This article is a particularly relevant example of why there's broad support in the US for gutting the national government, eliminating entire departments, cutting those that remain by large percentages, and replacing the nonpartisan experts who somehow survive the cuts with know-nothings who can pass a test of loyalty and ideological purity.

Who is willing to spend 60 to 90 minutes carefully reading 12,450 words, with technical vocabulary like "longwall mining" and "abutment load", with long sentences that contain multiple clauses?

Who has the sustained attention and intellectual curiosity needed to grasp abstract relationships between ideas and complex, multi-layered concepts, such as the tension between safety and profitability, the inherent incentives of market economies, the power imbalance between workers and owners, and the long-term systemic changes resulting from the well financed campaign to blame government and collective action for systemic market failure?

Very few people have the capacity, attention, interest or stamina to thoughtfully read an article like this and understand exactly why the wealthy mine owners wouldn't fix this problem on their own, why the market couldn't fix this problem, why it required deep expertise from a government worker to fix this problem.

It's far easier to simply parrot the idea that government is the problem, that corporations need less regulation, that tax cuts for the insanely wealthy will magically trickle down to workers, that our many serious problems can be solved by concentrating migrants and homeless in camps, that protesters should be imprisoned or killed, that democratic elections are fraudulent, that only a strongman ruler can fix it.

Looking at your country from the outside, both your initial overoptimism and your subsequent disillusionment seem inaccurate.

There's a ton of propaganda both ways; all of it is based on blowing some small fact completely out of proportion.

The US is awesome but no place is perfect.

> Growing up, I was taught that we (the US) was the greatest country on Earth. You can only imagine my disillusionment upon entering voting-age and adulthood.

As a side note, your experience is similar to many other adults living in many other countries.

>I will try to find more stories like this.

No offense, but it sounds like your problem is that you spend too much time "finding stories", and end up cynical and pessimistic about the the country.

But, back in reality, the US is very wealthy, has amazing educational institutions, unlimited opportunity and guess what? Not everyone who waves the flag is a fascist or racist. Some of those people long for the way things were...just like you seem to be doing.

It's not perfect, but the US is still a great place.

Fully agree with your attitude.

Its always easy to fall into cynicism and and its trivial to justify to yourself and others, but in the end, its a shit attitude that is more likely to do harm than any good...

Another book about a civil servant doing great things is “Racing for the bomb” about General Leslie Groves who built the Pentagon and led the Manhattan Project, completing both in record time.

> We really haven't, we've reduced national jingoism and converted it into identity jingoism

This is kinda what I mean-- instead of identifying with the nation (freedom & opportunity), a lot of people have latched onto their party instead, and this is an obvious disadvantage for social cohesion (you could even reframe this a bit as freedom vs opportunity, an interesting thought).

I find it curious how your wording implies direction/intention/agency in these changes, which i personally don't believe to exist. Sure, some people owning large media might sit at a longer oar, but in the end we're all just along for the ride and no single person or entity really sits at the helm and controls how culture and society changes (in my view).

edit: I honestly think that education is roughly better than it ever was-- I would not really blame it for this despite some failings (but got no US education personally).

I get the opposite impression in Berlin. Nothing that's as dangerous as people seem to think happens actually happens.

I happened to be hanging around sn area where some anarchist activists set on fire on New Year's Eve a few years ago... in the middle of the closed off road far away from other flammable objects, which the fire department only got to once it was already dying down. Yet the reporting and public perception of that event was as if the whole block burned down and you cannot ever go in that area or you will be arsonized. Police presence was ramped up at all following NYEs and fireworks were banned in that particular area, enforced with a police cordon, as if that was supposed to achieve anything. (There were illegal fireworks there anyway)

Seems pretty wholesome and folksy: https://youtu.be/K6D5xpCgETk?t=16

The documentary was also insightful: https://youtu.be/Li2m3rvsO0I?si=QsJLtqES3AEhbcEO

Government jobs have a fixed pay grade that isn't changing. It doesn't afford an upper-middle-class life in an expensive city. You may find yourself wanting both, but you can't have them. If you already get that, you're not missing anything!

If you have a deeper question about why the US government chooses this outcome, here is the answer: It is ideologically closer to Mondrian than to other US corporations. This ideology makes it hard to hire for certain higher-wage skills; they have to find workers who will accept a pay cut. (Mondrian's maximum wage ratio -- the wage of the CEO divided by the lowest-paid worker -- is six. Private sector CEOs might get 10x more than Mondrian's CEO; Mondrian's CEO makes ideologically-motivated sacrifices. Something similar is happening for high-skill devs at Mondrian and the USG.) To some degree this ideology is thrust upon the largest entities whose workforces tend to unionize and lobby for similar outcomes; to some degree it is an emergent outcome of principled and political choices by legislators and executives.

Go USG! Such an inspiring organization. I can understand why people are cynical -- it's too much to understand; anything big has lots of ugliness; much of the Rep party has been ideologically opposed to Mondrian; etc -- but I just think it's so beautiful.

As someone not in the third trimodal tech pay-hump (I can’t possibly pass the interviews, I’m all used up for the day after 90-120 minutes of far-less-stressful ordinary interviewing) I’d considered it, because the pay cut would be fairly small, I find the mission appealing, and federal government benefits and retirement are really good…

Then I noticed the “term of service” stuff and nope’d out. Without the retirement, it’s a terrible deal even for me.

one of the best teams I've worked on was in public service with other consultants who were extremely mission focused.

what made it successful was the team related the way special operations relate to regular forces. I'd bet if you went down the list of Sammy nominees, or looked at most accomplishments in public service, they were done by people who succeeded outside the mainline org reporting.

if you look at the way the military uses special forces to achieve objectives, there is probably an analogous model in public service. to some extent it's done in consulting, but there is so much partisan bloat and low-level fiefdom in it that there isn't a coherent operating model.

the 18F program that became the US Digital Service was a task force that had huge impact. there are certain whitehouse initiatives around cybersecurity that worked in a similar way. maybe the opportunity is to create a special operations doctrine for public services, where it codifies how there's a specific way to use that kind of initiative and talent, and when not to.

There was a pretty sharp drop before too.