Eating Our Own Dog Food

I’ve been pondering a recent article positing that a major problem with government is that politicians are so far removed from the people they govern, that it is nearly impossible for them to make smart decisions. This was more-or-less the stance taken by Clive Thompson in his Wired article – see it here  - entitled “If Politicians Had to Debug Laws Like Software, They’d Fix the Bugs.” Thompson makes the case (for those of us who haven’t been paying attention) that the people who make policy aren’t very motivated to respond in ways that would be helpful to the average American, because they are NOT average Americans. Citing many of the benefits of a position in national politics, he notes that in general, our elected officials have more health benefits (including doctors on the work site), higher incomes (wages of $174,000 per year for the job, compared with the national average of teachers for example, which is around $59,000), better retirement plans (probably double the private sector benefits), etc. than the ones who elected them. So, where does the dog food concept come in?

Thompson cites the historical derivation of the term “eating your own dogfood” as arising in the ‘80s among code developers at Microsoft, who forced themselves to use their own “still in development” software as a way to not only understand the end user experience, but also as an incentive to fix things that weren’t working as quickly and efficiently as possible. He reports that funding for TSA activities was cut as part of the sequester, until elected officials had to head home for the holidays. When they encountered the delays and long lines the average traveler endures, the funding was restored so quickly that “part of the bill was handwritten…”!

I imagine that many of us believe that if the average Congressperson had to live for a few weeks on welfare payments or food stamps, or get medical care in a publicly funded, understaffed clinic (don’t get me wrong, many of these are VERY good at what they do), or send their kids to schools that lack sufficient personnel, supplies, and hot meals, things might change, and perhaps in a hurry. The same could be said for a lot of top-level business executives – Undercover Boss puts CEOs on the assembly line, grilling burgers or dumping trashcans, but how many bosses ever really do that? I remember reading once that it was considered inappropriate in some eastern cultures, for the CEO of a company to make more than seven times the salary of their lowest-paid worker.  That interesting convention has probably gone by the wayside, however.

Not naive, I sincerely doubt that many politicians will ever try to live the socio-economic life of the common person, nor will too many CEOs be seen hosing down the equipment at the end of the day (unless the cameras are rolling). But we can all ask ourselves how we might stay in touch a little better, practice a little more compassion, and work to keep our thinking more realistic in our own daily lives, in the hopes that small improvements will lead to big changes.

There are a lot of other terms we employ that express similar sentiments – “A rising tide lifts all boats”, “Walk a mile in my shoes”, and so forth. I like “Make them eat their own dog food”!

See another take on this idea in the Big Think Article “The Arrogance of a Well Fed Society”