4 posts
As I've said a few times now, all models are wrong. That includes laws and norms, employee handbooks and product roadmaps, system diagrams and city plans. If something is abstracting away from reality, it's creating a gap. What happens when that gap causes problems?
Few people are happy with the US government these days. Recent Gallup polls show that 71% of people are somewhat or very dissatisfied by "our system of government and how well it works". Common complaints are that government's too polarized and full of conflict, or that it's bureaucratic and inefficient and can't get things done.
Bureaucracy is stupid, David Graeber writes in The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. As the premise for a book, it’s more fertile than it sounds.
I read a comment recently about the rules for bidding on government contracts. This isn’t the comment, but it gets at the same issue, which stuck with me: