Government isn't a startup

Government is insurance

Elon Musk and DOGE are in the news for the USDA needing to reverse “several” accidental firings over the weekend of “agency employees who are working on the federal government's response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak”.

It's easy to look at this and think "what a bunch of idiots". And they are. But ask yourself - if Bird Flu wasn't a thing right now, would you feel the same way?

Firing people working on a current crisis is what we will call visibly stupid. But firing people working on preventing or responding to the next crisis is what we can call invisibly stupid.

Government maintains capacity (and builds that capacity elsewhere) for moments of crisis. Government doesn’t know what that next crisis will be.

What a waste of money IT tabletop exercises are - until you have a cyberattack. So unnecessary is financial oversight - until a bank fails. How foolish to have emergency crews around doing nothing - until something happens.

This is why Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s fast actions are a slow rolling crisis. They’re making the bet nothing will go wrong.

But in government, and I speak from some experience here, everyday something goes wrong. Over a big enough population, that’s simply the law of large numbers. You don’t know what will hit, but you know you’re going to get hit. It’s not even a matter of time. You know when - it’s always. You don’t know what. What, and how bad are the only questions yet to be answered.

Government is not perfect and not perfectly run. You can certainly find examples of government waste. There are programs that have run their course, there are entitlements that could be combined. There are regulations that were put in thoughtlessly or reflexively or so long ago that they no longer serve a purpose. But most government?

Most government is prevention and insurance. Oversight on companies to prevent them from breaking labour laws. Data and analysis about environmental and geopolitical threats – many of which will not come to pass. Health care, social supports and research to keep us safe against the risks to our wellbeing that are lurking out there. Armies we hope to never need.

This is very different from the startup world Musk and his cronies come from. In a startup environment, you have one purpose, and you’re allowed to spend a little bit of time to find it. You work at an unsustainable pace. You try things. Things break. The mantra is “fail fast”.

The mantra of government is “fail never”. Government always has to work. The stakes aren’t your app bombs and your investors lose money. The stakes are people’s lives and livelihoods if you’re lucky and you eff up your country and the planet if you’re unlucky.

Indiscriminate cuts make any government less resilient. The depth and thoughtlessness of the cuts going on in the United States right now will certainly make America less resilient. The consequences of cutting your insurance aren’t seen on Day One. If anything, you save a little money and get to feel better about yourself! The consequences are felt on Day 100, Day 1000 and beyond.

Trump and Musk think they’re trimming the fat. They would do well to remember – today’s fat is tomorrow’s necessity.

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