Some civil servants are just like my loved ones: Talking Heads and the Entrepreneurial State

Many of the risks that fell into the government’s lap felt so remote as to be unreal: …that some airborne virus wiped out millions – Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk

Talking Heads are uneasy listening. David Byrne is tense and nervous and can’t relax. On their fidgety debut Talking Heads: 77, the Heads are at their most cerebral. The funk and disco influences have yet to permeate their polyurethane, wipe-clean surface. The sound is precise, pedantic, signed in triplicate. Among other things, the lyrics inspect banality, evil, the banality of evil and the evil of banality. They are ambiguous, conflicted, unsettled.

Don’t Worry About The Government knows what it thinks about the government but cannot quite make up its mind (or its body) as to how it feels about the government. The whole song is a man talking himself into a comfortable state of mind. The hurdy-gurdy verses and their mandolin are deliberately awkward while in the chorus, he pulls himself together to sell himself on a vision of the planned good life and effective government. It could go either way.

Byrne was born in Scotland , his family moving to first Canada and then the suburbs of Maryland (not far from a certain Washington DC), arriving around the time that public trust in the US government was peaking (Oct 14 1964 – 77%). Now the figure sits at 17%.

Some of the causes and consequences of this trust deficit can be found in Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk. Like any book from Lewis, it is deeply researched, deftly written, and five minutes ahead of everyone else. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, Lewis talks to people in the federal government about the handover of power between administrations – or rather the lack of it. The Obama appointees wrote weighty authoritative tomes on how their departments worked, and the Trump appointees-, well, to begin with there weren’t any Trump appointees, as Donald had someone sack Chris Christie, his transition manager, shortly after the election. Then when eventually the appointees arrived, they binned the preparatory materials.

While the malfeasance of the Trumpists is appalling, it is also something of sideshow – a pinhead perhaps. Lewis’ book is a paean to the complexity and reach of modern government. Federal government departments protect and maintain huge swathes of American life and yet their beneficiaries are mostly unaware of their work. In some cases, departments are actively prevented from communicating what they do. They predict the weather. They manage dole out funds to the struggling. They protect the nation’s stockpiling of nuclear weapons.

Libertarians will be appalled by all this. Why shouldn’t the more efficient private sector get a shot at this? Why isn’t Walmart in charge of the 56 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste in Hanford WA produced as by-products of weapons development? Or Kodak? Hang on, maybe not Kodak.

As the book indicates, some of the most vociferous critics of government have been politicians – esp. from the conservative movement. Many of whom do not seem to understand what it does or why. No wonder that Americans have such a low opinion of government when half of those governing them seem to hate government itself. Self-loathing leading to self-mutilation. This lack of curiosity is encouraged by corporations who provide copious amounts of lobbying cash. Of course, private enterprise is better at everything.

A similar self-interested myopia can be found in Mariana Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State. Mazzucato is not as elegant a writer as Lewis, but her remorselessness is equally effective.  Mazzucato takes aim at a series of widely-held myths about the role of the state in innovation. Contrary to a million start-up gurus and Jobs fanboys, Mazzucato argues that the private enterprise isn’t that enterprising and venture capital does not venture very far from home. Basic research has been driven by governments in areas as diverse as semiconductors, biotech, and green energy. States have greater risk appetites and greater resources to sate those appetites than corporations and investors.

Mazzucato spends time taking apart the iPhone. Apple invented none of the key technologies that make up this device (e.g. touchscreens, microprocessors, GPS). Instead these were the result of significant government-directed investment and research. Apple did combine them in an effective and attractive package that made consumers swoon. It has been reluctant to pay the taxes that would fertilise the future research that could grow new Apples.

There are many things to fear from a strong state (e.g. surveillance and control) but we should remember that when we talk about “government” in a democratic society, we are talking about ourselves. Government is our collective effort to act. If we decide to mock and belittle it then we are just punching ourselves in the face. If we underfund basic scientific research and support services then we have only ourselves to blame if everything breaks.