Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
I'm trying not to harsh on this piece by Ethan Marcotte, which has the now-common "make a list beforehand of things you won't do" advice. Well and good, the problem is that people don't do this early enough.
If you join a hierarchical organization -- especially, say, the administrative apparatus of an empire -- you certainly have to make that list. Because you will be doing the bad things eventually.
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
People making an ethical or moral stand about their work is fine, it's a good thing. But they have the ability to see further into the future than a few months. People have to start taking this more seriously and letting themselves see a wider picture of what's going on than a small rectangle.
/fin
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
Maybe being the I.T. guy for this system is not a great thing even when you are personally savvy enough to avoid being part of a future "IBM and the Holocaust" book.
That's sort of the first half of it. The second half is: what does a hierarchical system *do*? Why build it in the first place?
The point of it is to empower hierarchical control. For instance, the military is not supposed to declare war (or peace) on its own.
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
Agencies are supposed to carry out legislation, as modified by executive policy and court orders. They certainly can be guided by their own expertise but they are not supposed to set the goals involved.
What happens when the legislators, executive, and courts are bad? Then they will instruct the administrative state to do bad things. *The whole point* of that state is to then do the bad things.
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
OK, but did all of those entities suddenly go bad under Trump? They did not. For instance, Biden instructed his administrative state to ignore policies that would have kept it from delivering weapons for genocide. The administrative state under Obama helped make the US the largest fossil fuel producer in the world, something which will cause deaths in the hundreds of millions.
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
The article says that Marcotte views what he was doing as "putting rectangles on screens". OK -- for what purpose? 18F is a part of GSA that acts as a sort of internal contractor to other parts of the government on tech issues. What are the other parts of the government doing? Is the rectangle a drone targeting rectangle that gets smaller as the pictured person on the screen gets closer?
But people at 18F have some ability to choose projects. No drone chasing -- as an individual.
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
In order to view this job as good, you have to view what the state generally does as good, at least enough so that your limited ability to choose projects puts you on the side of the angels (although one of your helpful co-workers is of course going to do them.) Is what the US state is doing generally good?
We have the largest carceral system in the world. We have an advanced military logistics system that we used to commit genocide.
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