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Comment by sfifs | Hacker News Reader

0ne of the pieces many articles discussing Singapore miss is actually the quality of the people in the Government officer corps. This i think makes a massive amount of difference in that a lot of what's planned in infrastructure and processes is much better thought out and executed than in other countries. It's the equivalent of the 10X programmer philosophy.

This is achieved largely by the government sponsoring the most promising/brilliant students to study in top Western universities and offering them quite competitive pay packages to join the government.

The Indian government's elite corps (IAS) as a contrasting example are also composed of similarly brilliant people (including some of my own classmates), but this is restricted to only the people at the very top of the hierarchy and capability doesn't penetrate deep into bulk of the government, nor is compensation as competitive which promotes corruption.

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> The Indian government's elite corps (IAS) as a contrasting example are also composed of similarly brilliant people, but only restricted to the people at the very top of the hierarchy and is not true for bulk of the government, nor is compensation as competitive which promotes corruption.

It may be anecdotal, but in my experience the officers of the Union Public Services are in most cases not particularly brilliant, as you may expect from a examination and qualification system that prioritizes rote learning. (my anecdotal sample size being 3-4 IPS officers, 5-6 IAS officers and a couple of other officers of the lesser known services, i.e. IRS, IDAS, IFS, etc.)

I share the same view of yours.

btw brilliant or not, it is like a switch flips in their brain once they become an IAS.... emperor of the universe/feudal lord firmware gets installed.

> This is achieved largely by the government sponsoring the most promising/brilliant students to study in top Western universities and offering them quite competitive pay packages to join the government.

And so do countless of other countries, some successful, some not.

Much of Africa for example sends its brightest to Oxfords, and Harwards for exorbitant amounts of money.

And there are counterexamples, very big ones at that. Countries where civil service is poorly paid, and often not demanding even a college degree.

> And there are counterexamples, very big ones at that. Countries where civil service is poorly paid

What are the successful countries where civil servants are not compensated fairly?

USA, a big one.

Much of Europe for the second place?

As for Asia, Taiwanese are quite low despite high bar, South Korean, and Japanese were more or less equal to average white collar job. Malaysia can be though of as a mid income country, and their local government salaries lag behind white collar jobs.

China... is a special case

I don't think anyone considers the American civil service to be much of a model for anything.

The current administration has certainly done some damage but:

- the NIH is one of the biggest drivers of biomedical research in the world, both in terms of extramural funding and intramural research. The NSF, NASA, and the research arms of the DoD and DoE (etc) are also world-class.

- Hurricane Dorian nonsense aside, the weather and ocean forecasts from NOAA/NWS are well-regarded.

- the FAA and FDA have kept flying, food, and medicine quite safe.

- The National Parks System is fantastic and the USGS maps are quite good; maybe only the UK’s OS maps are better regarded.

The FDA blocked private testing at a critical point early in the coronavirus. The FDA keeps many lifesaving treatments out of the US, at a large and unseen cost. For example, the FDA blocked UVB sunscreens for a decade after they were permitted in Europe. Those extra US skin cancer deaths are "unseen" but are casualties of the FDA. In turn, the FAA allowed Boeing to "self-regulate" approvals of the MAX and after the first plane went down, still deemed it to be airworthy.

Anything involving risk and trade-offs is tough to evaluate.

The FDA might be too slow to approve approve new sunscreens, but they also dragged their feet on approving thalidomide, a decision that turned out to be absolutely correct in hindsight.

The FDA's overall reputation seems pretty good. Daniel Carpenter's book calls it "the most powerful regulatory agency in the world." This article talks about its (very positive) reputation as well: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.23.1....

US institutions have a huge issue with regulatory capture

Regulatory capture is profiteering off something other that value added.

Which US institutions are profiting?

There’s a revolving door system where you can make laws to benefit an incumbent large company and conveniently end up as a board member in a few years after quitting the government role.

So while the 3 letter agencies don’t profit directly, sometimes the people do.

ISPs are probably the big bugbear. Constantly ranked as one of the worst industries by consumers, competition doesn't exist in many markets or is noncompetitive, and mergers have slowly brought back the edifice of Ma Bell back from the dead.

Boeing was, making profits selling unsafe planes.

> 0ne of the pieces many articles discussing Singapore miss is actually the quality of the people in the Government officer corps. This i think makes a massive amount of difference in that a lot of what's planned in infrastructure and processes is much better thought out and executed than in other countries. It's the equivalent of the 10X programmer philosophy.

Some of the scholars, yes. I interacted with some scholars during my university time, and I thought that some of them were, in my opinion, not very smart outside of academics.

There are many in the civil service that perform the bare minimum for their position — it's not easy to get fired from the civil service, and they're content with minimal career progression.

Interesting... I immediately contrast this with the American drive to make government work undesirable. This has led to a mass exodus of competence from government all the way to the top. Even the office of President is now sought by a bunch of third rate candidates: bland old bureaucrats, delusional ideologues unfit for the real world, and con men and narcissists like the current occupant of the office. Have we intentionally created an incompetent government?

Well "Starve the Beast" exists . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

"Starve the Beast" is a bit of a boogeyman, because the actual size and spending of government hasn't changed, only the deficit has.

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