America needs a bigger, better bureaucracy

BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 152 points –
America needs a bigger, better bureaucracy
noahpinion.blog

It might be a controversial take, sure, but the linked article/post makes a pretty thoughtful case for the benefits of having functional state capacity vs. outsourcing or just not having it

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The TLDR is that for almost any given thing we want the government to do, it's cheaper and more efficient to hire government workers to do it than to hire contractors and nonprofits. The author generalized this conclusion from studies finding a correlation between higher quality dept of transport employees and lower department costs. Makes sense to me.

This take of all government employees being bureaucrats is... oversimple at best. In much the same way that I don't consider the military servicemembers to be bureaucrats.

You're right of course, this article specifically talks about civil servants (i.e. bureaucrats) and not other government employees like elected officials or military service members.