The possibility of a tyrant can never be eliminated. I dont think that's our main danger. Our main danger is implosion and collapse because the parties and permanent bureaucracies cannot govern. THAT is more likely to create a tyranny than a serious government actually gripping the country, saving taxpayers cash, stripping the system back etc!
But the current dynamics of greater debts, more racial hate, polarisation, bureaucratic dysfunction, social media madness is driving US downhill, so I think it's worth trying a once in 70 year Presidency that closes a bunch of crap down, calms the situation, defuses race hate etc...
Thanks for starting this long post with a summary rather than a teaser. (Not saying you generally would, but it deserves to be acknowledged.) This topic has been on my mind lately wrt the US -- very timely.
I think on Trump that Scott Adams had it very right last year - Trump does the easy stuff badly and the hard stuff well.
I do agree on the failing to control the government but I also think things are too far gone in the US. The law is breaking down and it's obvious that the ruling caste have an almost murderous dislike for the ordinary people.
The reason I started wondering if a “Vote Leave”-style operation could work in the U.S. was the attack on crypto in the current appropriations bill. The crypto world has been my main hope of seeing improvement in government, by building alternatives instead of trying to reform it directly. (Of course that would take time. But the next best hope started with general relative enlightenment with the spread of better tools for thought, etc., taking generations.) If you think in these terms and not in terms of an industry happy to find a place at the trough (obviously an element that exists too), then you look for some moves outside the usual playbook.
Sadly I’m not one of those guys who can cut a $200k check. Not even a Republican. (And I have big doubts about net positive results even if this got to an election win.) But crypto might be a more fruitful group to look to than Silicon Valley proper.
Agree on hopes for 'tools for thought' (per Nielsen, Matuschak) but also this will take time!
Agree on hopes for crypto - e.g Vitalik and quadratic voting.
Also re hopes for 'building replacements' instead of persuasion/takeover - which Ill write about shortly.
I also have doubts re net positive results!
But I think the downside of Trump as candidate is so high it's worth rolling dice - it wd have to go REALLY badly for the result of a $3M project to be worse than Trump as 2024 candidate
Yes. When voting for Biden/Harris I felt like "I am so going to regret this" (while expecting the regrets to take longer), and yet there was no alternative, by then.
Preparing my sackcloth and ashes but sorry have to disagree re downside of Trump. Regularly speak to peeps in the US. They are adamant that the election process itself was a whitewash - that's bad enough. From having seen various counts, it did not follow normal patterns and the scrutineering was a joke. The Dems are fundamentally opposed to doing anything to clean this up as they know it won't help their chances.
Second, we should be talking in $3TR not $3M... Biden's "infrastructure" bill includes a $1.3 billion "bailout" for the media. The very thing you are inherently opposed to.
Crypto is not going to save the world Far from it. China (short of energy) is one of the largest crypto-mining countries. No mining, no proof of work, then less new coin and a choke in blockchain - which itself is risky and on which I have already written. Even the Chinese have now panned it as they realised it uses too much electricity and the business-case can' be made.
The US government is even more dysfunctional that our own so downgrading Trump for failing boldly where others have failed before doesn't advance arguments. He at least had popular support, quickly visited North Korea and other fraught areas of the world with some foreign policy in mind. Clearly even he did not anticipate the depths the political establishment was prepared to go to to see him out. But here's the thing: as a non-career politician (of which we have all had too much) he represents the very thing Dominic has been proposing - regime change.
I'd be overjoyed to see someone do this, but the US constitution/legal system is a massive impediment. Once in govt, they'd need a massive and currently unlikely electoral mandate, otherwise it would be tied up in the US legal/procedural system the moment they moved to close anything. Not the case in the UK though......interesting.....
That's where I was heading. An alternative candidate/party/programme/funding model has, despite received wisdom re new parties, a surprisingly higher chance of success in our uncodified/good chap system. Would need to lie completely outside existing party structures and appeal to the large number of undecided/switch voters in terms of reset/break the failed monopoly. I can see that appealing emotionally to a large swathe of electorate who feel let down by all parties (as per but more so than US GOP/Dem system).
Thiel is brilliant. The interview where he sits next to Eric Schmidt and tells him directly (and repeatedly) that Google has no idea how to innovate is superb.
Is crowdfunding a Cummings/Yarvin discussion an option? Owl Farm as the venue (I’m assuming all fantasies are permitted over here)? Be warned; If they have a live audience and tape a small lump of Carlyle’s Coal under each seat we’d be left with a challenge greater than “clean your room”.
Fascinating piece as ever Dom. Did you believe pre-June 2019 that much of worst parts of the state should be closed down rather than reformed? Or did experience of running no10 convince you it was necessary?
While it is true that Trump had trouble controlling Government (lots of his ideas got blocked and he was seriously exposed as just a figurehead for many of his signature policies like The Wall), it was actually a good thing he got blocked! The man was not brought up with values that many of us are educated from when were young. Born into wealth and power, he was only ever going to be an autocrat. If he hadn't been a figure in pop culture for 30+ years, he wouldn't have gotten elected.
