It can even be in organzation A’s interest to temporarily give a problem 1 to organization B, knowing in advance that organization B will return problem 1 to organization A in a worse state, incurring blame to organization A. This is because refusing to do so could entail having partial responsibility thrust upon organization B for an even worse problem 2, one that is presently entirely owned by A.
Thanks for the insightful comment. However, I didn’t understand this part. Could you maybe explain or rephrase it?
The CDC doesn’t “own” economic problems. It “owns” disease outbreaks. But it can pressure the federal government to manipulate the economy to help the CDC manage its disease problems. That might mean making the economy worse.
The CDC won’t be blamed for resulting inflation, and the federal government won’t get credit for the economic manipulation’s effects on controlling disease outbreaks, because nobody gets credit—only blame. The federal government will get blame for the resulting inflation, though.
So why might the federal government comply? One explanation is that they think their economic manipulation will be net positive for the economy, by suppressing the disease.
If they don’t think that, though, they still might do it. This is because the CDC has managed to temporarily define the economic measures they want as solving a “health problem,” not an “economic problem.” They just happen not to have the legal levers to pull to manage this particular aspect of the “health problem.”
If the federal government won’t pull those levers, then they are seen as “interfering with a health problem,” and thus taking partial ownership and blame for it.
If there’s more blame attached to the disease than to the inflation that results from the economic manipulation, they might do it. They’d rather be blamed less for the inflation than be blamed more for the disease.
Still, mapping your explanation to the original quote, if I assume that A is the federal government and B is the CDC, then I think maybe the second sentence in the quote is mixed up, and it should look like this:
It can even be in organzation A’s interest to temporarily give a problem 1 to organization B, knowing in advance that organization B will return problem 1 to organization A in a worse state, incurring blame to organization A. This is because refusing to do so could entail having partial responsibility thrust upon organization [A] for an even worse problem 2, one that is presently entirely owned by [B].
Thanks for the insightful comment. However, I didn’t understand this part. Could you maybe explain or rephrase it?
The CDC doesn’t “own” economic problems. It “owns” disease outbreaks. But it can pressure the federal government to manipulate the economy to help the CDC manage its disease problems. That might mean making the economy worse.
The CDC won’t be blamed for resulting inflation, and the federal government won’t get credit for the economic manipulation’s effects on controlling disease outbreaks, because nobody gets credit—only blame. The federal government will get blame for the resulting inflation, though.
So why might the federal government comply? One explanation is that they think their economic manipulation will be net positive for the economy, by suppressing the disease.
If they don’t think that, though, they still might do it. This is because the CDC has managed to temporarily define the economic measures they want as solving a “health problem,” not an “economic problem.” They just happen not to have the legal levers to pull to manage this particular aspect of the “health problem.”
If the federal government won’t pull those levers, then they are seen as “interfering with a health problem,” and thus taking partial ownership and blame for it.
If there’s more blame attached to the disease than to the inflation that results from the economic manipulation, they might do it. They’d rather be blamed less for the inflation than be blamed more for the disease.
Thanks, that explains it!
Still, mapping your explanation to the original quote, if I assume that A is the federal government and B is the CDC, then I think maybe the second sentence in the quote is mixed up, and it should look like this:
Yes, I think you’re right that I mixed those two up. Will edit—thanks!