Following on from my brilliant analysis of USAnian politics I feel inclined to write some words on DOGE and related matters; and Sabine's vaguely-related Science is in trouble and it worries me tips me over. Let's begin with her thesis; you should probably at least watch her graphs for context.The exponential increase of people, money and papers in science is no evidence for an exponential increase in science being done, of course. Partly because if the proportion of scientists as a fraction of people is increasing, their average quality is inevitably going down, and as we all know the best produce a disproportionate amount of what is valuable. But also because - at least I assert this - science is increasingly a job, a career, and while the people doing it will undoubtedly be happy to discover wonderful new things it likely isn't their prime motivation; nor indeed is it the prime motivation of the people employing them. I may be falling victim to the hoary old trope of the Victorian gentleman-scientist motivated purely by curiosity; or I may not. Overall, on this model, there's probably a lot of decent science being done, but quietly, and not necessarily making Nurture. If so, then the vast reams of <stuff that isn't exactly junk, but is just low-quality career-science> isn't doing anyone any great harm.
From that, we move onto DOGE. There are two ways of looking at this, and I think most people are looking at the first and least interesting, which is saving money. And then immeadiately saying "it is pretty hard to save money". Which is true. Most science money, for example, goes on salaries; either of the scientists, or the admin and support staff; if you cut that you'll just have roving homeless packs of feral scientists doing drugs on the streets, which helps no-one. Similar hand-waves apply to social security or medical stuff.
The more interesting stuff is what kicked off Musk in the first place, as it inevitably must, to anyone actually trying to run a company: the vast reams of goverment gumpf that stand in the way of getting anything done.
But rolling that back is hard work, our society has come to love it so much, so many people are beholden to so many special interests who want it continued.
Perhaps if Musk could interest that nice Dominic Cummings he might get somewhere. So I wish him the best but fear for the worst1.
Refs
* The energy transition will be much cheaper than you think.
* How Scientific American's Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science.
* How Industrial Strategy Killed British Industry.
* Link to Twit.
* Peter Schickele / P.D.Q. Bach.
* Inactivity is a choice, not an inevitability in British politics. The projects approved by Labour in its first full week had sat on the desks of Conservative predecessors for months. The Economist.
* No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms, Ritov et al..
* Canadian Euthanasia as Moral Progress. Individual liberty, the common good, and human dignity.
* Democracy's Opportunity Cost.
* International school scores comparison.
* 2013: Syria: the West makes the usual mistake; 2015: The UK should not bomb Syria.
* Perhaps US health spending is not so bad after all?
Notes
1. Consider DOGE Can Succeed by Scaling Back Its Ambitions.
3 comments:
I actually started, ran and sold (profitably) three companies during my career. I must say that the government/regulatory burden was very light. Two of the businesses were in California and were customer facing--what I would have considered targets for regulatory asphyxiation. But I spent maybe 20 hours a year dealing with government and paid an accountant a very reasonable sum to handle taxes and other regulatory stuff. Is it possible that Elon Musk is exaggerating? Is it possible that choosing an industry sector that can be fatal to its customers and those around them might tilt the scales towards more regulation? He certainly has not seemed handicapped in operating either his solar power or space exploration ventures.
I'm surprised to hear you say that; it doesn't at all correspond to "hat one sees in the papers". But I cannot claim personal experience of regulation in California.
There is regulation, no question. But they've put a lot of effort into making it easy to understand, which I think is 90% of the problem with regulations overall. And I think (big) business does like to exaggerate the extent of the problem, although to be fair I'm sure the regulatory burden is higher for large businesses.
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