There is though a point of getting small groups, but usually they are done to get elected (the Obama campaigns are a case in point, which took the Howard Dean campaign and put it on steroids). The problem in US politics is that the aims are so short-term.
My main point is - unless you are deluded enough to think Trump has a load of good ideas *and has learned to do things he didnt do in 4 years*, it's in your interests to support a project like this so we can all avoid having to watch the horror...
Everyone goes into govt to change things for the better, then ends up in the same inescapable swamp. Due to our selection systems/media, almost no one goes into politics to break it. The media trope of "move fast and break things" views this with horror/contempt because can't understand current systems are designed to prevent any change. Working within system = capture/acceptance/absorption.
Trump was raised as a middle class kid who’s father had a construction company in Queens. His father built Leavitt towns (first pre-fab development houses) for the postwar vets from WW2.
This is middle class Queens.
As far as the values you were all bought up in~ the values of American technocrats are stealing trillions annually, drowning everyone else in porn, drugs, divorce, crime and covering it up with racial divisions to the point of funding riots. These are the actual policies and the revealed values.
And these same people are who “Dom” is appealing to save America and the world from “Trump.”
We don’t need to be saved from Trump, we need to be saved from you.
Will the group of ten agree on the why they have got gov control? Will the eventual leaders of the startup gov also?
Looking at No. 10 now doesn’t seem like the only issue is the institutions but also limits of the imagination of politicians faced with realities of any major changes achieved.
Employment issues post Brexit one good example. ‘Hire Brits’ is not an answer but is being offered as one.
True, wonder if Dom had any convos about hra/echr in no 10. Do we reckon Boris just spirals out from here, briefing against treasury feels like he’s on self destruct mode
This PM no chance - he decided in 2020 to rever to 'Gvt is just responding to the media' mode.
A successor COULD but obv huge institutional forces against.
Even after 11 years in power, brexit, covid, most MPs have no idea how the govt machine actually works & like Boris they mostly just focus on telegraph and social media all day
How about using prediction (betting) markets to help make decisions? You could, for example, have a market that bets on poll results conditional on a specified campaign strategy, e.g. if we spend $10 million on immigration messaging what do you bet the polls on immigration will say and if we don't spend the money the bet is cancelled.
Seeing a lot of Yarvin here. All of this is good. Another key factor -- voters on the right are sick to the point of gagging over the GOP. Something provides a genuinely novel approach and proposes to transcend the entire current garbage system could be wildly popular. Wish I had the money to thrown in $200K, but I don't. I hope others will.
I have a friend of mine who is a young (successful) technology entrepreneur. He's probably the best person I know at building things (networks, products, you name it). He is essentially the exact kind of person you were looking for when you put out the call for highly talented 'weirdos' at the start of last year. He doesn't have substack but he has the same results focused approach to politics that you do (i've shown him your work and he's on the same page). Is there any way for people like him to get in touch with you/your network to help on projects like these going forward? I can send you his details if you are interested etc.
Thanks for sharing! I agree re rebooting rather than reforming, but it is hard to think of any examples. Are there any instances where this approach to existing institutions has been tried? (I feel like FDR was mostly creating new institutions, correct me if I'm wrong. If so I would be interested to hear about them, and the piece would benefit from tangible examples.
Fwiw, the only example I can think of is the Ukrainian (I think) police force where a new force was started to make a clean break from systemic corruption.
Also the part about it not being a pitch might benefit from being put nearer the front.
That requires a Dictatorship that isn’t possible in America given its size and diversity of Geography, interests and peoples.
It wasn’t before either when the Iroquois Confederation*, the Crown both tried tyranny and failed.
*The Iroquois confederacy lasted centuries and was based on federated, just, peaceful rule. At the end however they resorted to force and then terror by the Mohawks terror troops- and it unraveled.
For Ukraine to break with corruption it has to break with USA, unlikely.
Ukraine is a money laundering operation for the USA Dept of State and associates like LTC Vindeman.
The Russia hatred is that Putin put a stop to the rape of Russia.
Really our Empire that replaced yours seems to have done things in reverse ~ we did the good stuff first then sank into corruption and looting. Britain began its Empire as Piracy at sea and on land then morphed into law, civilization, proper British education. Just before you lost it…a lesson there I suppose.!
I work for a smallish tech startup. I joined ~4 years ago, when we were a rabble of kids in a room. It's now doing pretty well (certainly not unicorn, but valuation tens of millions £)
Despite having a truly exceptional (really 0.001%) CTO and experienced director, in the early days, we were a mess. A total shambles. Lacking direction, changing priorities each day, putting out fires, appeasing shareholders etc.
Of course, in a small company with little to lose, this isn't disastrous. With few customers or major institutions signed up, hardly anyone was reliant on us. We could afford to make lots and lots (and lots) mistakes, and that's how we learned. Today, it's a much better operation.
My question is - if a major government dept was replaced by a startup organisation, would the "success through failure" startup mentality be tolerated by those reliant on its work? Indeed, would it even be morally acceptable? If you were to replace DWP, for example, with a new startup, there would undoubtedly be serious interruptions to UC payments on which people survive.
