Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe, maybe not.

People underestimate how fast the Government moves when there is consensus. The issue with Americans is that we have rarely any true concensus.

I definitely feel bad for the career civil servants and fear for the loss of their expertise. It will take decades before indiviuals can replicate their job at any level of efficiency. But Government could hire more workers to do the jobs of the old experts, or maybe hire them back or even contract to them as consultants (at grossly worse prices but I don't think any of these experts are dead. Just distrustful and maybe a bit vengeful about the loss of their work environments).

Nothing going on here is permanent loss. Its 'only' a gross level of inefficiency and waste. But if we all agree that 2024 was a better year than 2025, it isn't a big deal to rebuild to the status quo.

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What is truly gone is out soft power across the world. Europe won't have a damn reason to trust us for decades.

"Nothing going on here is permanent loss... it isn't a big deal to rebuild to the status quo."

There is no status quo to rebuild.

Loss of trust, loss of momentum, loss of context, loss of relationships - insofar as any of these things existed, they are permanently destroyed. That's what will need rebuilding. The original process took decades, if not a century or more. You can't just disrupt that and then expect to restore it easily - or expect it to spontaneously reconfigure on its own with reliably desirable outcomes.

People working in the government are not fungible labor units like GPUs or VMs, to be spun up and disposed of without consequence. The network formed between people is even more important than the individual jobs - and it has an insane cold-start penalty.

Maybe if the folks in charge were absolute geniuses in leadership and organizational psychology, something miraculous might happen. But, that's never a thing to expect in general, let alone given the evidence at hand. They're making the classic blunder of trying to rewrite the system from scratch, which has almost never gone well for anyone.

> People working in the government are not fungible labor units like GPUs or VMs, to be spun up and disposed of without consequence. The network formed between people is even more important than the individual jobs - and it has an insane cold-start penalty.

I don't believe those networks are ever destroyed.

In practice, those networks will be transferred to the private sector, and the government will have to pay premium money to hire them back as consultants rather than as government workers.

There's exceptions: maybe there's a 60-year-old super-old guy who is at near retirement age, and takes this opportunity to take an early retirement and refuses to answer any phone calls to come back. But I don't think these people are the norm. Offer any 60-year-old or even 70-year-old enough money and strictly promise them its a temporary rebuilding moment and they'll likely come back.

Government is supposed to work slowly and thoughtfully. It provides stability. Much like a pendulum that swings back and forth. This tipping over the edge in one direction is not a good development at all.

Are you talking about the four years under Biden where the pendulum swung to EV-damn-the-cost, or Trump "Elon doesn't need subsidies to be profitable anymore"?

Biden's policies clearly weren't EV-damn-the-costs.

You can see this easily, as China and many European countries have more EV sales. Norway is leading, with 93% of all new cars being EVs.

No. Government is composed of many parts.

The executive moves quickly and is designed to move quickly. Congress and Courts are designed to be somewhat slow and deliberate.

That's why all this change in the President / Executive branch is happening so quickly.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust...

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