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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

It’s unlikely. Every time the US cuts it’s federal bureaucracy, it overwhelmingly cuts experts which means the US has to hire consultants and contractors en masse and no longer has experts who can even tell if the services the US government is paying for are reasonably priced or even work properly at all.

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Just think of Yosemite National Park firing their only(?) locksmith. It sounds like the most boring job but such a big park and many buildings. As soon as someone locks themselves into or out off something it becomes highly lucrative for a contractor to do this task. Replacing broken locks or cutting new keys won't get cheaper. It will be the same on many other levels. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/02/1... https://www.instagram.com/natevince/p/DGLxMKbyKwq/

I think that’s true on the very low end, but also on the high end. If the US government didn’t purge most of its software experts in the 90s on the basis that the US would be buying, not building, most of its software then maybe the Obamacare rollout wouldn’t have been bungled so badly. A competent senior software engineer in the room might have been able to prevent a horrible contractor from being hired in the first place, and they might have been able to tell the bureaucrats that they need to relax some of their impossible or impractical requirements.

Which was basically the point of the USDS, which has now been gutted of its original purpose and turned into DOGE

Yes, USDS was responding to a need for tech professionals inside the government _after_ the (IIRC) 1990s purge. But the scope is even bigger than just digital services (it's just the domain I'm most familiar with)--the same applies to domain experts (e.g., accountants and tax lawyers to oversee the digital services built for the IRS, aerospace engineers to oversee the systems built by the DOD, etc). "Small government" isn't an unreasonable goal, but when you stupidly hack away at existing government, you end up writing blank checks to contractors and consultants ("welfare for consultants" doesn't even do it justice). Trump supporting Americans are about to find out why expertise is a real, valuable thing, although I'm skeptical that they will connect the dots between their policy and its outcomes.

> If the US government didn’t purge most of its software experts in the 90s on the basis that the US would be buying, not building

I hadn’t heard about this before, would love to learn more. Got any good links?

In the 90s, the Clinton Admin pushed a government efficiency program similar to DOGE (except much more organized). Around 250k federal employees were laid off.

It destroyed a significant portion of local economies (as several military base towns/cities like Rantoul IL, Lynn MA, and Pittsburg CA saw their economies collapse) and caused our defense industries (Aerospace, Shipbuilding, etc) to be forced to consolidate and ossify.

IMO, we need to re-look Clinton's legacy and see how much of a negative impact his policies had over the long term, just like we are now doing so for Reagan.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Rei...

I might be misremembering, but I think Congress had passed a law mandating "buy, not build". Was Clinton pushing that policy, or was he implementing it, or am I conflating multiple distinct "small government" initiatives?

The Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 ("buy not build") was a part of this.

These consultancies don't have experts as you mean it and don't provide then. They have very good talkers and management can offload unpopular decisions on them.

But, they don't have expertise, just confidence. They generally leave companies in worst shape as they were originally.

The actual experts are then hired from elsewhere.

I think you might be misunderstanding my comment. I was arguing that the government has variously employed experts, and when they've been fired under the pretense of "smaller, more efficient government" then we end up hiring contractors and consultants who can take advantage of a stupider government and charge astronomical rates for broken systems. I'm NOT making a claim about the expertise of these consultancies. Stupidly hacking away at government results in costlier, lower-quality governance (which suits the billionaire class that is less dependent on governance and directly benefits from a lack of oversight, at least in the short term).

I have seen so many millions of dollars thrown away by the government on projects where nothing was delivered. All the consultancies made out like bandits. Over time it's better for government to be very small and not get involved in too many things. They cannot execute and everything gets bastardized over time.

I have seen the same in private corporations. Consultancies made made out like bandits, the company was left more dysfunctional then before.

Goverment is bad is act of faith on the conservatives. They intentionally sabotage it and then claim it can not deliver. You just literally described how small goverment claim was used as a vehicle for corruption.

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