How can the initial disruption, chaos and failure of the startup be justified (or tolerated), even if it proves more successful in the long term?
I was thinking exactly this as I read. I mean, you might get away with it at DWP - it's pretty incompetent to start with and has a function that isn't that critical. But the idea of start-uping the MOD or Pentagon, with all the security implications... the whole point of start ups is that they fail 90% of the time, and that's good. But do you want a ministry of defence with a 90% chance of actual failure and 10% chance of being good? Is that really better than one with 0% chance of failure and 100% chance of just being really inefficient? I don't know, but I can see how an opposing candidate with half a brain could tear the policy to shreds.
Having more than a dalliance with the DWP (married into), I can assure whoever cares that the issue isn’t incompetence. At least where the “staff” is concerned. That’s not a “don’t talk about my wife like that” knuckle-dragging view (she is a… not the time). The issue is EXACTLY what DC has been bleating on about for years.
One assumes it’s the same pattern repeating throughout all departments currently managed from Whitehall, from the DVLA to DEFRA…
It’s the shambolic management structure that tends to promote 3 levels beyond objective competence. It’s the myriad new Job Coaches, who started a few months ago bright-eyed and ready to serve only to be “targeted” into irrelevance (10 minute appointments to make but one arbitrary target). It’s the obsession with the alphabet people, themselves seemingly looking for a job, not a rally cry. It’s the illogical/inaccessible language with holistic approaches based on gender sensitivity while implementing meaningful stakeholder communication centred on open dailo… you get the point.
The DWP certainly has critical functions, mostly payments. But ripping it up to start again needn’t effect those parts - they can ALL be done indefinitely with fairly basic automated software or (brace yourself) pay out 6 month’s of UC up front while “we work on it”.
There are levels of complexity that will definitely be effected by an explosive “reorganisation/reset/whatever”, but the people within the organisation effected will be PRECISELY those you’ll want to keep as the dust settles. Simply finding those individuals is justification for the initial disruption.
No, I didn't mean that DWP staff were incompetent - I have no idea whether they are or not. Perhaps a better word would have been dysfunctional, it appears to me that long, mid, short term it is not really fulfilling it's purpose, whatever that is. In the way that, say, our primary school system is mostly functional and at least minimally working for the people who use it. (I've been here long enough to know that someone will tell me how wrong I am!)
But I think you are confirming the point, though rather than disagreeing - the resetting the DWP to be a start up is imaginable without causing an existential threat to the country. With the MOD (or the Pentagon) it seems like the minute the Russians heard that you were doing something like that, the country would be flooded with field agents waging seven hells of hybrid war.
I’m definitely agreeing with the overarching point - and you’re right that, for example, primary schools are minimally working.
What DC & CY et al are up to (in their own respective inimitable ways) is to use their platforms to ask a fairly simple question… are you ok with just ok?
I expect we're in broad agreement. A lot of public organisations are low quality. If you were to imagine a world class health service, for example, you certainly wouldn't describe the NHS. Same with (I expect) primary schools and the DWP.
I am broadly in favour of starting again where possible. Changing great behemoths like Whitehall depts is near impossible - they're just too big, the processes too embedded. There's a reason big companies often cede ground to small ones - they become old lumbering oafs compared to young agile foxes. Big tech knows this to a degree, though their solution is simply to buy the agile foxes.
The problem is this. Startups (by definition) don't begin with existing responsibilities. They start from scratch, and build from nothing. So if they fail, the damage is minimal.
If, as you say (and the Pentagon is a far better example than DWP) a startup replaces an existing bureaucracy with significant responsibility, the startup assumes that responsibility from day one. If a startup fails in this circumstance, the damage could be very large indeed.
I expect some damage could be mitigated through, as you say, advance UC payments. But something like national security - you can't mess around with that. If you shut the pentagon, built a replacement startup, and suffered an attack in the meantime, I think you'd rightly be criminally liable.
The problem with UKG departments, once started, is that they don’t exist with accountability (or authority). At least not in the same way anyone in the private sector would recognise.
The responsibility point is very interesting - I would love to strap a Cabinet Member to a lie detector test and ask them who, exactly, they feel responsible to? One suspects it would take a few dozen responses before the needle settles down.
b/ Saying 'here's all the ways the Pentagon has faile, killed people, wasted billions, corruption etc - let's create a new agency run by the following people, operating with these principles instead and outside the Congressional budget control that guarantees corruption' etc wd be not just rational but popular with enough people to make it viable. Who wd object? Many Dems happy youre closing the Pentagon. Many GOP happy at actual chance to save money / do things porperly etc. The objections wd be from big defence companies which you cd turn into a STRENGTH with the right campaign
Yes, its time the Pentagon became its own Master as the Federal Reserve, CIA, FCC, NRLB are Independent Agencies. It’s archaic and Dead Parchment Governance to ask for every penny from Congress.
That is a direct contradiction of Technocratic Governance.
