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by rayiner 37 days ago
It’s not “ideological mistrust of the public sector.” It’s that government jobs aren’t subject to market forces so you need some sort of external controls, like pay scales.

FDR, who can hardly be accused of distrusting the public sector, emphasized the importance of public control over government sector salaries: https://www.fdrlibrary.org/unions
4 comments
datsci_est_2015 37 days ago
Consultancies don’t appear to be subject to market forces either, judging by their complete dearth of talent and expertise.

In other words, “rent seeking”.

The only protection against pilfering of the public coffers appears to be strong cultural opposition to it, so exactly the opposite of what’s happening in the US, for example.

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convolvatron 37 days ago
this is absolutely true. I can spin up a government consultancy and get inside the system so that I can low bid contracts, get extensions and not provide any meaningful service at all, that's a comfortable parasitic life. I worked in the US Dod and there was no meaningful quality difference between the 2x salary contractors with their additional 2x overhead than the lifers.

we can bemoan that the government isn't being efficient, but involving people with even less oversight whose only goal is to extract as much from the public coffer as possible is not a magic bullet that gets the public more for their money.

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Henchman21 37 days ago
People in the US are told what to think by their phones. They're being told to view theft of public everything as a good.

It is insanity to watch.

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forlorn_mammoth 37 days ago
> It’s that government jobs aren’t subject to market forces so you need some sort of external controls,

has the inbuilt assumption that 'market forces' are the only appropriate form of external control.

which is homeomorphic to "ideological mistrust of the public sector".

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rayiner 37 days ago
Market forces aren’t the only appropriate form of external control. That’s why we have pay scales for government workers legislated by Congress. But OP said that’s driven by ideological mistrust of the government too.

And your second point is wrong too. See Scandinavia for places that both have a deep trust in the public sector and also deeply believe in markets and market forces.

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lesuorac 37 days ago
> It’s that government jobs aren’t subject to market forces so you need some sort of external controls, like pay scales.

They are subject to the same market forces though. It's this exact thing that's killing government competency; the pay scales are set lower for a role in the government than at other corporations so qualified candidates do not apply to the government.

Ex. Google's annual revenue is ~400 B and it's CEO makes ~200 M/yr while USA's annual reveune is ~5,000 B and Trump makes ~0.4 M/yr.

Ex. Google's board members make ~500 k/yr while congress critters make < 150 k/yr

But also the GS-15 caps out around 200k which means that the best you're going to make in the USG is worse than an entry level employee at Google.

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bigfatkitten 36 days ago
They absolutely are subject to market forces — the labour market.

Try hiring 100 software developers at civil service rates. You’ll get maybe 10 very talented people who are in it for “the mission” or for other ideological reasons, and about 90 who would be unemployable anywhere else.

And that’s after you’ve already excluded 95% of the market with citizenship and location requirements, suitability to hold a security clearance etc.

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