[whynotmaybe]

You (and other comments on this subject) reminded me of the old joke we had when working on the server farm and we found a server that wasn't registered to any specific owner.

We joked that we just had to unplug it and wait for something to fail or for someone to complain.

As a non citizen of USA, I'm genuinely curious of what will happen now that it seems that this joke is a normal way of doing this. "Let's shut everything down and see what we're really missing! We'll fix it if needed be. "

55 years ago the Cuyahoga River caught fire (it wasn't the first time) and the fix was to kickstart the EPA.

[timewizard]

> we just had to unplug it and wait for something to fail or for someone to complain.

You could also have kept better records in the first place so this sort of thing didn't happen.

> that this joke is a normal way of doing this.

You'll find that there are many differences between the operation of a profitable company and a government.

> and the fix was to kickstart the EPA.

The _natural human response_ once the media got involved was to start the environmentalist movement. Most of the work to cleanup the river was done by Cleveland and Ohio state. Which is just quibbling over details. What you should really explain is why the EPA needs credit cards to do what they do.

[whynotmaybe]

> You could have kept better records...

Each time I see or hear that kind of remark (because it's said everywhere in the world) , its paradoxical nature baffles me. Many people want government agencies to be efficient, professional and productive... but they don't want to pay for it with their taxes.

The pure définition of wanting the cake and eat it too.

> Why the EPA needs credit cards...

As I said, I'm genuinely curious to see how all of this will pan out. My opinion clearly don't matter on such weirdly hyperbolized subjects that I personally qualify as trivial.

[timewizard]

> Many people want government agencies to be efficient, professional and productive

That's you moving the goalposts. I just want it to be efficient. This idea that government is going to be "professional and productive" is ridiculous.

> The pure définition of wanting the cake and eat it too.

Adding acute accents does not make your point any smarter.

> My opinion clearly don't matter

Yet you so readily share it. When the question of "does the EPA having credit cards prevent river fires" comes up then you are silent. Who's actually eating their cake and then wanting it too?

[whynotmaybe]

> That's you moving the goalposts. I just want it to be efficient. This idea that government is going to be "professional and productive" is ridiculous.

Efficiency refers to the ability for an agency to achieve its objectives using the least amount of resources while maintaining high-quality service, transparency, and accountability.

There is a paradox in expecting high efficiency from a government agency while offering low pay to its employees.

Don't expect motivated and talented employees when you have a low pay, because there's also a good chance that they're easy to corrupt.

Hence my words "paradoxical nature".

> does the EPA having credit cards prevent river fires Does the EPA not having credit card prevent river fires ?

I'm still not sure about what's the best between a situation where someone has to fill 2 forms to asks for new pencils and that 2 directors have to approve it OR the same person has a budget of few hundreds dollars per year to buy pencils. (Back to the efficiency point)

Reducing those credit card to 1$ is just virtue signaling to poor people that thinks that those same employees pays their groceries with that credit card.

> Adding acute accents does not make your point any smarter. -1 for me for having a multilingual keyboard that auto corrected "definitions" to "définitions" (in French) and not proofreading.

>> My opinion clearly don't matter

>Yet you so readily share it.

I'm not in the US, that why my opinion doesn't matter.

You clearly didn't understood my point, I'm not saying it's good nor bad to do what they're doing, I'm curious of what's gonna happen.

From my joke, nobody ever decided to unplug that server and wait for someone to scream.

The current administration is now unplugging everything, everywhere. The results will be interesting.