There may be some problems of course but it will sort itself out nicely enough in the end.
And I can’t think of anyone who matters objecting more than pro-forma for appearances sake.
Any real objection could quite be handled with efficiency ☠️💀
Could a startup mechanism be worse than current DWP? Understand your point, but if manifesto/campaign state this at outset, a sufficient mandate might - might - allow for change. Particularly if it includes commitment to change employment law in certain circumstances, eg Civil Service.
With government you cd start with people already proved to be highly able, not 20 year olds!
Now these people dont get involved for obvious reasons - they are never given true authority, just nonsense 'tsar' type roles, ie dumb meetings, no power.
Nothing is ever guaranteed to work but youd get a lot further with a government having someone like Altman or Collison setting something up than with Grayling ad Boris and Starmer.
If you could involve a Collison figure, clearly that would be of huge benefit to the country. But is it realistic someone of that calibre would want to be involved? How do you convince them to leave private enterprise behind?
In the new department run by Collison, who has authority? Presumably you dont get Collison elected? So do you ennoble him? Or do you appoint a puppet minister? If no minister, is it palatable to have someone with so much power who the public didnt vote for, and cant vote out?
Engage them intellectually with the challenge (not said naively). You have them as an outside head of an Agency (we already have tons of these). You give them a finite length of tenure,extensible on results set out by central govt beforehand. And you trial it first, ask public to engage/respond, and monitor constantly, from outside not inside the new agency. Don't clog it up with bean counters like me: judge by outcomes/public response/feedback. If its a disaster, try again differently, but don't give up, and always judge perception of disaster vs reality of predecessor dept/agency.
<blockquote><i>A tiny and cheap (<$2-3 million) project — independent-for-now of any candidate — should start now to figure out how a GOP candidate could win, how they could actually control the government after they win, and who the candidate should be.</i></blockquote>
Are you up for it yourself with a few able key partners aiding right royally, Dominic? Just follow a great faultless and/or failsafe plan and prizes are easily won and any misguided opposition or competition bowled over and steamrollered. There are those with such plans readily available. Do you know of any of them and how surprisingly easy it is to directly connect with them?
Master Piloted Programs could also be made available to the powers that currently be lumbered with the responsibility of creating postmodern civil societies in Afghanistan from the ashes of the West's bonfire of the vanities abandoned there.
Such is not without its traditional problems though, as is accurately and adequately revealed in this earlier post elsewhere ........
The difficulty/hurdle that existing Pentagon type systems/executive administrations experience and struggle and too oft so maddeningly fail to overcome, is in recognising and realising developed and developing advanced technologies, and especially the game-changing types of technologies.
And it is of no help or use whatsoever to have such as may be such submissions run the gauntlet of subjective editorial moderation/comment vetting, and be dismissed and rejected whenever they are freely shared for greater public viewing and open peer review in presentations in publications such as National DEFENSE magazine.
Such a difficulty/hurdle though has unintended coincidental consequences for many of those who would benefit greatly from developed and developing advanced technologies as it guarantees leadership of great game-changers being exercised and led by others elsewhere.
It is though a perfectly natural progression born out of suppression and borne via ignorance and aided immensely by the arrogance in support of hubris.
Fortunately it does not adversely affect nor halt the rapid progression and infiltration by such advanced and advancing developments into failed conventional and struggling traditional systems/SCADA administrations.</i></blockquote>
The possibility of a tyrant can never be eliminated. I dont think that's our main danger. Our main danger is implosion and collapse because the parties and permanent bureaucracies cannot govern. THAT is more likely to create a tyranny than a serious government actually gripping the country, saving taxpayers cash, stripping the system back etc!
No Im not sure, everything has risks.
But the current dynamics of greater debts, more racial hate, polarisation, bureaucratic dysfunction, social media madness is driving US downhill, so I think it's worth trying a once in 70 year Presidency that closes a bunch of crap down, calms the situation, defuses race hate etc...
People who believe what they read on Wikipedia should be denied the right to vote.
Right. Not long until Barmy Dom does away with Democracy and the Rule of Law anyway. Anything to get his precious Dark Data infecting Whitehall...
Citing Wikipedia is akin to citing 1950s-era Pravda articles as proof that Communism works. Everyone knows this - except Conservatives.
Go eat a book, worm.
Not convinced that Dom is barmy presumably you have paid your 10 quid?
Thanks for starting this long post with a summary rather than a teaser. (Not saying you generally would, but it deserves to be acknowledged.) This topic has been on my mind lately wrt the US -- very timely.
Cheers.
The sooner non-Trump-like people think seriously about this in a disciplined way the better for us all!
Do share thoughts...
I think on Trump that Scott Adams had it very right last year - Trump does the easy stuff badly and the hard stuff well.
I do agree on the failing to control the government but I also think things are too far gone in the US. The law is breaking down and it's obvious that the ruling caste have an almost murderous dislike for the ordinary people.
