[anonylizard]

Government is exactly a codebase. Government bureaucracies is essentially constricting human judgement to more robotic code-like behavior, that's the only way to build large systems.

You say government is not like code, then what exactly is it? Can you describe it in an effective way? Or are you just going to raise your hand up and say there's nothing we can do about it, nothing we can do about the $2 trillion/year titanic deficit?

Historical governments often needed little beyond an army and a tax collection system. And tax collection system was primarily data gathering and analysis, since if you knew how much property someone owned, you can easily tax them for an appropiate amount.

The tech way of thinking has proven extremely successful in many industries already. That's why tech companies (and tech adjacent ones, like say quant trading, or even index fund trading) have been so economically dominant, and utterly kicked out the traditional MBAs from their pedestals.

Stop being a self hating programmer who despises the mentality of tech.

[apical_dendrite]

This is so naive.

Not all of government is the DMV.

Government has a massive policymaking function, which is not "robotic code-like behavior". It's about solving nuanced, challenging problems. Government has a huge research function.

And tech has created some great things, but it's also created some really terrible things, mostly because of this "move fast and break things" mentality that doesn't consider the consequences of its actions.

[vharuck]

>You say government is not like code, then what exactly is it?

Government is mostly individuals deciding goals and attempting to convince others. Then rules are added to prevent harm to others or using corrupt methods of convincing. That "code" part is more like a moderated forum: necessary for the huge task, but it's just the framework for the actual content.

>Historical governments often needed little beyond an army and a tax collection system.

And historical computers used vacuum tubes. What's your point?

>The tech way of thinking has proven extremely successful in many industries already.

Even in tech companies, the richest people are almost always the smooth talkers. Because the best, and really only, way to get money is convincing somebody else to give it to you. You can do it by offering a better product or charming them.

Most government goals aren't technically difficult and certainly don't require advanced algorithms or fast computers. The real work is aligning people.

[throwawaymaths]

i hate to break it to you but it's literally called "the federal code".

[anon7725]

I hate to break it to you, but 2 million people engaged in an endless list of activities that encompasses repairing tanks, making grants, building bridges, supporting citizens abroad, distributing pension checks, performing surgery, making sure airplanes don’t crash and conserving forests is not the same kind of thing as a codebase and requires a different skill set to effect change in.

[throwawaymaths]

and yet the structure of the federal code is generally designed to be read as a recipe. judges are instructed to be as objective as possible. disbursers of funds are expected to justify decisions in as mechanical a fashion possible (this maximizes accountability) perfection is impossible, but the idea of running government like code is a quasi-ideal, or else you cant go back to the taxpayer and say "hey we did good by you".

[Juliate]

Your discourse screams delusion or next-to-none experience in any mid-sized life and collective/team work.

Maybe try first to spend some time and speak with the actual people (judges, administrators, clerks, etc.) that do this daily, to understand how it works in reality.

[Juliate]

For the love of God. How old are you?

If you cannot make the distinction between computer code and law/regulation, that get applied by humans in humans time and humans circles…?

« Refactoring » an org or a government like you project to, like Elon and his boys is doing, it is going to cost actual lives. People killed.

[nullocator]

- Part of government is the legal system which a Judge's whole thing is being endless nuanced in understanding and applying what the law means; I would not considered this constricted robot like behavior even though the law is literally a bunch of written down rules.

- Part of government is funding research that involves people doing real experiments collecting real data? Are novel experiments those of constricted robots or LLMs?

- Part of government are the dedicated every day folks who are doing the best they can despite being overworked and under resourced who have to make life and death decisions in the moment every day (air traffic controllers), who monitor and coordinate relief and management of disasters big and small in a very interconnected world (we just had a global pandemic, are culling record numbers of chickens, had a bad hurricane season, and large wildfires) these are not people behaving like robots they are just people following laws and regulations primarily passed via efforts of lobbyists, or else are those that are written in blood.

Don't like the way a part of government works? Reform it. Don't try to burn the whole thing to the ground by doing shit like emailing the people responsible for keeping planes from crashing into each other that if they want to they can fuck off for the next 8 months on the tax-payers dime and then find a new low-stress job. Don't like certain regulations or the ways laws are weaponized against everyone but corporations and the wealthy? I get it, me neither I'd like to see affordable housing too. Unfortunately, congress has the responsibility to fix that, not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, nor any of his former SpaceX interns. If they want to make those changes they should get elected to congress or hell maybe for shits and giggles use some of that lobbying money for the common good they claim to care so much about.

[throwawaymaths]

> Don't like the way a part of government works? Reform it.

at what point does that become disingenuous? how many years have people bern trying to do it incrementally? just tell the reformer: oh try harder, knowing every feature of the bureaucracy is stacked against them and they wont succeed. in the meantime people are hurt, dollars are wasted.

> Unfortunately, congress has the responsibility to fix that,

that's not correct. congress has ceded execution of these things to the executive in many cases with broad leeway to do or not do (thats why it's called discretionary spending, any spending that is by law congress' responsibility is statutory spending)

[ruds]

You are mistaken. Discretionary spending is spending that Congress allocates during the annual appropriation process, while mandatory spending is spending that is required by prior law. See https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...