Links to Consider, 7/10
The Zvi on how to brain-drain China; Jennifer Pahlka on outcomes vs. process; The Zvi on weight-loss drugs; I review Jean Twenge's latest
Note: Tuesday, July 11, at noon New York time, I will discuss Jean Twenge’s Generations on Zoom. Free for all, but registration required.
Chinese friend of Paul Graham estimates 90% of highly educated 25-year-old Chinese citizens would come to USA if handed a green card. If we made this our policy, we would cripple China and supercharge America. If you think we have to ‘beat China’ in any sense, or are worried about Chinese AI, or arguing that we can’t slow down on AI because we must beat China, and are not screaming for this immigration policy from the rooftops, your position is not coherent.
public servants are trapped between two distinct systems of accountability. In the first, politicians will hold the public servants accountable for outcomes…
In the second system of accountability, various parts of the administrative state—the agency itself, the inspector general, the Government Accountability Office—will hold these same public servants accountable to process. Procurement and planning documents will be reviewed for any gaps, any skipped or partially skipped steps, any deviance from standard protocol, even if that deviance is legal, just nonstandard.
Pointer from the Zvi (see above).
Recall what I wrote about Dunbar’s number.
Think of small organizations as sub-Dunbar, and large organizations as super-Dunbar. My claim is that sub-Dunbar organizations operate informally, while super-Dunbar organizations rely on formal bureaucratic structure.
What Pahlka calls process accountability is necessary in a large (super-Dunbar) organization. Otherwise, something that a group does that helps it achieve its own goals will harm the ability of other groups within the organization to achieve their goals. You need a process to ensure that A’s actions don’t create a mess that B has to clean up.
The problem with process accountability is that it can take on a life of its own, and it becomes an impediment to getting anything done. In business, this requires “business process redesign,” which means working from scratch to make the process more rational, stripping out all of the dysfunctional internal requirements while keeping the necessary checks in place.
Government agencies are not under economic pressure to do business process redesign. BPR is not going to happen just because Pahlka points out that we need it. Maybe it would take place under the COO/CA model. Otherwise, I don’t see much hope for improvement.
Getting back to the Zvi, he writes about a promising new weight-loss drug,
how much to buy out the patents here and offer this free to whoever wants it? Can we for once not have a massive deadweight loss triangle, and instead have massive weight loss? I bet the government turns a profit after health care spending cost reductions and productivity gains.
And he links to Paul Graham’s essay on how to do great work.
If you're still in school, try thinking of your education as your project, and your teachers as working for you rather than vice versa. That may seem a stretch, but it's not merely some weird thought experiment. It's the truth, economically, and in the best case it's the truth intellectually as well. The best teachers don't want to be your bosses. They'd prefer it if you pushed ahead, using them as a source of advice, rather than being pulled by them through the material.
Yes. My favorite professors were the ones who sent me to the library with a list of articles I should try to read.
I reviewed Jean Twenge’s recent book, Generations.
One trend is toward a slower life trajectory, by which she means starting later to join the work force and form a household. With greater college attendance and fewer early marriages, young people are spending more time in what seems to older generations like adolescence. Moreover, it seems like an adolescence that is less adventurous and more sheltered.
The book is definitely information-dense.
Note: Tuesday, July 11, at noon New York time, I will discuss Jean Twenge’s Generations on Zoom. Free for all, but registration required.
Substacks referenced above:
@
"Individualism is a trend that predates the twentieth century, but Twenge sees it accelerating recently. For her, individualism is: "… a worldview that places more emphasis on the individual self… Individualistic cultures such as the U.S. value freedom, independence, and equality...'"
But hasn't recent history seen a rise in ideological conformity? In "cancel culture"? That seems the opposite of individualism. "Equality" has a complicated relation to individualism. It is traditional to distinguish "equality of opportunity" ("free to be, you and me") which is generally favorable to individualism and "equality of result", which is generally disfavorable. And, of course, to be ridiculously literal, if everyone is perfectly equal, everyone is the same; there is no individualism at all. There seems to have been a change in culture (at least elite culture) in how one is allowed to be an individual and how one is supposed to conform; perhaps more freedom is one aspect requires less freedom in another. As I once cynically remarked, respectable opinion seems to be:
The best diversity is
Where everyone looks different
And thinks like me.
"Government agencies are not under economic pressure to do business process redesign."
This is a fundamentally under appreciated fundamental attribute of government. I think many people just can't grasp that government is different from other organizations in this very important aspect, which aspect puts a hard limit on how large a government can get and how much it can do. Keeping organizations aligned and not internally blocking themselves is constant work, and no one in government has the incentive to do that work. (Except sometimes when the fate of the state itself is on the line, and even then historically it doesn't always happen.)