Quote · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
What Comes After the Iran War? — with Rep. Jim Himes
Where this was said
Private Sector vs. Public Service: Why Government Isn't a Bad Business
At 52:58 · chapter starts 52:10
Galloway asks Himes to compare nearly 18 years in Congress against his Goldman Sachs years. Himes responds by immediately confronting the cliché that government needs to be more like business. He doesn't reject the idea of efficiency — government inefficiency genuinely frustrates him — but he argues the frame is wrong at the root: every business exists to make money, a clear and singular objective. Government, by contrast, is the perpetual, inherently messy exercise of dividing power and resources among a massively fractured population of 350 million people with incompatible worldviews. There is no bottom line, and there shouldn't be. His personal prescription is more nuanced than a binary choice: the legislators he most respects have spent time in multiple sectors — military, law, private business — and it's that breadth of experience that produces genuinely valuable legislating.
In his twenties and thirties, Himes was afraid to admit ignorance because he thought it made him look dumb. Now approaching 60 and wielding real power, he sees listening and admitting uncertainty as the markers of genuine influence — not weakness. The MAGA conception of manhood denigrates exactly this quality.
