[ExI] Merging of agencies [ was Should the US Have a Military Presence in Space?]

[Dave Sill]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2018 at 11:54 PM SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> wrote:

> The US really does have a proliferation of agencies which compete. For
> example: CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. I think it would be cheaper to combine them
> somehow, so they could pool resources and intelligence. It doesn’t seem to
> me that this type of redundancy is useful.
>

Yeah, I get the distinction between domestic and international
surveillance, but there are too many spy agencies.

As far as agencies being merged... well, Trump is floating a merger of
> Department of Education and Department of Labor, into, I’m not sure, maybe
> a Department of Education, Training, & Employment. Not sure if I agree with
> the move because his motives seem suspect, but we’ll see how it plays out.
>

Education and Labor are different enough that I don't think combining them
makes sense.

But another thing to consider is maybe we actually need more agencies/
> departments. Which sounds insane, I know, but hear me out. Look at all the
> agencies and departments involved with the US Immigration system. They are
> absolutely inefficient and make the whole system insufferably complicated,
> because “one hand doesn’t know that the other hand is doing”. And that
> makes accountability hard, because they can all just point fingers at each
> other.
>

That implies that we need fewer agencies, not more.

The entire US government is way too bloated and redundant in all the wrong
> ways. It’s definitely “too big” in the sense that it could do more with
> less. Maybe we need to go through with the pain and expense of reorganizing
> and streamlining the whole thing.
>

It's also "too big" in the sense of trying to do too much and spending more
than we have. But with our current political system I don't see any way for
that trend to reverse.

-Dave
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