
Obama on Silicon Valley - lebek
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/10/13/remarks-president-opening-remarks-and-panel-discussion-white-house
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lebek
Key quote:

"The final thing I’ll say is that government will never run the way Silicon
Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse
country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And
part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody
else wants to deal with.

So sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about
leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing
was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about
whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about
whether the app had some unintended consequences -- setting aside my Syria and
Yemen portfolio -- then I think those suggestions are terrific. (Laughter and
applause.) That's not, by the way, to say that there aren't huge efficiencies
and improvements that have to be made.

But the reason I say this is sometimes we get, I think, in the scientific
community, the tech community, the entrepreneurial community, the sense of we
just have to blow up the system, or create this parallel society and culture
because government is inherently wrecked. No, it's not inherently wrecked;
it's just government has to care for, for example, veterans who come home.
That's not on your balance sheet, that's on our collective balance sheet,
because we have a sacred duty to take care of those veterans. And that's hard
and it's messy, and we're building up legacy systems that we can't just blow
up."

