A built in sun hat.

No department, government or commercial likes giving up resources, once it has them. This can cause them to become quite inefficient.

In commercial companies, this is corrected for by financial pressures (imperfectly). In government systems there is no obvious mechanism. Instead it's a lot more ad-hoc. This allows for things like "starving the beast" to break government functions. Conversely it allows for a lot of public money being funneled into private hands.

A better option is to have systems in place to control spending. Critically, those systems need to have people who understand what is being done. They simultaneously allow for reduction in spending when appropriate (or at least stop run away), but stop the chainsaw to the knees approach (e.g. DOGE under musk).

A good example would be something like the UKs NHS NICE (National institute for Clinical Excellence). They keep drug prices under control in the NHS. They are powerful enough to give pause to the drugs companies, they stop the government from going "chainsaw massacre" directly and they keep the NHS efficient in their area. They are also small enough to not bloat themselves as easily.

They act as a 2 way shield. They stop governments sticking their oar in too directly. They also keep the service efficient and updated.

Basically we need localised intelligence to filter what rolls down from higher government, while keeping those below accountable.

In this case, it seems like they over trimmed the science. Some stand down from full height is reasonable, but no mothballed facilities were kept to rapidly spool back up in an emergency.

Any government run system needs something to trim the bloat down. Otherwise there is nothing to stop it becoming dangerous. Capitalism relies on profit motives to do this. It works, to an extent.

The problem comes with how to trim. E.g. this programme. Once the barrier was established, it could be trimmed. The fact it worked for 25 years after is proof of this. This (in theory) would free up resources for more critical tasks. The catch is that it needed to hard protect the barrier itself. It also needed the capability to rapidly scale back up. It seems that that was trimmed too, leading to the current crisis.

A dam is a good analogy. It takes a lot of resources to build one. But far less to run and maintain it. You also need the option for emergency maintenance, but that can be shared with other dams or construction projects, when not needed.

The first trim got rid of the construction budget. DOGE got rid of the maintenance budget. Now the dam needs rebuilding, not just maintaining.

I'd guess the flip over point is maybe a bit higher. I can see definite gains up to 500,000-1,000,000 a year.

I suspect the cut off is around there however. Assuming the same base work level to get it.

I could personally live VERY happily on 100k a year, but not afford EVERYTHING I could reasonably want.

A lot of people do exactly that.

Money has a strong diminishing return to happiness. Once you have enough to do what you want, and keep up that lifestyle from investments, you've "won".

Most who goes past that point are self selected as problematic personalities. They've figured out that more money = more power = more happy. When they are not happy, they obviously need to work harder to get more money. This doesn't make them happy and the feedback loop continues.

I would actually be curious if the curve goes negative after a while. There's a point where more money gets isolating. That is well past the point where the happiness gain becomes negligible too.

I definitely think there are grounds to the cleanliness hypothesis. Basically the immune system expects a certain amount of activity. If it's underperforming, the body systems assume it's a problem with the immune system, not a lack of bugs, because we are too clean. It then racks up activity levels, causing problematic autoimmune or allergy reactions.

I think the immune system can't see the eye, so it's never trained to avoid it. If the eye is damaged, the immune system can become aware of it and start reacting. Once it starts, pulling it back is not easy.

The immune response system is simultaneously amazing and insane.

It basically deliberately scrambles part of the DNA in the immune cells that create antibodies. The rest of the body then sheds cells into the blood to move to the lymph nodes. Any immune cells that react then self destruct.

It's the equivalent of firing a paint blunderbuss at a wall, and creating a silhouette by standing in the way!

Np, and thank you! Apparently it's been 3 years since I jumped ship from Reddit.

Massively appreciated. I almost deleted my post before posting it.

Executive dysfunction is a bitch, but not actually too bad on its own. It's when you either can't control around it, or don't know you need/how too that it really fucks you over.

I definitely feel your pain on that one. My partner works in teaching had a similar issue (they also have ADHD). Their work were amazing. A quick comment to HR, and they got moved to a duel office, with someone of a similar mindset. They were proactive in trying to help more.

They've also (with their permission) started referring students with ADHD to them. Apparently just having someone in authority who just understands can make a huge difference.

We are clawing in some level of control. I just wish the process wasn't so slow, but it's improving. Hopefully you'll be able to figure out a solution, or jump to a company that actually recognises that accommodations help with productivity (and sanity), and so help the company too.

It unable Vs unwilling. Trump has shown he's perfectly capable of motivating himself to do stuff. He just doesn't bother.

Laziness is sitting on the sofa watching TV, ignoring other required tasks.

ADHD is sitting the on the sofa watching TV, internally stressing over the tasks that need doing, but you just don't get up.

Externally they look almost identical, but the internal cause is quite different. Trump is lazy

FYI, the difference is what fucks up people with ADHD who are told they are lazy. The motivation methods for laziness don't work well on ADHD. Pre diagnosis, I thought I was lazy, because I couldn't reach my potential. The internal stress I put myself under actually caused me heart issues. They went away when I went into complete burnout post university. It took over 6 months for me to become even particularly functional, and I never fully recovered mentally.

Sorry for the rant, the comparison hit a nerve. ☹️