Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarab92 | Hacker News Reader

> there seems to be this implicit assumption that people working in the bureaucracy are the ones making the rules

Most regulations come about due to agency rulemaking under vague or broad statutes, so this implicit assumption is likely generally true.

Given that power, it doesn't surprise me that Republicans would be uncomfortable with organisations like 18F that had zero ideological diversity, in much the same way that I would expect Democrats to be uncomfortable inheriting an agency composed entirely of MAGA types.

Regardless of their technical prowess, as a government organisation, they should have taken more care to avoid becoming completely partisan, and shouldn't be surprised at this outcome.

View on HN

> it doesn't surprise me that Republicans would be uncomfortable with organisations like 18F that had zero ideological diversity

Ideological diversity within the federal bureaucracy is exactly what the war against the permanent civil service is directed against, in favor of partisan patronage and Führerprinzip.

Are you assuming that the current makeup of the civil service is ideologically diverse? It isn't. There were no conservatives at 18F.

Is DOGE ideologically diverse? From recent reporting it also looks like a bunch of white men primarily.

White men can't be ideologically diverse?

> W̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ m̶e̶n̶ DOGE can't be ideologically diverse?

In theory DOGE could be diverse. In practice, at this specific time there's no real indication they're age diverse, gender diverse, or even messiah diverse.

You don't really mean "ideologically" there do you?

By "there" do you mean

> W̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ m̶e̶n̶ DOGE can't be ideologically diverse?

where I "quoted" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43228120 which "quoted" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43225916 by performing s/ DOGE / White men / and I returned by performing s/ White men / DOGE / ?

You would first have to ask scarab92, dragonwriter, and hypothesis if they ' really mean "ideologically" ' and then address the question of why did you substitute DOGE with White men .. which is all getting a tad meta for me.

As for that part of "there" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43228187 ) which is all me .. I very much meant that the DOGE operatives do not appear to suffer from any form of diversity by any metric.

Perhaps they differ by meme coin preference?

I get what you're trying to say, but 'ideologically diverse' doesn’t really work that way—it’s about ideas, not how things look on the surface.

That's one of the side effects of hiring on merit rather than voting patterns

The best of the best that actually want to take part in making effective change for the better within goverment services will tend to have a progressive outlook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F

You're not seriously making the case that the government was hiring strictly based on merit are you?

I'm more interested in the original claim that there were no (zero, nada, < epsilon) conservatives at 18F.

Particularly if the tent is broadened to include traditional pre-Trumpian conservatives.

What percentage should there be?

Zero, as claimed, seems unlikely.

"Should" seems prescriptive.

Within a standard deviation of the mean general distribution for the US Federal service would be probable by the Central Limit Theorem.

Why bound it to the US Federal service?

I love how it's "We KNOW diversity makes us stronger" kinda stuff right up till it's all people you agree with then we don't need diversity any more and it's all merit.

I've known this was true forever but it's interesting seeing it said out loud now.

This is exactly what I was saying in another thread, but wasn’t able to put so clearly.

> There were no conservatives at 18F.

And we know this how?

> Are you assuming that the current makeup of the civil service is ideologically diverse?

On the whole. Yes. Given the lengths of careers, the structure of the civil service system (both the formal structure and the way it has, until last month, been applied in practice), and the different and (in some areas more than others regional and occupational-area biases in who is attracted to it, that would be hard to avoid.

> There were no conservatives at 18F.

Even if that were true, the mass firings of federal civil servants haven't been limited to 18F.

How do you legislate "ideological neutrality" into an agency? There's nothing left-wing about 18F's mission.

If Republicans are unhappy about how agencies use rulemaking power, they have had many opportunities over the past few decades to pass bills more clearly defining the powers of those agencies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com