Did Odysseus Make the Right Choice?

The gist

1. Bureaucracy's real problem is unaccountable, incompetent people using red tape to protect themselves from being replaced by better operators.
2. The Pendleton Act of 1883 introduced merit-based civil service exams that correlated with job performance for about 100 years before being dropped in the 1970s.
3. America's wealth and reserve currency status remove the existential pressure that would otherwise force meaningful government reform.
4. Lonsdale argues that legacy-driven ambition is a useful incentive for getting hard things done, and dismissing it as vanity removes a key motivator.