|
Lädt ... The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy (2019. Auflage)1,454 | 76 | 12,664 |
(3.96) | 32 | "The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. At Agriculture, the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it's not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do. Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems. But if there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes -- unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system: those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.… (mehr) |
▾Reihen und Werk-Beziehungen ▾Auszeichnungen und Ehrungen AuszeichnungenPrestigeträchtige Auswahlen
|
Gebräuchlichster Titel |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
Originaltitel |
|
Alternative Titel |
|
Ursprüngliches Erscheinungsdatum |
|
Figuren/Charaktere |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
Wichtige Schauplätze |
|
Wichtige Ereignisse |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
Zugehörige Filme |
|
Epigraph (Motto/Zitat) |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Real organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!
9:55 pm – 15 Nov 2016 _________________________ 25,572 retweets 112,055 likes | |
|
Widmung |
|
Erste Worte |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. Chris Christie noticed a piece in the New York Times -- that's how it all started. (Prologue) | |
|
Zitate |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. The relationship between the people and their government troubled her (Kathy Sullivan, head of NOAA). The government was the mission of an entire society: why was the society undermining it? "I'm routinely appalled by how profoundly ignorant even highly educated people are when it comes to the structure and function of our government," she said. "The sense of identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer. The idea that government should serve the citizens like a waiter or concierge, rather than in a 'collective good' sense." There is another way to think of John MacWilliams' fifth risk: the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long-term risks with short-term solutions. […] “Program Management” is the existential risk that you never really even imagine as a risk. (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 75 (Norton, 2018)) Thousands of people inside the Federal government had spent the better part of a year drawing a vivid picture of it for the benefit of the new administration. The United States government might be the most complicated on the face of the earth. Its two million federal employees take orders from four thousand political appointees. Dysfunction is baked into the structure of the thing: the subordinates know their bosses will be replaced every four to eight years. And that the direction of their enterprises might change overnight – with an election, or a war, or some other political event. (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 37 (Norton, 2018)) The 2020 national census will be a massive undertaking for which there is not a moment to lose, and yet there's no Trump appointee in place to run it. “The actual government has not really taken over,” said Max Stier. “It's kindergarten soccer. Everyone is on the ball. No one is at their positions. But I doubt Trump sees the reality. Everywhere he goes, everything is going to be hunky-dory and nice. No-one gives him the bad news.” (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 46 (Norton, 2018)) The third department [Rick] Perry wanted to get rid of, he later recalled, was the Department of Energy. In his confirmation hearings to run the department, Perry confessed that when he called for its elimination, he hadn't actually known what the Department of Energy did – and he now regretted saying that it didn't do anything worth doing. (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 47 (Norton, 2018)) With the nuclear scientist who understood the DOE better than anyone on earth [Rick] Perry has spent minutes, not hours. “He has no personal interest in understanding what we do and effecting change,” a DOE staffer told me in June 2017. “He's never been briefed on a program – not a single one, which to me is shocking.” (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 46 (Norton, 2018)) Since [Rick] Perry was confirmed, his role has been ceremonial and bizarre. He pops up in distant lands and tweets in praise of this or that DOE program while his masters in the White House create this budgets to eliminate those very programs. His sporadic communications have in them something of the shell-shocked grandmother trying to preside over a pleasant family Thanksgiving dinner while pretending that her blind-drunk husband isn't standing naked on the dining-room table waving the carving knife over his head. (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 46 (Norton, 2018)) Meanwhile, inside the DOE building, people claiming to be from the Trump administration appeared willy-nilly, unannounced, and unintroduced to the career people […] “Yes, you can notice the difference,” says one young career civil servant, in response to the obvious question. “There's a lack of professionalism. They're not very polite. Maybe they've never worked in a office or government setting. It's not hostility so much as a real sense of concern with sharing information with the career employees. Because of the lack of communication, nothing is being done. All policy questions remain unanswered.” (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 46-47 (Norton, 2018)) By early summer, I had spoken with twenty or so of the people who ran the department [DOE], along with a handful of career people. All of them understood their agency as a powerful tool for dealing with the most alarming risks facing humanity. All thought the tool was being badly handled and at risk of being busted. They'd grown used to the outside world not particularly knowing or caring what they did – unless they screwed up. (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 62 (Norton, 2018)) What we know about them we know mainly from whistle-blowers who worked inside the [Hanford] nuclear facility – and who have been ostracized by their community for threatening the industry in a one-industry town. (“Resistance to understanding a risk grows with proximity,” writes Kate Brown.) (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 74 (Norton, 2018)) There is another way to think of John MacWilliams' fifth risk: the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long-term risks with short-term solutions. […] “Program Management” is the existential risk that you never really even imagine as a risk. (Chapter I: “Tail Risk,” p. 75 (Norton, 2018)) A small portion of its massive annual budget ($164 billion in 2016) was actually spent on farmers, but it financed and managed all these programs in rural America – including the free school lunch for kids living near the poverty line. “I'm sitting there looking at this,” said Ali. “The USDA had subsidized the apartment my family lived in. The hospital we used. The fire department. The town's water. The electricity. It had paid for the food I had eaten.” (Chapter II: “People Risk,” p. 88 (Norton, 2018)) | |
|
Letzte Worte |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
Hinweis zur Identitätsklärung |
|
Verlagslektoren |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
Werbezitate von |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
Originalsprache |
|
Anerkannter DDC/MDS |
|
Anerkannter LCC |
|
▾Literaturhinweise Literaturhinweise zu diesem Werk aus externen Quellen. Wikipedia auf EnglischKeine ▾Buchbeschreibungen "The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. At Agriculture, the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it's not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do. Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems. But if there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes -- unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system: those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night. ▾Bibliotheksbeschreibungen Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. ▾Beschreibung von LibraryThing-Mitgliedern
Zusammenfassung in Haiku-Form |
|
|
Aktuelle DiskussionenKeineGoogle Books — Lädt ...
|