Ron Pragides’ Post

Transcript

Here's what built the government that we have today. What built the government we have today is in the 1930s, it was Roosevelt like dramatically transformed the government. It was like it was a fraction of what it what it was in the 1920s, a fraction of what it became like. That was the discontinuous step function. And if you recall what what what Roosevelt did, which was widely lauded at the time and sense is he put out the call for basically all of the smart young people in the country to put their hands up and volunteer. And if you were a smart aggressive, if you know, it was the white combinator of its time, right. The federal government was the Y combinator of 1930 Deal maybe yes, the New Deal, right. And so. Literally what they did is Rose Roosevelt basically delegated to Harry Hopkins. Like you got to build this new thing and do a build all these programs and agencies and do it quickly because the Great Depression and World War 2. And we don't have the people to do it today because the government is just tiny as compared to what it needs to be. And so you put out the call and the call is every smart 2530 year old who's good at anything. You, you, you bring him to Washington and you, you create an agency and you put him in charge and you have to go do it. And it's like, you know, Harry, you go electrify the Tennessee Valley, you know, and, and you know, and Mary, you go, you know, create the art grants program, right? And you know. You know, can you go, you know, build naval warships, right? And these were all people who would be the exact same kinds of people that we have who come and into why combinator and come into our firm and pitch and start companies. They're smart, young athletes. You know, they haven't spent 30 years studying government. They haven't been, you know, government bureaucrats for, you know, forever. They, you know, they don't come from a long history of government service, but they're very smart. They're very well educated. They're very good systems thinkers, right? What you really want is somebody who can wrap their head around a complex system. You know, they're really good at understanding incentives. They're really good at understanding how to build things. They're really understanding how to demand high levels of performance. One of the things that one of the reasons why FDR such a legend is because he turned the, the FDR era federal government was actually high performance, right? Like it actually worked right. Like it, it, it did. It did electrify the Tennessee Valley. Well, let's just take that one as an example. FDR did electrify the Tennessee Valley. The Biden administration did not build electric charging stations. Right. So, right, it's like, OK, and then and then it goes back to your questions, like, OK, who do you assume is going to do a better job building electric charging stations? You know, the mayor of South Bend, IN or the guy who built the electric car, right. So it's anyway. So anyway, look, it's definitely a change from how DC has been operating. It's definitely a change from the kinds of people who have been recruited to run these things for the last 40 years. It's hard for me to believe they're going to do a worse job. It's quite straightforward for me to believe they're do a better job.