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The Pareto Principle is sometimes called the 80/20 rule, fondly remembered by me as “20% of the beer drinkers drink 80% of the beer”! rule (I do my best at 6’4” and 300 lbs). There is some evidence that the leverage of technology has made it more like 90/10 in STEM fields — 10% of the techies produce 90% of the value.
I’ve worked with a few geniuses, though none close to the combination of leadership + technical skills of Elon. Prior to his losing a son to trans, and realizing that society was in uncontrolled rapid descent to hell, he was a major hero for the left. He is even more of a hero to the reality-based population now. When I saw the booster land in the “chopsticks,” it was equivalent to the moon landing for me. The most significant positive technological event since 1969!
Having worked in tech for 34 years, reporting status on a regular basis was basic. When you drive a performance car, you have gauges, and you monitor them. If your vehicle is not high-performance, idiot lights will do. Gauges (and even idiot lights) provide feedback, and all systems, including our bodies, require feedback to operate.
If you have a system that doesn’t care about feedback, it is a parasite… which is what government is (it doesn’t produce anything). That is not to say that parasites are not useful! A human body has billions of parasites that we need to live! We won’t go into details, but if your intestinal tract loses some critical ones, you will need a fecal transplant to restart your gut to proper operation.
A business requires constant status reporting so that management/leadership can spot areas that are not making the progress they need for success. Perhaps there are conflicts between people and other departments, perhaps too much effort is being applied to testing or “improvements” (sometimes called “polishing the turd”). Maybe projects having cross dependencies not proceeding at complimentary rates so overall goals can be achieved. Sadly, just plain incompetence or “sloth” is common (see 90/10), especially if there is little or no monitoring — and like infection, it DOES spread!
It is now obvious that our vast bureaucracy and the media that works in concert with it have no idea of these principles. They have been completely in charge since at least 1990, and they are certain of their invulnerability. They were surprised by Trump in 2016 and the entire deep/administrative state attacked even before he was elected. (See Crossfire Hurricane.) The Russia Hoax was quickly manufactured, and impeachment proceedings were initiated, because he worked to expose the Biden Crime family's activities to enable war profiteering in Ukraine, etc. The list is endless and nauseating, but praise be to God and the American people, he survived!
It is clear that Trump was locked and loaded the day he took office, and Elon directing the assault on the federal kleptocracy is a show that requires extra buckets of popcorn. Will Trump, Elon, and America win? It is early in the first quarter, and although the DC home team (the away team for the rest of us) is back on its heels for the moment, we can be assured it will fight back, and it has no scruples nor cares for we Deplorables nor America in general. Five of the top ten richest counties in the US surround DC. Following the money shows us a glimpse of what we are up against.
That is the uncertain reality, but for the moment, each new day has been an opportunity to enjoy the smell of victory!
Discussion (43)
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I go with the square root of the number of employees. If there are four workers, two probably do most of the work. If there are a hundred employees, ten probably do most of the work. The federal government has about two million civilian workers last I checked. That means there might be fifteen hundred doing most of the work.
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Some of the federal employees are working. They are doing exactly as mandated. But what is mandated is useless. I don't know how it is now, but nigh on twenty years ago I had a consulting gig. There was apparently a mandate for all federal processes to be documented. But the process repository was difficult to use and understand without serious training. The people executing those processes never used the process repository. If they made changes to how they did things, they did not update the documented processes. Nor did they follow the documented processes. Thus, the people who were on the process team were doing make-work. The point of a process is not to document it, but to implement it in a way that nobody goes around the process. The proper way is to make it easier to follow the process than to make stuff up on the fly.
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I am as cynical as they come and I am surprised at the level of corruption that is being revealed. Wow. I look forward to the unveiling of cartel money in our banking system.
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I’m more interested in the % of government activities that 90% of citizens derive benefit from and believe the benefit is conveyed successfully. I’ll bet 80% of what the various governments (Fed, State and county) do is not of benefit to most of its citizens. I’ll bet that 80% benefits governments and its personnel in some way. That’s a derivation from my belief that public schools are not now run for the benefit of the children, but for the benefits of the associated adults. I for sure don’t want government activities that no one knows what the end product or service is.
In conclusion - I’d like to buy only that 20% of what the government offers that I want and benefit directly from. I will buy military defense for all but I’m not interested in buying medical services for optional sexual activities by anyone. Taxes a la carte. Government involvement in citizen life by invitation.
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