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A Tale Of Two Philosophies [1]
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Date: 2025-05-31
There is no doubt that this present period of time will be thoroughly dissected by historians and political scientists for decades to come. Of course, the primary focus will be trying to understanding how a Professor Harold Hill type politician bamboozled so many and the wide ranging ramifications thereof. I believe that there will also be a deep dive in comparing two distinct models of management.
On the one hand, you have the techno-bros move-fast-and-break-things ethos. Of course, Move fast and break things was the internal motto of Facebook. Trump has adopted this same ethos. As described by Politico:
Trump and his top lieutenants see the speed with which he is moving to enact not just trade policy but his entire agenda as a feature, not a bug. Trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has been with Trump since his first term, often refers to the pace as “Trump time,” and other senior White House staff members frequently chalk up any inconsistency or volatility in the president’s policymaking approach to his dealmaking acumen. “We have to act fast,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon. “We have to be fast and nimble.”
Trump's Tariff Strategy. The benefit of this is when you free yourself up to “break things,” you take on greater risk in the hopes of yielding a more substantial reward. See Master Class on Move Fast and Break Things. However, the three negatives of this philosophy are: (1) decreased stability, (2) greater risk of errors and (3) less direction. Master Class on Move Fast and Break Things. All of these cons are exacerbated by Trump’s character. For instance, though you have a greater risk of errors, Mark Zuckerberg explained that “you are better off trying something and having it not work and learning from that than not doing anything at all.” [Emphasis added.] Trump, however, does not learn from mistakes — rather he cannot admit any errors. As Trump once said, “I'll tell you, that's the toughest question I can have because I don't really believe I've made mistakes." Moreover, it is clear that Trump has no direction — something that is magnified by moving too fast.
On the other end of the spectrum from “move fast and break things” is Chesterton's Fence. In G.K Chesterton’s 1929 book, The Thing, in the chapter entitled, “The Drift from Domesticity”, he wrote:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
Taking a Fence Down. John F. Kennedy summarized this as “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.” Obviously Trump does not have the intellectual curiosity to determine why a fence or a law was enacted. Moreover, he will tear down a fence simply because it was built by his predecessor.
Now, you can also compare the DOGE’s move-fast-and-break-things approach to reforming government to the approach taken during the Clinton era with the National Partnership for Reinventing Government — “Partnership” being a key word. The "reinventing government" program cut nearly half a million federal jobs and dispensed with a massive number of regulations. This team of about 400 civil servants who worked across a number of teams conducted reviews of Cabinet-level agencies with a partner team within the agency and returned recommendations for review. Six months later , the project had yielded hundreds of recommendations bound in a report titled "Creating a Government that Works Better & Costs Less." As described by Elaine Kamarck, who spearheaded the program:
"We cut fat and they [DOGE] cut muscle. It's as simple as that," Elaine Kamarck, now a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, told CBS News. "We didn't have any meltdowns of agencies, we didn't have any dysfunction going on, and we obeyed the law. When we thought something was wrong, we sent it to Congress and asked them to change it."
Reinventing Government DOGE Comparison. To put it another way, Clinton’s Reinventing Government task force took the time to understand why a fence was built while DOGE never cared.
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