Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats
Astral Codex Ten Podcast · Jeremiah Prophet
January 27, 202517m 21s
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Show Notes
I was surprised to see someone with such experience in the pharmaceutical industry say this, because it goes against how I understood the FDA to work.
My model goes:
- FDA procedures require certain bureaucratic tasks to be completed before approving drugs. Let's abstract this into "processing 1,000 forms".
- Suppose they have 100 bureaucrats, and each bureaucrat can process 10 forms per year.
- Seems like they can approve 1 drug per year.
- If you fire half the bureaucrats, now they can only approve one drug every 2 years.
- That's worse!
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/bureaucracy-isnt-measured-in-bureaucrats