Washington saw something like the rules, Power advertisingState tortorching, protocol abortation of delighted chaos and happy chaos that is Elon Muschus.
Margaret O'Mara has.
The historian of the University of Washington recorded the spectacular rise and the all-swolling influence of the tech industry and its titans in their excellent, highly readable work from 2019 “The Code: Silicon Valley and The Remaking of America”.
Musk, who became rich through his starting work up to the age of 30, is a relatively small character in the book for reasons of narrative and focus. Instead, O'Mara centered her story on the founders and background stories of the large platform companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.
But there is an attitude, a worldview and a basic series of principles that lead the technology industry and its descendants like a secular catechism. O'Mara sees these beliefs in Musk's Ministry of Government, to destroy the federal government in a single, unrestricted blow for the government efficiency or dog and its breaking efforts.
Several elements are available and are taken into account.
The “techno optimism”, as O'Mara described it, with its unshakable belief that the technology is naturally good and will improve things – “even if there is collateral damage on the way.” The drive to move quickly and quickly if it can be ruthlessly scaled. The importance of personal relationships such as the transaction bromse between President Trump and Musk, which spent more than a quarter of billion dollars to bring his allies back to the oval office.
The two are masters of the “modern attention economy”-the people can get people to put up and draw attention to-“and have a kind of shamelessness,” said O'Mara: “This is your advantage, business and politically at the moment.”
O'Mara worked in the government and politics before taught and carried out her catalogizing history of American history. (More books are one that looks at four presidential races that have shaped the 20th century.)
O'Mara grew up in Little Rock and went from college to volunteer work for the presidential campaign of Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. After winning, she took a position in the White House and worked from the west wing of economic and social politics.
Although O'Mara worked for a while in the rod by Vice President Al Gore, an early technology adapter and one of the strongest political allies in Silicon Valley, she did not work on technology policy. “I was in the room next to the room in which this happened,” she joked from her home office to Mercer Island in the state of Washington when she was called. Your dog, an enthusiastic Labradoodle called Zuka, offered short comments outside the camera.
O'Mara's thesis at the University of Pennsylvania led her to Silicon Valley when her dissertation examined the domestic economic effects of the Cold War. “As soon as you look at this question,” she said, “brings you to a variety of things, including the electronics industry as well as microelectronics and transistors. So I came to the technician through politics. “
Seattle, Washington-At the University of Washington, Margaret O'Mara Scott is the chairman of the American History of Washington (together with and Dorothy Bullitt) (Margaret O'Mara)
(Margaret O'Mara from the University of Washington wrote a highly readable story of Silicon Valley and its ascent)
O'Mara's book explains how The federal government built Silicon ValleyA fact that many of their entrepreneurs and legends-like in the reflection of their self-pampering sun decisions, ignore or not understand. “This is actually part of the secret,” said O'Mara. “The indirect nature of expenses, the fact that it flows in a way through universities and private companies that are secret and hidden.”
Of course, there was a wealth of great minds, innovators and visionaries in the fertile Santa Clara Valley in California with a superhuman ability to fit into the future. However, all of these brain power would not have been for the charity of Uncle Sam. As a customer. A subsidiary of research. A manufacturer of human capital through generous educational financing. As an angel investor.
“We think of low taxes and deregulation as the lack of government,” said O'Mara. “But actually these are state decisions that – very intentionally – have been made cheap to this industry.”
Let us call it ignorance or arrogance, there is a deeply embedded term in Silicon Valley and many of its residents that the government is not market -oriented. They think that people who work in the government are not very smart. The clever people all work in business. “
This mentality significantly contributes to explaining the meat-or-at-time approach that has used Musk with Trump's encouragement for entire agencies and federal programs. There is undoubtedly waste, fraud and abuse, which could be carved thoughtfully and deliberately. After all, the government is a human endeavor.
But the wantonality of the destruction of Doge, the bloodshed, the undifferentiated discharge of federal employees and masses is not a mistake, as they say in software development. It is a function.
“Elon takes a kind of what he did on Twitter.” – An original step was to lose 80% of the workforce – “And try to port it to the federal government, ”said O'Mara. However, the federal government is not a small to medium-sized, unprofitable social media company. And the jury is still adopted whether this was actually an effective way to manage Twitter. “
There is a trope that is preferred by the politically easy favorite that the government should work more like a company. But that's a cheap hustle and bustle. Business and government have different constituencies and different functions. The government cannot select those that it serves or write off parts of the country on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. If this was the case to use just one example, you are feeling Rural postal delivery.
“Could you make things more efficient? Could you get people's tax refunds faster and all of these things out? “Asked O'Mara. “Yes, but often the more government requires no less. More human capital, more technology, more investments. “
The desire for high services to inexpensive – other ways, a free lunch – is A contradiction and a mystery The Americans have been long before the country was founded, long before there were competing democratic and republican parties.
And now Elon Musk should be the solution?
The sky helps all of us.