Hacker News Reader

Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

> You can agree that its within the federal authority to mandate vaccines, but it really should be a decision made and explicitly endorsed by elected representatives rather than some agency

I'm from a country (UK) where parliament has absolute power, but also where the populace largely trusts the civil service. Health decisions, prosecution decisions, and so on are explicitly devolved from the government so that they don't become politicized. To me, that seems better, rather than asking politicians to intercede in what should essentially be decisions for experts to make.

View on HN

I'M in the UK and I absolutely do not trust the civil service at all.

> Health decisions, prosecution decisions, and so on are explicitly devolved from the government

Yes, although UK Govt ministers tend to retain accountability when things go wrong, at least in the eyes of the media.

this is why it becomes a severe legitimacy problem when experts can no longer be rationally seen as apolitical actors.

In London they are taking butter knifes from people and bragging about it on social media.

Except in the US, the civil service is politicized and its employees are 95% in favor of one party, as shown by their political donations history.

> Except in the US, the civil service is politicized and its employees are 95% in favor of one party, as shown by their political donations history.

That's not at all generally true historically, even if you drop the made up specific number and say something like “vast majority", of US civil servants; it is true of some states, localities, or agencies, and reversed for others.

2020 looks like that, but the 2020-2021 election and transition cycle were rather outside of historical norms. [0]

There is some historical imbalance, but then, that people who adhere to the party that consistently demonizes government, government work aside from military and law enforcement, and government workers, aside from military and law enforcement don't tend to choose to work for government as much as people who don't adhere to that party is...somewhat unsurprising.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=W03

Thanks for the link!

I'm referring to the Federal government. I will amend down to 85%!

I think 2020 is more representative:

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=W03&cyc...

I'd say the Federal civil service starts at Health and Human Services and below.

> I think 2020 is more representative

The historical chart on my first link shows that 2020 is wildly nonrepresentative.

Unless you think that Trump vs. the present Democratic party is somehow a new stable political alignment.

> I'd say the Federal civil service starts at Health and Human Services and below.

It does not. Department of State and USPS are largely federal civil service, whereas Los Angeles County and the City of New York are entirely not, for instance.

Well, look at 2018 compared to 2020 - they are similar.

State and the USPS are a little different - State looks outwards, unlike the rest of the agencies, and the USPS is quasi civil service and a bit of a political football. Not only that, but it has a strong local presence across the country.

The rest of the agencies are, unfortunately, politicized and biased.

Edit: Not all the charts in your link show cumulative data.

But, look at the chart for "Party Split, 1990-2022" in the election years - that's when the civil service donates heavily to get "their party" into power: 2012: Dem 69% 2016: Dem 77% 2020: Dem 76%

That chart includes both "Public Officials" and "Civil Servants". The former group is far more balanced, since the Republican/Democratic split is pretty even. If there was a similar chart for just the Civil Servants, it would be a lot more biased.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com