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For my entire life – I'm in my fifties – I've heard talking heads in the media complain about the "waste" they are absolutely sure must be there in the federal budget.
There's this whole little cycle. First they'll hold something up for mockery, usually an expense of the Department of Defense, because they're always a good target for this. Then later it will come out there was some reason for the expense being as high as it was. Sometimes it was because it was some specialized version of an ordinary thing, that had to be engineered to be combat ready. Sometimes it was because a vendor had them over a barrel and, well, that's how the free market works under capitalism: supply and demand, baby. Sometimes it was actually a perfectly reasonable amount of money to spend on the thing in question, it's just the general public has no idea what the cost of labor is.
Now, it's not that I am unmindful to the potential benefits of looking for ways to economize, or that I don't believe it's possible there's something I would agree is wastefulness going on in the federal government. It's just that I've been around that cycle enough times to be inured to it and become cynical, and I have the intellectual humility to realize that from the outside and with no idea of the constraints on procurement, I'm in no position whatsoever to critique someone else's budget.
Talking heads in the media have been pounding this drum for at least half a century, and the underlying implication is that you (an American) pay too much in taxes because the federal government is irresponsible with your money. That they waste it. That they don't bother to count the cost of anything they buy, so they fritter money away needlessly, or pay for silly things they do not – could not possibly – need.
This has engendered a deep mistrust in the federal government. Over the course of my lifetime, it has become a commonplace to believe that our government cannot be trusted with tax revenues. This belief has been particularly attractive to those who gravitated to the GOP – who once positioned themselves as the party of fiscal conservatism and small government – because they resented having to pay as much taxes as they did. Though originally it was a bipartisan issue – in the 1980s, Reagan was a target of such rhetoric, because of his huge military budget – it encouraged those whose identification with the Republicans was based on hatred of taxes to ever more conspiratorial thinking and hostility to government.
Indeed, the idea that the government spends money wastefully has lodged itself so firmly in the American psyche that it's become something of an article of faith: the reason taxes are "so high" – higher than the speaker wants them to be – is because of government waste.
I say it's an article of faith because it doesn't actually seem to be predicated on real evidence. The evidence presented is pointing at numbers and baldly asserting, "See, this one is too high. Surely you agree this should not be so." You should not so agree. That's a trick. "Too high" is an opinion, and like any opinion it's worse than worthless if it's not an informed opinion, and unless you are in a position to know, your opinion isn't informed.
But that's reason, and the attraction of believing that the cause of one not having enough money is because the government stole it from you and blew it on hookers and blow is not any supposed firm evidentiary basis for such a belief, but because it offers an emotionally reassuring shortcut to a solution. Thus some very large part of the American populace has convinced themselves that they wouldn't have to pay so disagreeably much in taxes if some responsible grown-ups took charge of the government and made it live within its means.
Well, here we are. We have come to the natural apotheosis of this ardent faith that the reason our taxes are what they are is that the government is wasting the money, and the path to prosperity is to make them stop. (Some of them are already noticing that maybe they should first have asked what the people begging their votes on a promise of "eliminating waste" meant by "waste".) It looks like we're going to see just how the golden eggs were made inside the goose.
I've known sysadmins who have joked that if you want to know if anyone is still using a server, just unplug it from the wall and listen for the screams. America is in the process of doing that with its governmental functions. We are going to find out exactly how much our tax dollars were doing for us. Eventually. The fullness of that reckoning will likely take decades, or maybe even centuries to fully come to account.
Perhaps at long last Americans will learn what it is that government does for them.
Well, did.
This is a pattern I've been noticing all across our society: the assumption the problem with that thing over there is waste, or rather wastefulness on the part of some population that's being othered.