The reason I started wondering if a “Vote Leave”-style operation could work in the U.S. was the attack on crypto in the current appropriations bill. The crypto world has been my main hope of seeing improvement in government, by building alternatives instead of trying to reform it directly. (Of course that would take time. But the next best hope started with general relative enlightenment with the spread of better tools for thought, etc., taking generations.) If you think in these terms and not in terms of an industry happy to find a place at the trough (obviously an element that exists too), then you look for some moves outside the usual playbook.
Sadly I’m not one of those guys who can cut a $200k check. Not even a Republican. (And I have big doubts about net positive results even if this got to an election win.) But crypto might be a more fruitful group to look to than Silicon Valley proper.
Agree on hopes for 'tools for thought' (per Nielsen, Matuschak) but also this will take time!
Agree on hopes for crypto - e.g Vitalik and quadratic voting.
Also re hopes for 'building replacements' instead of persuasion/takeover - which Ill write about shortly.
I also have doubts re net positive results!
But I think the downside of Trump as candidate is so high it's worth rolling dice - it wd have to go REALLY badly for the result of a $3M project to be worse than Trump as 2024 candidate
Yes. When voting for Biden/Harris I felt like "I am so going to regret this" (while expecting the regrets to take longer), and yet there was no alternative, by then.
Preparing my sackcloth and ashes but sorry have to disagree re downside of Trump. Regularly speak to peeps in the US. They are adamant that the election process itself was a whitewash - that's bad enough. From having seen various counts, it did not follow normal patterns and the scrutineering was a joke. The Dems are fundamentally opposed to doing anything to clean this up as they know it won't help their chances.
Second, we should be talking in $3TR not $3M... Biden's "infrastructure" bill includes a $1.3 billion "bailout" for the media. The very thing you are inherently opposed to.
Crypto is not going to save the world Far from it. China (short of energy) is one of the largest crypto-mining countries. No mining, no proof of work, then less new coin and a choke in blockchain - which itself is risky and on which I have already written. Even the Chinese have now panned it as they realised it uses too much electricity and the business-case can' be made.
The US government is even more dysfunctional that our own so downgrading Trump for failing boldly where others have failed before doesn't advance arguments. He at least had popular support, quickly visited North Korea and other fraught areas of the world with some foreign policy in mind. Clearly even he did not anticipate the depths the political establishment was prepared to go to to see him out. But here's the thing: as a non-career politician (of which we have all had too much) he represents the very thing Dominic has been proposing - regime change.
Fiat lux.
I'd be overjoyed to see someone do this, but the US constitution/legal system is a massive impediment. Once in govt, they'd need a massive and currently unlikely electoral mandate, otherwise it would be tied up in the US legal/procedural system the moment they moved to close anything. Not the case in the UK though......interesting.....
In some ways it's easier in UK cos unwritten constitution, as we showed in some ways...
That's where I was heading. An alternative candidate/party/programme/funding model has, despite received wisdom re new parties, a surprisingly higher chance of success in our uncodified/good chap system. Would need to lie completely outside existing party structures and appeal to the large number of undecided/switch voters in terms of reset/break the failed monopoly. I can see that appealing emotionally to a large swathe of electorate who feel let down by all parties (as per but more so than US GOP/Dem system).
Would be fun to see you in the US. OMG. Those pompous Americans wouldn't know what to do with themselves.
I bet someone like Peter Thiel would be worth talking to
Thiel is brilliant. The interview where he sits next to Eric Schmidt and tells him directly (and repeatedly) that Google has no idea how to innovate is superb.
He's a genius and extraordinarily successful. Just imagine him and DC
I read this as a direct pitch to Thiel ha. He could fund this in a second
Would be surprised if he isn't doing something. He's already back JD Vance in a big way.
Is crowdfunding a Cummings/Yarvin discussion an option? Owl Farm as the venue (I’m assuming all fantasies are permitted over here)? Be warned; If they have a live audience and tape a small lump of Carlyle’s Coal under each seat we’d be left with a challenge greater than “clean your room”.
I can't help but imagine something like Malcolm Tucker's exasperated reactions to nondescript American bureaucrats in 'In The Loop'...
Best post yet
Fascinating piece as ever Dom. Did you believe pre-June 2019 that much of worst parts of the state should be closed down rather than reformed? Or did experience of running no10 convince you it was necessary?
I thought it before goign to No10 from experience in DfE.
No10 confirmed it
While it is true that Trump had trouble controlling Government (lots of his ideas got blocked and he was seriously exposed as just a figurehead for many of his signature policies like The Wall), it was actually a good thing he got blocked! The man was not brought up with values that many of us are educated from when were young. Born into wealth and power, he was only ever going to be an autocrat. If he hadn't been a figure in pop culture for 30+ years, he wouldn't have gotten elected.
There is though a point of getting small groups, but usually they are done to get elected (the Obama campaigns are a case in point, which took the Howard Dean campaign and put it on steroids). The problem in US politics is that the aims are so short-term.
My main point is - unless you are deluded enough to think Trump has a load of good ideas *and has learned to do things he didnt do in 4 years*, it's in your interests to support a project like this so we can all avoid having to watch the horror...
