Government Incompetence

Extracted Attributes

• Definition

  Perceived failure of governmental bodies to effectively manage and address societal issues.

• Criticized by

  Rick Caruso, All-In Podcast hosts (Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg, Sayan Bannister).

• Contrasted With

  Private sector approaches, private firefighting efforts, business-like focus on results, limited effective government.

• Associated Problems

  Homelessness, urban decay, insurance crisis, deteriorating basic services (e.g., garbage pickup, park maintenance).

• Core Characteristics

  Lack of foresight, bureaucratic inefficiencies, poor leadership, lack of long-term planning, red tape, lack of transparency, unreliability.

• Policy Failures Cited

  California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Department of Insurance market-distorting policies, misprioritization of DEI.

• Theoretical Framework

  The Peter Principle (individuals promoted to a level of incompetence).

• Potential Extreme Consequence

  Discussions of federal intervention (e.g., National Guard deployment).

• Proponents of Peter Principle

  Laurence J. Peter, Raymond Hull.

Timeline

• The book 'The Peter Principle', which introduced the concept of individuals rising to a level of incompetence in hierarchical organizations, was published by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. (Source: wikipedia)

  1969-01-01

Peter principle

The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another. The concept was explained in the 1969 book The Peter Principle (William Morrow and Company) by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull. Hull wrote the text, which was based on Peter's research. Peter and Hull intended the book to be satire, but it became popular as it was seen to make a serious point about the shortcomings of how people are promoted within hierarchical organizations. The Peter principle has since been the subject of much commentary and research.

Web Search Results

• Ten Secret Truths About Government Incompetence

  The federal government spends $1 trillion per year on Medicare, Medicaid, and related programs, but private and nonprofit medical facilities actually provide the care. Estimates of waste and improper payments in the Medicare program range as high as $120 billion a year, but you can’t reduce that without getting a handle on people outside government who don’t work for you—and to them, that $120 billion isn’t waste, it’s a windfall they’ll fight to keep. In an August column in the Washington Post, the political scientist John DiIulio asked, “Want better, smaller government?” His answer: “Hire another million federal bureaucrats.” We have no hope of making government work, he wrote, if we don’t hire the government we need to run it—and to rein in the proxies who do so much of the government’s work on its behalf.

• The Unbearable Incompetence of Government

  California, Energy and Environment, Governance, Permitting Reform, Restoring the First Branch, State Policy, Transparency And yet, while the federal, state, and local government should be limited in scope, it’s imperative that those few, basic functions it does perform, be done *well*. The public especially lost confidence in their government when it came to specific concerns around “transparency” and “reliability.” When faced with disaster, local government *also* fails to uphold its basic commitment to its constituents. We’ve long advocated for free markets and limited government, but what we need is so much more. We need limited, *effective* government that oversees and manages the most basic functions of its community so that we can ensure a safe and functioning society, and restore the public’s confidence.

• Government failure

  Examples· Economic crowding out · Regulatory · Distortion of markets · State monopolies · Corruption.

• Ten Secret Truths About Government Incompetence

  The federal government spends $1 trillion per year on Medicare, Medicaid, and related programs, but private and nonprofit medical facilities actually provide the care. Estimates of waste and improper payments in the Medicare program range as high as $120 billion a year, but you can’t reduce that without getting a handle on people outside government who don’t work for you—and to them, that $120 billion isn’t waste, it’s a windfall they’ll fight to keep. In an August column in the *Washington Post*, the political scientist John DiIulio asked, “Want better, smaller government?” His answer: “Hire another million federal bureaucrats.” We have no hope of making government work, he wrote, if we don’t hire the government we need to run it—and to rein in the proxies who do so much of the government’s work on its behalf.

• The Incompetence of Local Government

  When deadly fires tore across the island of Maui in early August, killing around 100 people and destroying thousands of homes and businesses, the public quickly learned that much of the destruction could have been prevented had local officials simply done their jobs. Despite high tax rates in many cities and towns, citizens still experience regular failures of basic functions of local government, from picking up garbage to keeping parks and other public areas clean and safe to simply making employees available to answer questions about city services. Deteriorating services by local government combined with partisan moralizing by public officials breeds cynicism in, and has a demoralizing effect on, the people these officials are supposed to govern.