It crops up in discussing healthcare costs in the US (and the UK). There are many people absolutely convinced that the problems with the high cost of healthcare in the US is "waste": that doctors are ordering tests that are a waste of money, that patients waste money on doctors visits and medical procedures they don't need, that hospitals waste money on supplies they don't need. This paradigm comes with solutions of the form that naughty people just need to be convinced, coerced, or incented not to waste resources, which we would surely be able to identify as waste.
It also ran riot in industry as "Lean manufacturing", which originally arose from an idea with merit and has become a demon eating its own legs. Businesses, not just in manufacturing but anything with logistics, started, in the name of "eliminating waste", removing all the slack from their logistical systems, making them brittle.
And of course, the poor are endlessly suspected of "wasting" what resources are given to them. Social programs implement invasive surveillance (such as random checks of bank accounts balances and urine screens) and punitive limitations (such as SNAP and WIC funds not being usable for diapers) to prevent the presumed irresponsible poor from "wasting" what they are given.
While actually eliminating actual waste is a laudable thing, at this point, you should be very suspicious of anyone who stumps on "eliminating waste". Mostly idiocy, duplicity, and cruelty march under that banner.
This post brought to you by the 212 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
For my entire life – I'm in my fifties – I've heard talking heads in the media complain about the "waste" they are absolutely sure must be there in the federal budget.
There's this whole little cycle. First they'll hold something up for mockery, usually an expense of the Department of Defense, because they're always a good target for this. Then later it will come out there was some reason for the expense being as high as it was. Sometimes it was because it was some specialized version of an ordinary thing, that had to be engineered to be combat ready. Sometimes it was because a vendor had them over a barrel and, well, that's how the free market works under capitalism: supply and demand, baby. Sometimes it was actually a perfectly reasonable amount of money to spend on the thing in question, it's just the general public has no idea what the cost of labor is.
Now, it's not that I am unmindful to the potential benefits of looking for ways to economize, or that I don't believe it's possible there's something I would agree is wastefulness going on in the federal government. It's just that I've been around that cycle enough times to be inured to it and become cynical, and I have the intellectual humility to realize that from the outside and with no idea of the constraints on procurement, I'm in no position whatsoever to critique someone else's budget.
Talking heads in the media have been pounding this drum for at least half a century, and the underlying implication is that you (an American) pay too much in taxes because the federal government is irresponsible with your money. That they waste it. That they don't bother to count the cost of anything they buy, so they fritter money away needlessly, or pay for silly things they do not – could not possibly – need.
This has engendered a deep mistrust in the federal government. Over the course of my lifetime, it has become a commonplace to believe that our government cannot be trusted with tax revenues. This belief has been particularly attractive to those who gravitated to the GOP – who once positioned themselves as the party of fiscal conservatism and small government – because they resented having to pay as much taxes as they did. Though originally it was a bipartisan issue – in the 1980s, Reagan was a target of such rhetoric, because of his huge military budget – it encouraged those whose identification with the Republicans was based on hatred of taxes to ever more conspiratorial thinking and hostility to government.
Indeed, the idea that the government spends money wastefully has lodged itself so firmly in the American psyche that it's become something of an article of faith: the reason taxes are "so high" – higher than the speaker wants them to be – is because of government waste.
I say it's an article of faith because it doesn't actually seem to be predicated on real evidence. The evidence presented is pointing at numbers and baldly asserting, "See, this one is too high. Surely you agree this should not be so." You should not so agree. That's a trick. "Too high" is an opinion, and like any opinion it's worse than worthless if it's not an informed opinion, and unless you are in a position to know, your opinion isn't informed.
But that's reason, and the attraction of believing that the cause of one not having enough money is because the government stole it from you and blew it on hookers and blow is not any supposed firm evidentiary basis for such a belief, but because it offers an emotionally reassuring shortcut to a solution. Thus some very large part of the American populace has convinced themselves that they wouldn't have to pay so disagreeably much in taxes if some responsible grown-ups took charge of the government and made it live within its means.