Everyone goes into govt to change things for the better, then ends up in the same inescapable swamp. Due to our selection systems/media, almost no one goes into politics to break it. The media trope of "move fast and break things" views this with horror/contempt because can't understand current systems are designed to prevent any change. Working within system = capture/acceptance/absorption.
Trump was raised as a middle class kid who’s father had a construction company in Queens. His father built Leavitt towns (first pre-fab development houses) for the postwar vets from WW2.
This is middle class Queens.
As far as the values you were all bought up in~ the values of American technocrats are stealing trillions annually, drowning everyone else in porn, drugs, divorce, crime and covering it up with racial divisions to the point of funding riots. These are the actual policies and the revealed values.
And these same people are who “Dom” is appealing to save America and the world from “Trump.”
We don’t need to be saved from Trump, we need to be saved from you.
Trump failed. Too squeamish about blood.
Don’t worry someone will come along. Much worse.
Will the group of ten agree on the why they have got gov control? Will the eventual leaders of the startup gov also?
Looking at No. 10 now doesn’t seem like the only issue is the institutions but also limits of the imagination of politicians faced with realities of any major changes achieved.
Employment issues post Brexit one good example. ‘Hire Brits’ is not an answer but is being offered as one.
Who knows you never know unless/until you start something like this...!
We never knew what would happen when we created Vote Leave summer 2015, almost everybody thought he had no chance
Seriously think you’ve underestimated the road trip time you know. Although it sounds like fun.
Emergent properties of complex adaptive systems maybe.
Why did you not try and set up this model in the UK. new startups and shut down the institution's
I did manage to get a few things closed in DfE and No10 -- latter obv hampered by combo of covid + PM.
And we started some new things outside existing entities
Do you see any chance of this pm turning it around? If not then hoping the next Tory leader isn’t a clown (obv starter waste of space)
Any Tory PM with a 61 seat majority who is not tearing out vast swathes of Blairite legislation by the roots on Day 1 is a lost cause.
True, wonder if Dom had any convos about hra/echr in no 10. Do we reckon Boris just spirals out from here, briefing against treasury feels like he’s on self destruct mode
This PM no chance - he decided in 2020 to rever to 'Gvt is just responding to the media' mode.
A successor COULD but obv huge institutional forces against.
Even after 11 years in power, brexit, covid, most MPs have no idea how the govt machine actually works & like Boris they mostly just focus on telegraph and social media all day
I imagine you agree that making truss fs was an example of media entertainment and not serious thinking re foreign policy
How about using prediction (betting) markets to help make decisions? You could, for example, have a market that bets on poll results conditional on a specified campaign strategy, e.g. if we spend $10 million on immigration messaging what do you bet the polls on immigration will say and if we don't spend the money the bet is cancelled.
Agree there are great possibilities around this...
Seeing a lot of Yarvin here. All of this is good. Another key factor -- voters on the right are sick to the point of gagging over the GOP. Something provides a genuinely novel approach and proposes to transcend the entire current garbage system could be wildly popular. Wish I had the money to thrown in $200K, but I don't. I hope others will.
Yarvin has written a short article directly in response to Dom’s.
It cost me £100 to see the cards turned over.
Link?
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/comment-on-cummings
It’s not behind a paywall.
Hi Dom,
I have a friend of mine who is a young (successful) technology entrepreneur. He's probably the best person I know at building things (networks, products, you name it). He is essentially the exact kind of person you were looking for when you put out the call for highly talented 'weirdos' at the start of last year. He doesn't have substack but he has the same results focused approach to politics that you do (i've shown him your work and he's on the same page). Is there any way for people like him to get in touch with you/your network to help on projects like these going forward? I can send you his details if you are interested etc.
Thanks once again for all your work.
Yup post his email here or DM me on Twitter
Hi Again Dominic,
Apologies for the late response on this, I didn't get the substack notificaiton of your reply and only saw this when you updated the post.
I've send you his details in a twitter DM (to avoid people spamming him). My twitter account has the same name as my account here.
Thanks for sharing! I agree re rebooting rather than reforming, but it is hard to think of any examples. Are there any instances where this approach to existing institutions has been tried? (I feel like FDR was mostly creating new institutions, correct me if I'm wrong. If so I would be interested to hear about them, and the piece would benefit from tangible examples.
Fwiw, the only example I can think of is the Ukrainian (I think) police force where a new force was started to make a clean break from systemic corruption.
Also the part about it not being a pitch might benefit from being put nearer the front.
Singapore under LKY is rich with examples, see other blogs
That requires a Dictatorship that isn’t possible in America given its size and diversity of Geography, interests and peoples.
It wasn’t before either when the Iroquois Confederation*, the Crown both tried tyranny and failed.
*The Iroquois confederacy lasted centuries and was based on federated, just, peaceful rule. At the end however they resorted to force and then terror by the Mohawks terror troops- and it unraveled.
For Ukraine to break with corruption it has to break with USA, unlikely.
Ukraine is a money laundering operation for the USA Dept of State and associates like LTC Vindeman.
