The Fifth Risk

This is a awesome read. In many countries, many people have long stopped wondering or caring about how their country actually functions, and this book takes us through a bunch of really useful government functions, from providing food and shelter to the needy to… just about everything you can imagine.

Than along comes a man (Trump) and his political appointee who could care less about reality and are busy throwing spanners in the very system that runs America - the many agencies which DO ALL THE THINGS.

In a broader sense, this book is about more than just Trump and his bunch of inept political appointees running places they have no business running, but rather society as a whole and its relation to the the government.

This quote stuck with me:

The relationship between the people and their government troubled her. The government was the mission of an entire society: why was the society undermining it? “I’m routinely appalled by how profoundly ignorant even highly educated people are when it comes to the structure and function of our government,” she said. “The sense of identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer. The idea that government should serve the citizens like a waiter or concierge, rather than in a ‘collective good’ sense.”

This book is specifically about America, but this malaise of ignoring reality can be seem across much of the world…