Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)3 Jul 2025

Achieving results in the physical world, with Adam Jarvis of “Public Service”

Patrick McKenzie is joined by Adam Jarvis, author of the Public Service substack and a New Zealand civil engineer and public sector veteran. They discuss how political capital constraints, funding misalignment across government levels, and accumulated regulatory "scar tissue" make infrastructure projects extraordinarily difficult. The conversation reveals why replacing a water pipe now costs more in planning than the entire project did a decade ago, and how talent sorting has drained capacity from public institutions. Despite these challenges, Patrick and Adam find reasons for optimism about reforming government capacity.

Complex Systems now has video episodes as well. Watch this episode and subscribe at: https://www.youtube.com/@patio11podcast
–
Full transcript: www.complexsystemspodcast.com/achieving-results-in-the-physical-world-with-adam-jarvis-of-public-service/

–

Links:

Public Service Substack: https://alethios.substack.com/

–

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction to Complex Systems
(01:13) Understanding local government functions
(03:41) Challenges in public sector project delivery
(06:31) Funding complexities in public projects
(09:14) The burden of regulatory and legislative constraints
(17:04) Appreciating the infrastructure we take for granted
(23:02) Historical and modern infrastructure challenges
(30:04) Talent mobility and its impact on public sector
(33:35) Public sector hiring practices
(34:11) Agglomeration effects and brain drain
(36:04) Aging population and resource allocation
(36:59) Structural factors in public sector layoffs
(37:49) Hiring and firing in the public sector
(40:39) Labor mobility and job security
(46:34) AI and automation in public sector jobs
(52:56) Risk aversion and process overload
(01:01:30) Optimism for public sector reform

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(94)

Forty ways to pay for coffee in Japan

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his 2021 essay "Payments in Japan," tracing how Japanese consumers navigate a landscape with dozens of competing payment methods at once: credit cards, electronic mone...

25 Jun 35min

The factory behind your home loan

Patrick McKenzie reads from his 2022 Bits About Money essay on mortgages, making the case that a mortgage is best understood as a manufactured product, not a simple loan between a bank and a customer....

18 Jun 26min

How brokerage transfers actually work

Patrick McKenzie reads from his 2024 Bits About Money essay on ACATS, the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service that governs how Americans move investment accounts between brokerages, then updat...

4 Jun 43min

Wrong numbers and why they survive, with Aaron Brown

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Aaron Brown, author of Wrong Number, to examine why institutions that produce bad statistics face so few consequences for doing so. They trace the pattern from ...

14 Mai 55min

Defendant, Censor, Politico, Spy

The improbable but true story of how non-profits operating a private intelligence agency to combat terrorism decided to interfere with campaign infrastructure in a U.S. election.This piece includes or...

8 Mai 1h 5min

How the SPLC became financial infrastructure

Patrick McKenzie reads from his latest Bits About Money essay, walking through why bank fraud charges are a prosecutor's favorite tool, how the Bank Secrecy Act's surveillance regime is designed to fo...

1 Mai 51min

The honey badger of payments

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his classic Bits about Money essay on how checks shaped the entire American payments infrastructure, from the origins of ACH to why a standard US bank account is, tech...

23 Apr 29min

Cash received is not revenue earned

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his classic Bits about Money essay explaining why revenue recognition in software is more complicated than most engineers, founders, and financial reporters think. The...

16 Apr 33min