Well, here we are. We have come to the natural apotheosis of this ardent faith that the reason our taxes are what they are is that the government is wasting the money, and the path to prosperity is to make them stop. (Some of them are already noticing that maybe they should first have asked what the people begging their votes on a promise of "eliminating waste" meant by "waste".) It looks like we're going to see just how the golden eggs were made inside the goose.
I've known sysadmins who have joked that if you want to know if anyone is still using a server, just unplug it from the wall and listen for the screams. America is in the process of doing that with its governmental functions. We are going to find out exactly how much our tax dollars were doing for us. Eventually. The fullness of that reckoning will likely take decades, or maybe even centuries to fully come to account.
Perhaps at long last Americans will learn what it is that government does for them.
Well, did.
This is a pattern I've been noticing all across our society: the assumption the problem with that thing over there is waste, or rather wastefulness on the part of some population that's being othered.
It crops up in discussing healthcare costs in the US (and the UK). There are many people absolutely convinced that the problems with the high cost of healthcare in the US is "waste": that doctors are ordering tests that are a waste of money, that patients waste money on doctors visits and medical procedures they don't need, that hospitals waste money on supplies they don't need. This paradigm comes with solutions of the form that naughty people just need to be convinced, coerced, or incented not to waste resources, which we would surely be able to identify as waste.
It also ran riot in industry as "Lean manufacturing", which originally arose from an idea with merit and has become a demon eating its own legs. Businesses, not just in manufacturing but anything with logistics, started, in the name of "eliminating waste", removing all the slack from their logistical systems, making them brittle.
And of course, the poor are endlessly suspected of "wasting" what resources are given to them. Social programs implement invasive surveillance (such as random checks of bank accounts balances and urine screens) and punitive limitations (such as SNAP and WIC funds not being usable for diapers) to prevent the presumed irresponsible poor from "wasting" what they are given.
While actually eliminating actual waste is a laudable thing, at this point, you should be very suspicious of anyone who stumps on "eliminating waste". Mostly idiocy, duplicity, and cruelty march under that banner.
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This post brought to you by the 212 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 10:58 am (UTC)Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 11:55 am (UTC)But I'd read the book written on the basis of that study, and found it really illuminating. It's actually about how conflict in romantic relationships can arise from differing expectations of what love is. e.g. if one partner is possessive and the other thinks it's a partnership, they're in trouble.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 05:39 pm (UTC)IOW, it was an effort to "reduce waste."
(Lots of scare quotes up there because none of the things conservatives purported to be concerned about actually worked the way they asserted things worked, most of the problems they identified were either not problems or were caused by "conservative" fiscal and social policies, and most importantly, pressuring people to marry neither improved overall economic conditions for children nor created stable marriages. But conservatives weren't interested in improving matters for children, because the straightforward way to do that was to 1) give their parents money without restriction (UBI) and 2) impose more parenting-friendly policies like paid parental leave, government-subsidized childcare, and universal health care. They just wanted to stigmatize single (Black) mothers and try to impose a heteronormative and Christianist vision of the family on people. The research they funded sort of worked for the former and failed badly at the latter.)
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 06:41 pm (UTC)And you don't have to be a social conservative to think it's a good idea for couples to match up their ideas as to what marriage is for before they go into it. My parents had very different ideas, and growing up in their company could be a pain.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 12:33 pm (UTC)Instead, any well-designed program (government, industry, educational, computer...) should come with objectively measurable success criteria, so one can tell how well it's actually achieving its intended effects. (Why yes, I did spend a couple of years as "outcomes assessment chair" at a university, as well as teaching test-driven software development.) A DEI training course that everybody takes because it's mandatory but which doesn't actually change measurable outcomes is probably a waste of time and money; one which does change measurable outcomes in the intended direction is doing what it claimed to do. You can argue whether the success criteria are actually in the national interest, but you can't argue that the latter program isn't achieving them.
