Would you prefer that the head of the FAA have no clue about the airline industry or airplanes in general? Where do you think that these people are to be found, if not those who used to work for that very industry?
We need people ready to serve the country. Not play cozy with friends.
Nominated to work in the govt ? Elected public official ? Great! Every penny beyond your average high income (best 5-10 income avg?) is taxed at 99% for life.
Working in the government should not be a way to enrich yourself and friends... or make a "career".
Its called public service for a reason. Its not private enterprise. Its not arbitrage. Its not patronage. Not to enrich yourself and your buddies.
Government employees already face a pretty substantial pay cut compared to the private sector. For people on an engineering track, you're looking at double-digit percentage paycuts, but for the upper echelons of management track, where the comparatives are being C-suite at a medium-sized company, it's starting to look like a 90% paycut. This means you have issues recruiting people to fill these roles.
Adding on a permanent pecuniary pay element for life is most likely to result in people finding various wheezes to get around that pay cap (I suspect in the form of undeclared gifts, not unlike the recent revelations of a certain Supreme Court justice). And it would tend to increase corruption, since now the incomes of these people are more heavily reliant on under-the-table payments from patrons who now need to be kept happy.
Under the table is good. The IRS will have something to say about it.
The engineer example doesn't follow. Its also not a pay cut.
Take for example 300k comp for your avg. eng 300k avg last 5 years avg comp. Goes to Gov. High cap is set at 300k. Gets a salary of 120k while with govt. He can leave govt, and go back to earn 300k. No problem.
He can even earn the gap between 120 and 300 also during his govt job. So he can maintain his QoL
This is really not a problem at all.
It doesnt punish success before govt.
It punishes sucess after govt. (Speaker fees anyone?)
The problem currently is that govt attracts people that want to make a career (and profit) out of it. I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in govt.
> I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in govt.
You want highly competent people in government. If generally they can make significantly (e.g. even 10x or more, I'm talking about upper management/CEP level position of course) in the private sector more often than not they will do that. The public sector will be left with the leftovers.
The revolving door is a problem, but your proposed solution is…let’s be charitable and say it’s something that would be proposed by an academic, rather than a realist.
They already have a hard enough time finding highly qualified, competent, motivated people to staff government agencies without adding super life-limiting conditions. We really don't need to make that problem worse. Government jobs don't pay well enough to get great employees.
Great way to further disincentivize the most talented people from choosing a career in government.
I'd any day pick somebody whose highly qualified, experienced and generally 'intelligent' but somewhat corrupt over someone who "chose" to serve the country because he couldn't get a job in the private sector or is strongly motivated by his ideological beliefs but has no clue what he's doing.
>Would you prefer that the head of the
FAA have no clue about the airline
industry or airplanes in general?
Not being an industry expert shouldn't necessarily be a disqualifier. For example we don't insist that the secretary of health should be a doctor, or that the defence ministry should be run by generals. The main qualities needed is being a good manager and able to listen to alternative views and being a good politician (yes, it's important to have good politicians). If anything being an outsider actually helps the organisation more because it avoids conflicts of interest like op and it keeps the head humble.
> or that the defence ministry should be run by generals.
This is a weird exception to the rule. It's a case where there is a strong argument to be made for sacrificing competence in exchange for minimizing the risk of a coup by bringing in an outsider without close relationships with the people below him.
There is no other department where we have to worry in quite the same way that they might just choose to start ignoring the rule of law, courts, and congress, and that if they do there is nothing that could really be done about it.
You don't have to look very far to find examples of militaries seizing power. Meanwhile I'm reasonably confident in saying that no aircraft regulation agency has ever seized power in the history of the planet.
It boils down to trust. A head needs to win the trust of his political overlords as well as, in more limited circumstances the general public. That's why he needs to be good at politics. It's no point appointing a supremely qualified individual if he's poor at communications and relationships.
> For example we don't insist that the secretary of health should be a doctor.
I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health to be a doctor who understands public health and its related policies, not a politician whose primarily skill is being popular and getting elected.
>The main qualities needed is being a good manager and able to listen to alternative views and being a good politician.
A Health Secretary who's not a doctor would find it difficult to judge if they're being fed the right information by their advisers.
Remember that Boeing's woes began when the company ceased to be run by the engineers and aviation experts, but instead by the arrogant MBA counters who likely pitched themselves as good managers. It turns out they mostly cared about management and printing cash, but lacked engineering expertise, leading to screwups like the 737 Max.
> I’ll definitely want my country’s Secretary of Health to be a doctor who understands public health
If by “doctor” you mean, as people usually do in general conversation, an MD (or DO), why? Public health is an entirely different discipline from medicine, with its own series of professional degrees. As is public administration. As is public policy. Why would a top-level public administrator and public policy professional in the field of public health need to have a professional degree in medicine more than one in public health, public administration, or public policy?
OTOH, your Surgeon-General or equivalent should definitely be a medical doctor.
>A Health Secretary who's not a doctor
would find it difficult to judge if they're
being fed the right information by
their advisers.
That's the point of being a good manager. Being able to forge personal relationships and to trust your underlings. Having experience in an industry isn't that helpful when dealing with policy that lies outside a heads direct field of expertise.
Being a doctor doesn't automatically provide a greater insight into what would make policies more successful. Yes he might have first hand knowledge of conditions on the ground, but the longer he's been out of doctoring the less up to date he will be and he will just be stuck with old notions
of what things were like years ago.
Your point about boeing is irrelevant, because the managment these had motives beyond engineering excellence, i.e making money.
> I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health to be a doctor who understands public health and its related policies, not a politician whose primarily skill is being popular and getting elected.
Why not? The head of the WHO is not a medical doctor, he's a doctor in the sense that he has a PhD.
There is probably no organization more trusted than the WHO.
