Trump's indiscriminate firings of all entry level "probationary" employees (which can mean a lot of things from agency to agency), without regard to their actual jobs and responsibilities, is going to create a huge "bubble" in the federal service system, with aging-out career civil service members retiring in a few years, the current mid-level employees moving up into those billets, BUT no junior staff available to move up into the mid-level tiers, and from there the senior GS levels in 15-20 years. This happened in the 1990s with the Clinton Administration's "Reductions in Force" and took over a decade to repair. I know because I was working as a civilian contractor in the Navy at that time, and its civil service was populated and dominated by old geezers. I had the opportunity to join the Navy's civilian force but turned it down thinking that it would be a risky move for later in my career. It looks like I was right.
Now with all of that said, I'm A-OK with getting rid of the DEI/BLM/Resistance infected offices, agencies, and employees of little worth, as well as the corrupt money laundering operations like USAID, SBA, CFPB, etc.
BUT, I draw the line when field staff such as nuclear weapons engineers, designers, and handlers and park rangers, maintenance men, and police officers are indiscriminately axed without rhyme or reason because TRUMP! Believe it or not, there are some functions that are necessary and even vital by the federal government, and cheering on those low level firings is both stupid and counterproductive, and the damage in the long run is going to be enormous. It amounts to "decimation" in the Roman style, and Trump's doing it out of pure vengeance, and NOT in line with any sort of Goldwater-Reagan Conservative ideology.
For instance, Gettysburg National Military Park of the National Park Service of the Interior Department was ordered last week to fire some 25 personnel (five fulltime and 20 seasonal)---rangers, police officers, guides, archivists, and maintenance crew members-- en masse without regard to their actual duties or performance. The military park is now all but shutdown, with only the superintendent and a handful of full-time rangers left to try and manage it all by themselves.
Trump terminations hit Gettysburghttps://www.gettysburgtimes.com/news/local/article_fb371390-ef0c-11ef-9a8f-7b475f44ab6c.htmlI also find the universal reason handed to all the terminated employees, that their agency has "determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment” totally obnoxious and dishonest. In fact, it's an outright lie concocted for legal reasons in the expectation of litigation.
I'm all for shrinking government but this is just stupid. The federal government is NOT SpaceX, and Washington DC is NOT Silicon Valley. "Moving fast and breaking things," as the smug quote from Silicon Valley goes, is a nihilistic approach with long term unforeseen consequences. Mark my words...we might get a cheap thrill at watching Trump and Musk swinging the decimation ax BUT there will be a BIG price to pay in the future when Trump is out of office.
Silicon Valley's culture of breaking things is totally brokenhttps://www.wired.com/story/move-fast-and-break-things-or-dont/AI makes Silicon Valley’s philosophy of ‘move fast and break things’ untenablehttps://theconversation.com/ai-makes-silicon-valleys-philosophy-of-move-fast-and-break-things-untenable-218159The unofficial motto of Silicon Valley has long been “move fast and break things”. It relies on the assumption that in order to create cutting edge technology and to be ahead of the competition, companies need to accept that things will get damaged in the process.
However, this approach can have implications beyond just economics. It can endanger people and be unethical. As we mark the first anniversary of the release of AI chatbot ChatGPT, it’s worth considering whether the big tech companies could do with moving slowly and taking care not to break anything.
(snip)
“Move fast and break things” could also prove to be economically wrong, making investors rush for novelty instead of value, as they did in the dot com bubble of the early 2000s. The idea assumes that although things might go wrong, we will be able to fix them quickly, and so the harms will be limited. Yet, looking at the history of Silicon Valley, this has been shown to be a problem on several counts.
Identifying that there is a problem is not the same as finding its cause. Once a technology has been deployed, the environment in which it is used may be so complex that it takes years to understand what exactly is going wrong.
So, we should be very careful what we wish for, or we might just get it, good and hard
(hat tip to H.L. Mencken)
