| HN Mirror

Folks on the left would do well to remember that the same unelected bureaucracy that declared “resistance” to Trump would destroy an AOC or Sanders presidency too. Ultimately, it’s a good thing if electing the President can effectuate drastic changes in the executive branch, because that’s the only real lever voters have for affecting the largest and these days most powerful branch of government.

archagon 482 days ago

In a modern nation, it’s not tenable to flush the federal government down the toilet every four years.

To the contrary, in a modern, diverse country, it’s not tenable for the same people to keep running the government in the same way regardless of who wins elections. That was okay when we had a more homogenous, slower-changing country with widely shared values. That’s untenable today.

DFHippie 482 days ago

Engineering, statistics, science: these things do not change every four years. How to dig a trench or survey a boundary does not change. How to conduct clinical trials, combat disease, deliver mail: these things do not change.

What is not tenable today, or ever, is firing the people with these skills every four years and re-hiring replacements, to the extent that this happens at all, based on ideological tests.

That was a fine notion before it became apparent that skilled professionals are unable to separate their work from their political ideology: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea...

This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-burea.... Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? If that’s genuinely the case, then there’s a place for the idea of a neutral civil service. But I don’t believe that’s the case, and that’s an unacceptable state of affairs.

acdha 482 days ago

> Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now?

Yes - every lawyer I’ve met considers it their professional obligation to work on their client’s behalf, even if it’s behaviour they personally disapprove of. This is especially true in government where the merit-based civil service is centered on following laws and policy.

Biden didn’t have those scary-sounding “mass immigration policies” - he asked Congress to pass much-needed reform but limited his actions to what was authorized under existing law.

DFHippie 482 days ago

> Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now?

This is precisely what lawyers do. They try to make the best argument for their client's case. If they do not want to make that argument, they let their client find a new lawyer (resign, if they work for the government). They don't make a shitty case because they think their client is wrong. (That being said, they cannot lie without professional repercussions.)

P.S. There were no mass immigration policies under Biden. You have been misinformed.

There's a good argument to be made that the role of bureaucracy in our government is to intentionally slow down change and even out the peaks and valleys as administrations change.

I'd be worried about the Chesterton's Fence problem when removing bureaucracy simply because we don't like that it gets in our way.

That’s not a role the framers ever envisioned, and it’s a bad thing to have in a democratic system. The government should be responsive—voting should result in visible changes to the government. A lot of the current polarization is due to the fact that people have been voting against globalization since 2008 and somehow we keep getting more of it. It’s dangerous in a democracy for voters to perceive that elections are just a suggestion to the bureaucracy that actually runs the country.

It’s also incorrect to assume that the bureaucracy averages out to the same place as the public. Public support for increasing immigration, for example, peaked at 35%. It’s never been popular. But we have been getting more of it for decades: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...

That's a tough comparison to make. The framers lived in a drastically different world with regards to the size and scope of the federal government.

They design a federal government that was purposely hamstrung by the states. It was poorly funded, had no standing military, only briefly had a federal bank, and had very limited purview of authority that didn't fall down to the state level.

If we want to remove bureaucracy while also rolling back many of the federal powers created over the last century or so I'd be all for it.

Removing one without the other either seems pointless (bureaucracy without authority) or risky (authority without bureaucracy) in my opinion.

turtlesdown11 482 days ago

The "deep state" is just a scapegoat for stuff people don’t like or understand. It’s a way to dodge real issues. There’s no secret conspiracy—just a lot of people doing their jobs in a messy system.

The "deep state" is also used to refer to the relatively small number of unelected people who make some of the most impactful decisions on society with no voter input.

I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone talk about the "deep state" to refer to career bureaucrats just doing their jobs in large government orgs / a messy system.

acdha 482 days ago

Do you have any examples of people you think do that?

Oh I'm not directly making the case that a "deep state" exists, I was just surprised by the way the earlier comment was using the term.