The Russia hatred is that Putin put a stop to the rape of Russia.
Really our Empire that replaced yours seems to have done things in reverse ~ we did the good stuff first then sank into corruption and looting. Britain began its Empire as Piracy at sea and on land then morphed into law, civilization, proper British education. Just before you lost it…a lesson there I suppose.!
Thanks, Dom - v interesting.
I work for a smallish tech startup. I joined ~4 years ago, when we were a rabble of kids in a room. It's now doing pretty well (certainly not unicorn, but valuation tens of millions £)
Despite having a truly exceptional (really 0.001%) CTO and experienced director, in the early days, we were a mess. A total shambles. Lacking direction, changing priorities each day, putting out fires, appeasing shareholders etc.
Of course, in a small company with little to lose, this isn't disastrous. With few customers or major institutions signed up, hardly anyone was reliant on us. We could afford to make lots and lots (and lots) mistakes, and that's how we learned. Today, it's a much better operation.
My question is - if a major government dept was replaced by a startup organisation, would the "success through failure" startup mentality be tolerated by those reliant on its work? Indeed, would it even be morally acceptable? If you were to replace DWP, for example, with a new startup, there would undoubtedly be serious interruptions to UC payments on which people survive.
How can the initial disruption, chaos and failure of the startup be justified (or tolerated), even if it proves more successful in the long term?
I was thinking exactly this as I read. I mean, you might get away with it at DWP - it's pretty incompetent to start with and has a function that isn't that critical. But the idea of start-uping the MOD or Pentagon, with all the security implications... the whole point of start ups is that they fail 90% of the time, and that's good. But do you want a ministry of defence with a 90% chance of actual failure and 10% chance of being good? Is that really better than one with 0% chance of failure and 100% chance of just being really inefficient? I don't know, but I can see how an opposing candidate with half a brain could tear the policy to shreds.
Having more than a dalliance with the DWP (married into), I can assure whoever cares that the issue isn’t incompetence. At least where the “staff” is concerned. That’s not a “don’t talk about my wife like that” knuckle-dragging view (she is a… not the time). The issue is EXACTLY what DC has been bleating on about for years.
One assumes it’s the same pattern repeating throughout all departments currently managed from Whitehall, from the DVLA to DEFRA…
It’s the shambolic management structure that tends to promote 3 levels beyond objective competence. It’s the myriad new Job Coaches, who started a few months ago bright-eyed and ready to serve only to be “targeted” into irrelevance (10 minute appointments to make but one arbitrary target). It’s the obsession with the alphabet people, themselves seemingly looking for a job, not a rally cry. It’s the illogical/inaccessible language with holistic approaches based on gender sensitivity while implementing meaningful stakeholder communication centred on open dailo… you get the point.
The DWP certainly has critical functions, mostly payments. But ripping it up to start again needn’t effect those parts - they can ALL be done indefinitely with fairly basic automated software or (brace yourself) pay out 6 month’s of UC up front while “we work on it”.
There are levels of complexity that will definitely be effected by an explosive “reorganisation/reset/whatever”, but the people within the organisation effected will be PRECISELY those you’ll want to keep as the dust settles. Simply finding those individuals is justification for the initial disruption.
No, I didn't mean that DWP staff were incompetent - I have no idea whether they are or not. Perhaps a better word would have been dysfunctional, it appears to me that long, mid, short term it is not really fulfilling it's purpose, whatever that is. In the way that, say, our primary school system is mostly functional and at least minimally working for the people who use it. (I've been here long enough to know that someone will tell me how wrong I am!)
But I think you are confirming the point, though rather than disagreeing - the resetting the DWP to be a start up is imaginable without causing an existential threat to the country. With the MOD (or the Pentagon) it seems like the minute the Russians heard that you were doing something like that, the country would be flooded with field agents waging seven hells of hybrid war.
I’m definitely agreeing with the overarching point - and you’re right that, for example, primary schools are minimally working.
What DC & CY et al are up to (in their own respective inimitable ways) is to use their platforms to ask a fairly simple question… are you ok with just ok?
If I can weigh back in...
I expect we're in broad agreement. A lot of public organisations are low quality. If you were to imagine a world class health service, for example, you certainly wouldn't describe the NHS. Same with (I expect) primary schools and the DWP.
I am broadly in favour of starting again where possible. Changing great behemoths like Whitehall depts is near impossible - they're just too big, the processes too embedded. There's a reason big companies often cede ground to small ones - they become old lumbering oafs compared to young agile foxes. Big tech knows this to a degree, though their solution is simply to buy the agile foxes.
The problem is this. Startups (by definition) don't begin with existing responsibilities. They start from scratch, and build from nothing. So if they fail, the damage is minimal.
If, as you say (and the Pentagon is a far better example than DWP) a startup replaces an existing bureaucracy with significant responsibility, the startup assumes that responsibility from day one. If a startup fails in this circumstance, the damage could be very large indeed.
