IT is a bit off-putting for Michael Lewis, perhaps America's most consistently successful non-fiction author, opening his new book boasting that the previous ones sold 500,000 copies. The book in question was The Fifth Risk in 2018, where Lewis responded smartly to Donald Trump's first administration with a profile of a few unknown federal employees to highlight what Trump had corned and highlight the costs of breaking it. His point in introducing who is the government? That means you can lift the lid in any department and find a treasure trove of similar stories. It's about doing work that you've never heard of, people you've never understood.
Last year, Lewis put together a long-form writer's crack team to reveal more of these stories for the Washington Post, and these articles are collected here. The timing is horribly perfect, so God smiles at him again. One of many people who don't understand how the US government works is allowed to pull it down to the stud in the name of “efficiency.” Elon Musk's Doge has only run for a few weeks, but Americans will suffer the consequences of his ignorant vandalism for years to come, including health, national security, disaster preparedness. It's no surprise to find out that some of the people interviewed here have already been fired or that their work has been paid back. Anyway, the mask demolition derby makes this kind of journalism feel more like a citizen's duty than ever before.
Contrary to the conservative stereotypes of Balloon's bureaucracy, the size of the federal workforce has not changed significantly since the 1960s. There are currently around 2.4 million people, of which more than 70% work in agencies related to defense and national security. While some of them are mediocre or incompetent, and there is no doubt that some systems need reforms so badly, the book correctly focuses on quiet heroes who represent the best public services.
One reason we don't know who these people are is that if you know who they are, they don't care. “The best thing in the world is when no one remembers who was whose idea,” says Ronald E. Waters, a humble powerhouse with a record-breaking rating by the National Cemetery Bureau on its customer satisfaction index. Casey CEP, a New Yorker, wrote: Dave Eggers visits NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and finds that he “puts a relentless focus on teams, groups and predecessors” rather than individual glory.
Each chapter has its own unique flavor. The story of novelist Geraldine Brooks' IRS cybercrime experts teaches jiu-jitsu when they're not blocking drug dealers. Terrorists and pedophiles could be the pitch in the film.
John Lanchester fine-tunes his allocations by profiling numbers, consumer price indexes, rather than people. He cleverly explains how it works and how it lacks. Food prices account for just 8% of CPI, but they are the main cause of sticker shocks, so inflation could technically decrease, but as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can tell you, consumers don't feel that. But it doesn't create a CPI, as the right-wing agitators argue, as they lie. Lanchester's seemingly unjust article as an expression of enlightenment values rises towards the upset defense of objective data pursuits.
Who is the government at Lewis Bookend? There are two usual fascinating stories that illustrate the limitations of free market solutions. Christopher Mark, a former coal miner who revolutionized the safety of the mines at the Department of Labor, discovered that the mine operator refused to implement simple life-saving measures to reduce costs. To force that hand, it was necessary to have regulations demonized as “red tape.” Food and Drug Administration epidemiologist Heather Stone is investigating fatal diseases that are rare and rare enough that the pharmaceutical industry has not benefited from developing treatments. Frankly, the private sector can kill people.
But it pays better. Doge's voluntary redundancy comprehensively encourages the most skilled civil servants to triple their salary by leaving and staying. For everyone in this book, public services are a higher call. It is also intended to transcend partisan politics. “There's no Republican or democratic way to fill veterans,” says Ron Waters.
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Doge's mercenary, hyperpoliticized agenda, is at odds with these civic values. “Move fast and break things” may work with startups, but it is a devastating approach to complex public institutions that have been built up over decades. Musk sees federal employees as hacking or internal destructive enemies of hour sales that burn taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, the fine humility of civil servants allows such caricatures to multiply. “Typecasting has always been lazy and stupid, but more and more fatal,” writes Lewis. Therefore, this eye-opening, multifaceted ode feels urgent and moving.
