"99% of the people in government are idiots"

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Tuesday, June 2. 2009

"99% of the people in government are idiots"

Re our link today to John Bogle's talk about Wall Street, a young fixed-income friend (the one who warned everybody to get out of both debt and equities in Spring 08), emails me this:

You know what is ironic about the Bogle piece? It's that I spend all day every day working for the public sector coming up with really smart ideas to save states and local governments money to lower tax rates, fix their deficits, find ways that they can actually afford their capital plans and if they can't - we tell them that. We don't convince them to do fancy structures they don't understand (although they don't understand much) and we don't wait until we are paid to offer advice or analysis either. Half my time is spent working on unsolicited stuff. You know what usually happens? They pick a worse firm and a not as good a proposal because of probably some political or golf relationship or pay-to-play scheme, and they end up wasting taxpayer money. Some smart govt people get it and do the right thing, but not many. One thing I have learned over my years in fixed income is that 99% of the people in government are idiots.

Posted by The Barrister in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 19:20 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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Having worked in government for 11 years I agree. When I started I had an anti-government bias but I thought the actual people would be educated, thoughtful, reasonable and reasoning.
I was wrong.

#1 Rick on 2009-06-02 19:41 (Reply)

Not unintelligent necessarily, in my view anyway, but their desire for occupational security trumps everything.

#2 Skookumchuk on 2009-06-02 20:41 (Reply)

But isn't it possible that they may not be able to be successful in anything else?

#2.1 Bird Dog on 2009-06-02 20:55 (Reply)

For some of them, yes - they never have been able to do anything else. And they know it.

Others always talk about leaving but can never quite take the plunge. When you are a consultant, you run in to those types all the time.

#2.1.1 Skookumchuk on 2009-06-02 21:04 (Reply)

Just taking the side of the government employees for a moment . . . this sounds like sour grapes to me. You didn't get the job and "they just picked the worse firm probably because of some political stuff, etc." Could it be the other firm had a better idea? Offered better advice at a lower price?

Naww, it had to be something other than that. Right.

Maybe, must maybe, you guys aren't as smart as you think.

#3 TRO on 2009-06-02 22:41 (Reply)

Could be, TRO. Good point. But in my experience after 12 years... not a valid one. I couldn't take working with the idiocy, so quit, forgoing my nice padded retirement. A man has to have some standards.

#3.1 Luther McLeod on 2009-06-02 23:08 (Reply)

You didn't get the job and "they just picked the worse firm probably because of some political stuff, etc." Could it be the other firm had a better idea? Offered better advice at a lower price?

I certainly can happen. Yet I also know of many instances when requests for proposals are so poorly written, so contradictory, and so unclear as to what the government client wishes to have done that a cogent response by any consultant is impossible.

#4 Skookumchuk on 2009-06-02 23:14 (Reply)

Almost every time I've been involved in a piece of complicated litigation in which one of the parties was the government, I have been astounded at the positions it took. When businessmen quarrel, although sometimes ego and rancor make the fight more bitter and mutually destructive than necessary, they usually can find some resolution that maximizes advantage to both sides. When the government gets involved, there's no feedback loop to keep the quarrel within reasonable bounds. A businessman doesn't succeed by committing excessive resources to litigation when a rational settlement would work better. A career bureaucrat often does, if only because there so rarely seems to be anyone in authority over him with both motive and power to rein in the excesses. Also, the bureaucrat rarely seems to have any understanding of even the basic business issues at stake, like the concept of a profit or some need for predictability in the commercial process. (I suppose the bureaucrat's perspective would be that the businessmen don't understand the public policy implications.)

#5 Texan99 on 2009-06-03 11:13 (Reply)

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Tuesday, June 2. 2009

"99% of the people in government are idiots"