Who is the government? By Michael Lewis Review – What Doges tries to destroy | Policy books

IT is a bit unpleasant for Michael Lewis, perhaps the most successful non-fiction author in America, to open his new book by breathing out that a previous one sold half a million copies, but keep with him. The book in question was The Fifth Risk of 2018, in which Lewis intelligently responded to the first administration of Donald Trump with profiles of a handful of unknown federal government employees to enhance what Trump has despised and highlight the cost of rupture. His point in the introduction of who is the government? is that you can lift the cover on any department and find a similar treasure of stories: people you have never heard of, do work that you have never understood the importance.

Last year, Lewis brought together a team of long -term writers crack to discover more of these stories for the Washington Post, and these articles are collected here. The gods have smiled at him again, if not his country, because the timing is horribly perfect. One of the many people who do not understand how the US government is somewhat authorized to prevail over the studs in the name of “efficiency”. The Doge of Elon Musk has only been taking place for a few weeks, but the Americans will have undergone the consequences of his vandalism ignored for many years to come, in health, national security, preparation of disasters and more. It would not be surprising to learn that some of the people interviewed here have already been dismissed or that their work has financed. In any case, Musk’s demolition derby makes this kind of journalism feel, more than ever, like a civic duty.

Unlike the conservative stereotype of a bureaucracy in hot air balloon, the size of the federal workforce has not changed much since the 1960s. It currently represents around 2.4 million people, more than 70% of whom are working for agencies related to defense and national security. Without a doubt, some of them are mediocre or incompetent, and some systems really need reform, but this book rightly focuses on calm heroes who represent public service to its best.

One of the reasons why we don’t know who these people are is that they don’t care who they are. “The best thing in the world is when nobody can remember who it was,” explains Ronald E Waters, the humble power plant whose administration of the national cemetery has a record note of 97 on the customer satisfaction index. As the New Yorker’s casey CEP writes: “He refuses to believe that there is something like a Ron fan club, regardless of the number of members I find.” Visiting the NASA jet propulsion laboratory, Dave Eggers notes “an implacable accent on teams and groups and predecessors” rather than on individual glory.

Each chapter has its own separate flavor. The story of the novelist Geraldine Brooks of an Irs cybercrime specialist who teaches Jiu-Jitsu while he does not thwart drug traffickers, terrorists and pedophiles could be a cinema field, while historian Sarah Vowell, the exquisite tour of national archives, hinders the history of the United States. “”

John Lanchester modifies the mission by profiling not a person but a number: the consumer price index. He skillfully explains how it works and how he fails. Food prices are only 8% of the IPC, but they are the main cause of stickers’ shock, so inflation can drop technically but, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris could tell you, consumers do not feel it. But that does not make the IPC, as the right -wing agitators claim, a lie. Lanchester’s apparently Wonk article rises to a moving defense of the pursuit of objective data, as imperfect, as an expression of enlightenment values.

Lewis Serre-Livre who is the government? With two generally captivating stories that illustrate the limits of free market solutions. Christopher Mark, a former coal minor who revolutionized mine security at the Ministry of Labor, discovered that mine operators have refused to implement simple rescue measures in order to reduce costs. It took regulation, often demonized as “paperwork”, to force your hand. Heather Stone, epidemiologist of Food and Drug Administration, survey of fatal diseases so rare that the pharmaceutical industry sees no profit in the development of treatments. In other words, the private sector will allow people to die.

It pays better, however. The voluntary redundancy of Doge offers perversely, encourage civil servants most accomplished to triple their wages when leaving and the least impressive to stay. For everyone in this book, the public service is a higher call. It is also intended to transcend partisan policy. “There is no republican or democratic means of burying a veteran,” said Ron Waters.

The agenda of the mercenary, hyperpoliticality of Doge is contrary to these civic values. “Move quickly and break things” could work in a startup, but it is a catastrophic approach to complex public institutions that have accumulated for decades. Musk considers federal employees as time long -time time burning the dollars of taxpayers or subversive enemies inside. Unfortunately, the admirable the humility of civil servants allows such caricatures to proliferate. “Dactylography has always been lazy and stupid, but more and more is fatal,” writes Lewis. This multifaceted ode worked on the public service therefore feels both urgent and moving.