Terry Zink has spent 57 years building a life in Montana’s backcountry. The 57-year-old third-generation houndsman from Marion—a remote town nestled deep within the Flathead National Forest—runs a small archery target business serving outdoor recreation workers and guides who, until recently, had steady employment managing America’s public lands.ContentsDOGE’s Destruction: 16,000 Jobs Eliminated in Public Land […]

Terry Zink has spent 57 years building a life in Montana’s backcountry. The 57-year-old third-generation houndsman from Marion—a remote town nestled deep within the Flathead National Forest—runs a small archery target business serving outdoor recreation workers and guides who, until recently, had steady employment managing America’s public lands. Contents

Those workers are disappearing. Their jobs are gone. And Zink, who voted for Trump in 2024, is watching his customer base—and his livelihood—vanish before his eyes.

“You won’t meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn’t vote for this,” Zink told Politico reporters as he surveyed the damage. “You cannot fire our firefighters. You cannot fire our trail crews. You have to have selective logging, water restoration, and healthy forests” (1).

  • hitmyspot@aussie.zoneEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    Have you thought about getting consultants in to get their institutional knowledge? They hote lots of recent grads who theoretically know what to do…they work them hard and then churn through more, overcharging for their time and underpaying them. Some progress to become senior consultants. Not many.

    • favoredponcho@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago

      It’s more than just “getting consultants.” Organizations need to have systems in place to manage their work. Consultants might know some things, but they are not systems. Systems usually are born out of experience and become more mature over time. They are complex and interlinked and adapt to nuances in the understanding of their work.

      The prevailing metaphor for organizational capacity is that they are comprised of interchangeable parts that can be rebuilt or replaced any time. However, the actual reality is they are more like plants that grow. Privatizing the public sector is akin to planting a tree with the aim of having it give you shade, except every 5-10 years you cut it down and replant a new one. In the end, you never really get what you’re supposed to, but a bunch of people are making money off it.

      • hitmyspot@aussie.zoneEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        Yes. I was making a joke. Consultants often are inexperienced and just make cuts, not improvements. Most of the work is done by cheap grads, who compete for few roles in the hope they make it. Most don’t. The customers get overcharged for poor advice.

        Usually, they are just a way for management to have someone to point to for the decisions they make that negatively impact people or the business.