I expect some damage could be mitigated through, as you say, advance UC payments. But something like national security - you can't mess around with that. If you shut the pentagon, built a replacement startup, and suffered an attack in the meantime, I think you'd rightly be criminally liable.
Agreed entirely.
The problem with UKG departments, once started, is that they don’t exist with accountability (or authority). At least not in the same way anyone in the private sector would recognise.
The responsibility point is very interesting - I would love to strap a Cabinet Member to a lie detector test and ask them who, exactly, they feel responsible to? One suspects it would take a few dozen responses before the needle settles down.
Surely the answer is to start with the less core critical depts, get public used to it, then tackle core competences like MOD?
Smart idea. 6 months payment to firewall the changes. Given cost of Covid, that would be a drop in the ocean.
I think your risk model is wrong.
a/ The Pentagon is already MASSIVELY FAILING!
b/ Saying 'here's all the ways the Pentagon has faile, killed people, wasted billions, corruption etc - let's create a new agency run by the following people, operating with these principles instead and outside the Congressional budget control that guarantees corruption' etc wd be not just rational but popular with enough people to make it viable. Who wd object? Many Dems happy youre closing the Pentagon. Many GOP happy at actual chance to save money / do things porperly etc. The objections wd be from big defence companies which you cd turn into a STRENGTH with the right campaign
Yes, its time the Pentagon became its own Master as the Federal Reserve, CIA, FCC, NRLB are Independent Agencies. It’s archaic and Dead Parchment Governance to ask for every penny from Congress.
That is a direct contradiction of Technocratic Governance.
There may be some problems of course but it will sort itself out nicely enough in the end.
And I can’t think of anyone who matters objecting more than pro-forma for appearances sake.
Any real objection could quite be handled with efficiency ☠️💀
Could a startup mechanism be worse than current DWP? Understand your point, but if manifesto/campaign state this at outset, a sufficient mandate might - might - allow for change. Particularly if it includes commitment to change employment law in certain circumstances, eg Civil Service.
With government you cd start with people already proved to be highly able, not 20 year olds!
Now these people dont get involved for obvious reasons - they are never given true authority, just nonsense 'tsar' type roles, ie dumb meetings, no power.
Nothing is ever guaranteed to work but youd get a lot further with a government having someone like Altman or Collison setting something up than with Grayling ad Boris and Starmer.
If you could involve a Collison figure, clearly that would be of huge benefit to the country. But is it realistic someone of that calibre would want to be involved? How do you convince them to leave private enterprise behind?
In the new department run by Collison, who has authority? Presumably you dont get Collison elected? So do you ennoble him? Or do you appoint a puppet minister? If no minister, is it palatable to have someone with so much power who the public didnt vote for, and cant vote out?
Engage them intellectually with the challenge (not said naively). You have them as an outside head of an Agency (we already have tons of these). You give them a finite length of tenure,extensible on results set out by central govt beforehand. And you trial it first, ask public to engage/respond, and monitor constantly, from outside not inside the new agency. Don't clog it up with bean counters like me: judge by outcomes/public response/feedback. If its a disaster, try again differently, but don't give up, and always judge perception of disaster vs reality of predecessor dept/agency.
<blockquote><i>A tiny and cheap (<$2-3 million) project — independent-for-now of any candidate — should start now to figure out how a GOP candidate could win, how they could actually control the government after they win, and who the candidate should be.</i></blockquote>
Are you up for it yourself with a few able key partners aiding right royally, Dominic? Just follow a great faultless and/or failsafe plan and prizes are easily won and any misguided opposition or competition bowled over and steamrollered. There are those with such plans readily available. Do you know of any of them and how surprisingly easy it is to directly connect with them?
Master Piloted Programs could also be made available to the powers that currently be lumbered with the responsibility of creating postmodern civil societies in Afghanistan from the ashes of the West's bonfire of the vanities abandoned there.
Such is not without its traditional problems though, as is accurately and adequately revealed in this earlier post elsewhere ........
<blockquote><i>GrahamC [2109010837] ....... shares on https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/9/1/analysts-see-shortfalls-in-pentagon-st-funding ....... :-) subject to negotiating the National DEFENSE magazine review process
The difficulty/hurdle that existing Pentagon type systems/executive administrations experience and struggle and too oft so maddeningly fail to overcome, is in recognising and realising developed and developing advanced technologies, and especially the game-changing types of technologies.
And it is of no help or use whatsoever to have such as may be such submissions run the gauntlet of subjective editorial moderation/comment vetting, and be dismissed and rejected whenever they are freely shared for greater public viewing and open peer review in presentations in publications such as National DEFENSE magazine.
Such a difficulty/hurdle though has unintended coincidental consequences for many of those who would benefit greatly from developed and developing advanced technologies as it guarantees leadership of great game-changers being exercised and led by others elsewhere.
It is though a perfectly natural progression born out of suppression and borne via ignorance and aided immensely by the arrogance in support of hubris.
Fortunately it does not adversely affect nor halt the rapid progression and infiltration by such advanced and advancing developments into failed conventional and struggling traditional systems/SCADA administrations.</i></blockquote>