I think one thinking error that people like the author make is that they assume these problems are inherent to and limited to government rather than being inherent to any organization of a certain size and complexity. (Big Tech is an interesting exception because those companies can demand a certain level of tech savvy culturally).
I've worked in large academic institutions and currently work in a giant private corporate behemoth and see a lot of the same issues. I think what it comes down to is a couple of things:
* For a lot of people, status means not having to learn or update/change anything about yourself or your way of working. We (where I work) franchise, and I see so many business owners who can't be bothered to learn email, how to log in to a computer system, etc. They shouldn't have to, they think. They're too important! In academia, this is professors in their 70s who don't want to change their teaching style or administrators who think it's the 1980s. In government, I'd expect this to be the bureaucrats who've been in their positions for 20-30+ years. Because these people have status (be that capital or tenure), the culture of the organizations leans towards pleasing them, and people who ask them to learn are stonewalled or exited.
* Related to this, people care most about what's in front of them. The veterans dying/students who have issues/clients who aren't served well are more abstract than John who doesn't want to learn and will make your life hell if you try to make him.
* In terms of resistance from the less entrenched, I think it's worth noting that for the most part, changes in the modern American workforce (especially rapid ones) very, very rarely favor the worker. Sudden changes usually mean more work for less pay, layoffs, etc. For example, my own company just switched the bonus system in what is clearly an attempt to pay people less in bonuses. The only counter-example I can think of recently is the rise of WFH, but that's already being rolled back. Changes = good for management/owners, bad for workers. This means people are going to be resistant to all change because they've learned it means bad things for them. In small enough organizations, this can be somewhat mitigated by the leaders having a personal relationship with their worker bees, but in big orgs that doesn't happen.
I also think there's a fundamental tension between the type of person you need to be in order to implement and understand systematic changes and the type of person that makes a good factory/retail/service worker. There's a lot of people at the top of society who want obedient, uncurious workers and then are shocked when there are negatives to a population filled with those kind of people. We (as a society) have completely failed in educating our population for the digital age because a lot of people make money off the general populace's ignorance, but that does mean that the general populace can't administer in a digital society.
Isn't one of the key distinctions here that government does not have to be concerned about failing? Businesses can end or change something to survive. Government bureaucracy can keep protecting itself without having to face harsh realities.
There are plenty of businesses that aren't concerned with failing, particularly post 2008 and post COVID, and this is more likely the larger they are. Furthermore, there is little correlation between the business failing and adverse impacts for the people running it, which is similar to the government.
If you're very high up in a giant organization and the business fails, you have the network to land somewhere else - the COO of a 10,000+ employee company is not going to end up penniless working at Walmart. In an organization of that size, responsibility is so diffuse you just blame it on other people/departments/etc. and parachute away.
If you're a worker bee in an organization of that size, whether the business succeeds or fails doesn't have much correlation with your job security or performance.
I'd agree in a vacuum that in a capitalist society that would be a major difference, but post 2008, business leaders are well aware that the appetite for letting large businesses fail is not there. We'd lose too many jobs/the economic hit would be too large, and we'd rather prop up bad businesses to keep people employed than help low-level employees after their leaders run their businesses into the ground.
I've worked in large academic institutions and currently work in a giant private corporate behemoth and see a lot of the same issues. I think what it comes down to is a couple of things:
* For a lot of people, status means not having to learn or update/change anything about yourself or your way of working. We (where I work) franchise, and I see so many business owners who can't be bothered to learn email, how to log in to a computer system, etc. They shouldn't have to, they think. They're too important! In academia, this is professors in their 70s who don't want to change their teaching style or administrators who think it's the 1980s. In government, I'd expect this to be the bureaucrats who've been in their positions for 20-30+ years. Because these people have status (be that capital or tenure), the culture of the organizations leans towards pleasing them, and people who ask them to learn are stonewalled or exited.
* Related to this, people care most about what's in front of them. The veterans dying/students who have issues/clients who aren't served well are more abstract than John who doesn't want to learn and will make your life hell if you try to make him.
* In terms of resistance from the less entrenched, I think it's worth noting that for the most part, changes in the modern American workforce (especially rapid ones) very, very rarely favor the worker. Sudden changes usually mean more work for less pay, layoffs, etc. For example, my own company just switched the bonus system in what is clearly an attempt to pay people less in bonuses. The only counter-example I can think of recently is the rise of WFH, but that's already being rolled back. Changes = good for management/owners, bad for workers. This means people are going to be resistant to all change because they've learned it means bad things for them. In small enough organizations, this can be somewhat mitigated by the leaders having a personal relationship with their worker bees, but in big orgs that doesn't happen.
I also think there's a fundamental tension between the type of person you need to be in order to implement and understand systematic changes and the type of person that makes a good factory/retail/service worker. There's a lot of people at the top of society who want obedient, uncurious workers and then are shocked when there are negatives to a population filled with those kind of people. We (as a society) have completely failed in educating our population for the digital age because a lot of people make money off the general populace's ignorance, but that does mean that the general populace can't administer in a digital society.