Both of those arguments are legitimate, and need to happen: is this program achieving its success criteria, and is achieving those success criteria actually in the nation's best interest? It's tempting to conflate the two, especially if you also conflate the nation's best interest with your personal best interest, because then anything you don't like is "waste", and naming it that gives you an "objective"-sounding excuse for cutting it.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 05:43 pm (UTC)Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-26 12:13 pm (UTC)Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 12:54 pm (UTC)Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-05-26 04:18 pm (UTC)Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 01:14 pm (UTC)Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 03:40 pm (UTC)This can be extrapolated to all kinds of organisations, because "overhead" is an inherent trait of a group of people are working together in some way.
So, in a state-sized organisation, even for rather small states, there will be a lot of overhead. And nerve-racking frictional losses that feel like a needless waste of everyone's time, energy, money and goodwill. But if you cut those, the whole thing falls apart.
It's of course still possible to implement better processes. Only it's hardly ever the low-hanging fruit it seems to be. (*Looks at forty years worth of patches on legacy code and cries*.)
And this does not even touch the "waste is resources spent on features I do not like" part of it.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 05:54 pm (UTC)When government does indeed have waste at some level, usually, other government employees are already trying to document, call attention to it, or whistle blow about it. With every Canadian scandal about wasteful spending that became public that I read about - what also became public is that some people close to the matter have been warning and writing about it for a while.
Actual government waste is probably harder to hide than people think. Departments are big enough to have committed, conscientious people working there who are experts in the matter, see what's going on, and try to do something about it. Based on the published scandals, we do need a better system to support them and listen to them much earlier.
And I see this notion as an addition that fits within your framework here, because supporting these people starts with respecting them, respecting the organizations / institutions and their internal strengths. Versus buying into the presumption that things must always be wasteful, and this inherent assumed wastefulness also seems to imply that nobody in the government cares, and thus outsiders who are full of contempt and suspicion can do something useful.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-26 12:34 pm (UTC)Likewise, the Federal Office of Special Counsel (not to be confused with the Justice Department position called "Special Counsel"), which serves to protect whistleblowers across the whole government, had its head fired on Feb. 7. He too, by law, can be fired only for substantive performance-related reasons, sued to get his job back, and is currently operating under a court order which the White House has appealed to SCOTUS. And this Monday the office announced that many of the recent firings of probationary employees "for cause" were unjustified by actual performance problems and hadn't followed proper procedures so they had to be reversed.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-25 06:16 pm (UTC)I do think there needs to be room for ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of different government activities, and some prioritization should happen around that. But yes, the vague rhetoric about "waste" has been getting out of hand for a very long time.
This post inspired me to look up more information about the Golden Fleece Award (Wikipedia link), which I was then surprised to learn was the invention of a Democrat!
One last factor relates to population distribution: people in urban environments are far more likely to notice positive impacts of government spending on their lives, for the geographical reason that things like large hospitals or other public works generally aren't built out somewhere in the countryside. I think this also has a substantial impact on perceptions about government spending.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-26 08:17 am (UTC)*edit*
And rural folks.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-26 02:36 pm (UTC)Different meanings of fraud from Musk-- ambiguities and falsenss.
Re: Comment catcher: The Baseless Faith in Waste
Date: 2025-02-26 06:30 pm (UTC)That's the rub, really: efficiency and resilience aren't the same thing, and 100% efficiency can be very brittle indeed.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-25 01:30 pm (UTC)Not to mention an awful lot of graft and actual, factual waste. Cheating the poor because it makes you money is reprehensible, but spending money to cheat the poor when it'd be cheaper and more profitable all around to not do that is... well, I don't even know what it is, but it's sure wasteful as fuck.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-26 12:38 pm (UTC)And cutting spending on the IRS, which was largely being spent chasing down tax evaders and getting them to pay what they legally owe the government, drives a massive hole in the budget. But it has the beneficial effect of saving money for rich constituents whose business model is tax evasion.