This morning I had a session with clients and as is normal for this group of two, we discussed many topics in just over an hour, ranging from the forest fires in California, to the tiny distance between Russia and US, suicide epidemics (that I might write about later) and what I will talk about now, government inefficiency.
But we didn't talk directly about it, but more in a general sense of inefficiency, when rather looking for the best result possible for the people, they are looking to make certain groups happy, at the expense of others. This results in resources being spread too thin making them ineffectual and, too many inclusions that do not bring value. I likened it to The Homer. Very expensive to build, but satisfies no one - and sends its shareholders broke.
That'd be Us.
Government inefficiency isn't the government's fault, it is just the way it is designed, where there are too many areas to cover, too many managers, too many competing wants, and too little accountability. It is the opposite of most businesses, where the goal isn't to grow profit, it is to grow itself at the expense of others. To keep consuming resources to sustain it, under the guise that what it is doing is working, but never having to actually prove it. When it inevitably fails, the leaders change, but the same framework of inefficiency continues.
But, I am a fan of inefficiency for the most part, because within is where possibility and innovation lays. If everything was absolutely efficient, there would be no more growth, no reason to change. I explored this a little many years ago in an article on architects and engineers.
The architect manipulates space without any limiting rules, save the self-imposed. They spend their time in a dream world of creativity and promise, possibility and exception. The engineer however, constantly develops new techniques and materials in order to strengthen, improve efficiency and increase effectivity. The engineer attempts to bring concrete integrity to an idea by increasing and applying knowledge of the rules to the physical world. This is a relationship of symbiosis, not conflict.
Every mistake is an opportunity to improve, and the governments are jam-packed-full of mistakes, from the ground up, always the way through to their successes. Because even when they are successful, like a broken watch telling the correct time twice a day, the framework of opposition will undermine it, not to improve results for us the stakeholders, but to reduce the power of those who succeeded.
However, government inefficiency is generally not of the kind that breeds innovation, because they aren't looking to do anything on the bleeding edge, they aren't willing to take developmental risks. Government inefficiency is born from incompetence and ignorance, not pushing the boundaries and failing. This means that the opportunity to innovate is reduced, because nothing new need be created, because the solutions already exist, they just didn't apply them. As said the other day, they are problem solvers, but the solutions they employ are already superseded well before what will inevitably be a terrible implementation process. They enter a a Formula One race, with a horse and cart.
They play it safe, because they are beholden to those who are benefiting from the status quo, the conditions that keep on generating wealth for the few, even though they are bringing less and less to the many who are financing them. This is different to the approach of private enterprise, because the shareholders there expect growth, which means risks will have to be taken and innovation happen, in order to compete for the limited resources of the market. However, the same approach shouldn't be applied for governance to improve wellbeing of people, because it is a model that reduces wellbeing in favour of profit. Privatisation of government services isn't a good solution to improve general wellbeing, even if it does improve economic efficiency.
The role of the government is to improve the wellbeing of the people governed, but if it doesn't do that, it needs to be audited and held accountable. However, replacing the government every few years doesn't change anything, because the structural and systematic problems will carry over, creating more inefficient incompetent decisions that don't bring the return on value they could - with the "value" being the wellbeing of citizens, not the increase in corporate wealth.
One of the so-called "problems" with distributed communities and development, is that they are very inefficient due to a lot of spread focus, and it takes a long time to get some things done. However, this is also one of its strengths, because decisions aren't made with a narrow perspective and pushed out to everyone as a one-size-fits-all solution.
Hive is a good example of robust and innovative inefficiency, where rather than looking at what needs to be done on the top layer to control everyone, the rules are built into the base layer and everyone is free to build upward. The speed of development upward in a narrow area can be rapid, but the changes to the base layer are slow and methodical, with each change looking to improve conditions for users, not grow itself.
It is interesting talking with these clients, as we have ongoing discussions that go back a decade, and I have noticed how they have changed over time to shift away from the general conformity of Finns that the state will take care of them, to the reality that it actually can't, at least in its present form. Yes, it does work better than many other governments in the world but as they start to increasingly align with the practices of the globalized world, they are getting worse and worse, not better at governance. This is because government is about personality, not policy; and about control and power over the people, not wellbeing of the people. But these can be left for another day.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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I know you have a negative view of AI, but what if 99% of the government functions were outsourced to AI? People would be in control of AI and it could run on a blockchain to make sure that it's actions are 100% transparent to the voters...
Over the years, I have written a lot about AI. I am actually not negative on the technology, it is more that I am negative about the intentions of the people developing it and, the unintended negative consequences.
This goes back a bit, but I found an early one where I touched on this a little.
https://peakd.com/philosophy/@tarazkp/an-artificially-described-perfect-world
Also, I am not sure if this search link in peakd will work for you, but give it a go :)
https://peakd.com/search?q=artificial%20intelligence%20&sort=rewards&since=all&author=tarazkp
The search link worked :) The early one is from seven years ago! And I wasn't thinking of letting AI run everything and evolve on it's own. I was thinking more in terms of execution efficiency and replacing most of the government workers, but not letting it run the world from the ultimate decision making standpoint. The scenario that you described a GAI might evaluate us as a species and decide that we are a parasitic entity and eliminate or enslave us Matrix style :)
Yep, I know. It was just one of the early ones I could find - the searches aren't very good here.
However, I think that AIs are already kind of running things, as a lot of what is done is data driven. This doesn't mean they are fed good data though. I have an article somewhere describing an AI that sits behind the president, and the human just says whatever the AI tells it to. That way, people would accept it :)
When it comes to knowledge work automation for repetitive tasks, the replacement of humans is already happening.
I think you make a good point about the people who are stuck in the cogs of the system. There are plenty of things I would change in the public sector where I work, but as you said, it would disrupt the status quo even though it might be better. We just have to lumber on or cut ties unfortunately.
Don't you find it disturbing that these are the options for a system that we support to help us in life?
I definitely do.
You are right in what you say. There is a problem in the foundation of states and governments. If there is a problem in construction, the problem will be reflected in the entire application.
I want the pressure and effectiveness of governments on people to decrease a little more. A transition to a semi-state model would not be bad.
The better models of governance are here already - but it would mean governments giving up power, and they don't do that.
I think right now this is every country's problem, as the governments are ineffective dinosaurs in terms of innovation. Quite a few local governments (local councils as we call them) here went bankrupt (they finished the allocated money before the end of the financial year).
Governments have an abundance mindset, because they can always take more from us, and borrow more in our name.
But sometimes they cannot. If everyone is poor, they will be poor too.
They don't care. They will consume until all is gone.
I think the role of the government has changed vice versa in recent years. It is duty to improve the wealth of politicians.
Wealth of politicians and the corporate shareholders who finance them.
I think right now this is every country's problem, as the governments are ineffective dinosaurs in terms of innovation. Quite a few local governments (local councils as we call them) here went bankrupt (they finished the allocated money before the end of the financial year).
The only way out of the inefficiency problem in the government is accountability. Accountability forces every part of the government to make certain they play their roles well because they know there will be consequences for not doing so. The way we are going it might take forever to rid the government of inefficiency. We can only go one step at a time, allowing results to compound over time.
Curious about the suicide epidemic.
Though inefficient, the government acts like mighty. I love how they reconcile that.
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