This is an interesting thread. I know nothing--absolutely nothing--about the Chinese e-commerce ecosystem, so I have no idea whether this accurately reflects the challenge, but it falls under a larger category of things questions that have been on my mind of late.
It's not enough to observe that American governance has been characterized, in this century, by the word "incompetence," though that's a start. We've now passed from "dismaying incompetence" to "suicidal incompetence," so we really need to be thinking about why.
And I don't think the ways we've been thinking about this are particularly useful. Tangential, but not irrelevant: Has any newspaper or magazine written a detailed, narrative account of the way the CDC screwed up the development & distribution of a test for Covid-19?
It seems to me journalists are letting our bureaucracies off the hook—is anyone asking (and finding out) just how these behemoth organisations screwed up so badly? I'd much rather understand that than read another opinion piece about the Clorox Speech.
It must be a great relief to the bureaucrats who screwed up—they must drop to their knees and *thank God* every time Trump goes live on prime time to recommend Americans swig a bottle of Clorox--because otherwise journalists might be asking: How did the CDC screw up this test?
Why *exactly* did they refuse to use the WHO’s test? How did they manage to screw up the development of their own? Why did the FDA hamper every effort to do anything useful?
It would be much more *helpful* to me to read that--
It would be much more *helpful* to me to read that--
--that is, if my objective is to understand how to fix problems like this-- than to read yet another article about how stupid it is that we elected as President a man who thinks we should inject Lysol. We get it. I got it from the first. He's a blistering idiot.
But that clearly wasn't the only problem here.
Shortcomings in the federal bureaucracy are Trump’s fault, in the strictest sense: He’s the chief executive of the federal government.
Shortcomings in the federal bureaucracy are Trump’s fault, in the strictest sense: He’s the chief executive of the federal government.
No doubt, the chaos around Trump and the ineptitude of his Cabinet contributed to a climate of bureaucratic chaos and ineptitude and to labradoodle-breeders running inter-agency Covid-19 task forces. But this explanation isn't sufficient.
Thousands of people work in those bureaucracies; they're not all political appointees. They should be able to run an operation like this with no direction from the Administration at all. How could they have been so inept?
If I had the Times’ or the Post’s investigative resources and budget, that’s the article I’d send out the reporters to research: an in depth, investigative piece explaining *exactly* how the CDC fucked up the development and shipment of the test.
I want to understand how the CDC works, which department was responsible for this, who *exactly* screwed it up, and how—with a detailed timeline of the screw-up.
The world’s greatest biomedical powerhouse was unable to execute a task that Germany managed in about three days.
The world’s greatest biomedical powerhouse was unable to execute a task that Germany managed in about three days.
We still haven't managed to solve the problem. Why, exactly? Whatever the real story is, I’m sure it would be instructive. I want to know exactly why our bureaucracies don't work.
I don't want to hear that all bureaucracies are incompetent, because it's flatly untrue--ours have not been historically, and other countries' aren't, now.
We don't need another front-page piece reminding us that that yes, really and truly, the American people elected a President who recommended they clean their lungs with Lysol. We know that already.
I want to know why our bureaucracies failed so spectacularly—and what else they’re spectacularly failing to do—and why every effort Congress makes to reform these bureaucracies results in the same thing: a new federal bureaucracy dedicated to coordinating the other bureaucracies.
And I want to understand the *systemic* reasons for this epidemic of incompetence. Not because I want to see anyone executed for it, but because I'd like to fix it. So that we can return to living in the developed world.
