What if we just start trying to run the government efficiently like a good business?
Tripolar nailed it:
But the problem is the citizens can’t agree on the mission priorities. That’s why we have elections - so one group gets the opportunity to interpret the ways and means of that mission - at the opposing group’s expense.
Or so it seems. :dubious:
Historically, the USA has had a lot of customers, or rather clients. I think Mubarak in Egypt was one of our customers. Certainly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. was a customer. The USA* is *a business, has been for a century at least. We’re a military for hire for everyone from the United Fruit Company to the kings of Arabia.
Excellent point. Foreign military sales for weaponry of all kinds is a not-insignificant portion of the economy. That doesn’t happen (legally) without government.
I disagree with this a lot. He’s not a salesman, he’s a CEO. He’s used to being surrounded by yes-men and getting his way in all things. I really think he’s going to try to throw his weight around Congress rather than working with the bureaucracy and make a lot of enemies and accomplish nothing of note.
…like a cartoon general, even. The idea that generals (all generals, at that) have a management style taken directly from R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket seems to me to be pretty absurd.
Especially seeing as Eisenhower’s job in WW2 was far more political and diplomatic than military.
One reads that a lot around here (I might have even posted it, myself), but I don’t think it’s necessarily true. I mean, it might be true in Trump’s case, but not “because he’s a CEO”. A good CEO does not surround himself with yes-men.
If you study management, you’ll learn about the different methods of decision making. That process is the same fora business and The Cabinet. That, the leader (CEO or President) gathers information from his staff, considered their advice, but ultimately it is the leader who decides. It’s not a vote… it’s not consensus… it’s a decision made by the guy at the top.
It’s very easy to get yourself surrounded by yes-men. All you have to do is fire people who disagree with you.
Though it is actually easier than that. Just reacting to disagreement in a negative way will create a chilling effect upon it, discouraging underlings from coming forward with concerns or advice.
Good CEO’s hopefully will not do that, and will instead welcome a different point of view.
I don’t see Trump as having the sort of temperament that would encourage opposition among his own people.
It doesn’t sound like Trump has ever had to report to a board of directors, forget about truly powerful “oversight” organizations like Congress and the judicial branch. This is an entirely new world for Trump’s decision-making process. I don’t think he’s up to it, but hey, I’m biased. We shall all see.
While boards of directors certainly serve as a useful check on management of a corporation, I cannot fathom that any business would organize itself with the vast extent of checks and balances that governments do. Do those who favor running government like a business also favor eliminating these checks and balances? I think we can all agree that things would run much more efficiently if we did, setting aside the obvious comment that it is not in anyone’s interest to have a very efficient government that doesn’t respect peoples’ rights.
Well, I didn’t mean to imply that, but I short-cutted too much of my response. I meant basically what the people below my post said, that TRUMP isn’t used to being told no and surrounds himself with yes men. It look like just his general personality to me, that he makes fun of any dissenters. Look at how he attacks Random Joe on Twitter. You could say that just because he does that on Twitter doesn’t mean he does that in his corporations, but I just get the vibe that he has one personality, one persona. He’s a little too gleeful with the “you’re fired” schtick.
Makes as much sense as making pizza like ice cream.
Not really. You spend a bunch of money to take a country over, then you have to rebuild everything you broke and maintain a large occupying force. And, in general, most countries on Earth are poorer and less well educated than the US, so you’re neither going to get much from taxation nor are you going to get good workers.
Sweat shops and brain drain are far more effective means of making the US profitable at the expense of other nations.
Steve Jobs was pretty effective running everything from the top down, while shutting down upwards feedback. And during the heyday of Japanese business, that’s largely how things ran as well.
It’s not a great long-term or general strategy, but it can work for specific cases, while that particular CEO continues to run things and continues to have vision.
Personally, I doubt that Trump is a particularly great CEO. He’s been able to not spend himself into a loss, but he’s still running a family business and most of his workers are unskilled, low-wage workers in known, existing markets.
He has successfully broken into TV and into “education”, so we can at least say that he’s acted a little bit as an entrepreneur. But on the whole, he’s still someone who fully inherited his fortune and can only really be said to be smart enough with his money not to lose it (or, at least, to make it look like he hasn’t lost it).
But as far as simply managing the Federal government and the military goes, that’s not necessarily a bad set of credentials. I think we can reasonably expect that the hiring practices of the Federal government are about to change drastically. And we can probably expect that there will be massive layoffs of Federal employees.
I’ll also predict that a lot of the logos and iconography of the US Federal government are going to get a polish.
I’m reasonably willing to believe that Trump is probably somewhat good at negotiating deals. But he’s probably also pretty good at driving away good deals. I suspect that most of his success comes more from eating littler fish than by finding favor with bigger fish. Selective memory has probably made him forget all the opportunities he had with smarter, classier people that he ended up losing due to his personality and sketchiness. So he just remembers getting the better of a bunch of people who were desperate enough for money to be willing to work with him. And now he’ll discover that his negotiating abilities work less well than they ever have before, because he has to make specific deals work, not just a minority from among a wide variety of offers. He may do well negotiating with lesser countries. Larger, modern countries he’s going to end up pissing off and then having to decide, later, whether to go back crawling to them and begging for forgiveness.
But in terms of reviewing intelligence and making good defense decisions, making good future plans for where the country should go, running the economy, etc. I expect that he’ll be mostly hopeless. Outside of a few rounds of Federal layoffs, I don’t think he’s going to bring much from his business experience to the role, and his temperament and intelligence won’t suffice for anything else that the job calls for.
People who say “run the government like a business” think of Walmart with a happy greeter at the door and “just in time” logistics. There are also crooked businesses that they show on “60 Minutes”.
I like the post stating three dubious cliches.
It has already begun (I am betting):
When is the last time that a comparable agency has had a media blackout?