions on them having children to assure that loyalty. It would be just like Plato's Republic.
Well, the Ottoman Empire actually did exactly this for several hundred years (with the devşirme). And guess what? The Ottoman government was still corrupt and inefficient. The Han, Ming, and Qing dynasties in China did something similar with eunuchs, with similar results.
The lesson is: any very large organization with no direct answerability to the stakeholders (i.e. taxpayers), will be corrupt and inefficient. This is a simple law of nature. Most of the efforts (remember Al Gore?) to thwart that law and impose strictures on the govt. leviathan will make it even more inefficient.
If you want more government efficiency and less corruption, the only surefire answer is to have less government.
P.s. I also never believed history ended and I was right.
One of the points made here is that there are many rules and layers of oversight in place to make sure bureaucrats are not wasteful. These rules themselves can be an instance of overregulation. It is hard to get the balance right.
Good ideas. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to teach anything to someone who thinks that he already knows everything. But props for trying anyway.
The only factual thing I disagree with in this letter is the suggestion that it is difficult to attract people to work for the government because it has low social prestige.
It obviously depends somewhat on your line of work, but working for the federal government is actually quite socially prestigious and a source of pride. The federal government routinely attracts lawyers from the tippety top law schools, who often take these jobs over higher paying private sector ones. Health- and science-based agencies like the nuclear regulatory agency, the bureau of land management, and climate-related agencies are also very high in prestige for
people with the requisite backgrounds. The Federal Reserve and other federal financial regulatory agencies are highly sought after by top-flight PhD economists.
The reason why federal employees are often not generally early in their careers is not because these aren’t attractive to young people but because many of these jobs have very strict post-graduate educational and experience requirements. Also, while it does depend, it is often the case that a major qualification for being a regulator for an industry is actually having worked in the industry being regulated and thereby knowing how it operates.
"It is a widely believed myth that the federal bureaucracy is bloated and overstaffed. This is not the case: there are basically the same number of full-time federal employees today as there were back in 1969, about 2.3 million."
In fiscal year 2022, the federal government spent about $271 billion on employee compensation, which includes wages and benefits. This cost was for about 2.3 million workers, not including military personnel or Postal Service employees. The majority of this cost was spent on the departments with the most employees, which are Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security.
However, the total number of federal employees is 4.3 million. This includes 2.87 million civil employees (contractors).
Ironically the number of contractors working for the federal government is about the same as the total number of federal employees in 1969.
The total number of federal employees, both W-2 and 1099 is double what it was in 1969.
The establishment has just lost a landslide election largely due to the loss of trust with the American people. Here we are, dear Frank is dispensing advice with the same kind of partial truth that MSNBC, CBS and NPR have been doing for years. Thank God, we have reached the end of history, the other history.
Jens Heycke Explains to Francis Fukuyama how to make government more efficient:
Suppose you could do anything to create the most efficient government possible. You might raise orphans from early childhood, giving them the best possible education and carefully refining their skills over many years. You would have them live together, fostering a sense of cohesion. Then you would use a meritocratic system of tests to place the brightest and most talented ones at the highest levels of government. Workers who did less well would take lower positions in the bureaucracy. Without parents or families, these govt. workers' only loyalty would be to the state. There would be restrictions on them having children to assure that loyalty. It would be just like Plato's Republic.
Well, the Ottoman Empire actually did exactly this for several hundred years (with the devşirme). And guess what? The Ottoman government was still corrupt and inefficient. The Han, Ming, and Qing dynasties in China did something similar with eunuchs, with similar results.
The lesson is: any very large organization with no direct answerability to the stakeholders (i.e. taxpayers), will be corrupt and inefficient. This is a simple law of nature. Most of the efforts (remember Al Gore?) to thwart that law and impose strictures on the govt. leviathan will make it even more inefficient.
If you want more government efficiency and less corruption, the only surefire answer is to have less government.
P.s. I also never believed history ended and I was right.
One of the points made here is that there are many rules and layers of oversight in place to make sure bureaucrats are not wasteful. These rules themselves can be an instance of overregulation. It is hard to get the balance right.
Good ideas. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to teach anything to someone who thinks that he already knows everything. But props for trying anyway.
The only factual thing I disagree with in this letter is the suggestion that it is difficult to attract people to work for the government because it has low social prestige.
It obviously depends somewhat on your line of work, but working for the federal government is actually quite socially prestigious and a source of pride. The federal government routinely attracts lawyers from the tippety top law schools, who often take these jobs over higher paying private sector ones. Health- and science-based agencies like the nuclear regulatory agency, the bureau of land management, and climate-related agencies are also very high in prestige for
people with the requisite backgrounds. The Federal Reserve and other federal financial regulatory agencies are highly sought after by top-flight PhD economists.
The reason why federal employees are often not generally early in their careers is not because these aren’t attractive to young people but because many of these jobs have very strict post-graduate educational and experience requirements. Also, while it does depend, it is often the case that a major qualification for being a regulator for an industry is actually having worked in the industry being regulated and thereby knowing how it operates.
"It is a widely believed myth that the federal bureaucracy is bloated and overstaffed. This is not the case: there are basically the same number of full-time federal employees today as there were back in 1969, about 2.3 million."
In fiscal year 2022, the federal government spent about $271 billion on employee compensation, which includes wages and benefits. This cost was for about 2.3 million workers, not including military personnel or Postal Service employees. The majority of this cost was spent on the departments with the most employees, which are Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security.
However, the total number of federal employees is 4.3 million. This includes 2.87 million civil employees (contractors).
Ironically the number of contractors working for the federal government is about the same as the total number of federal employees in 1969.
The total number of federal employees, both W-2 and 1099 is double what it was in 1969.
The establishment has just lost a landslide election largely due to the loss of trust with the American people. Here we are, dear Frank is dispensing advice with the same kind of partial truth that MSNBC, CBS and NPR have been doing for years. Thank God, we have reached the end of history, the other history.
Whole truth. Note that you have nothing refute it except your feelings.
A Letter to Francis Fukuyama.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/151510114