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Comment by stormdennis | Hacker News Reader

The reason why public sector jobs are so unproductive, imo, is because there are no real bosses. Everyone's an employee, all the way to the top. No one's remuneration is affected whether you do more or less, better or worse. The logical course for all concerned is to always take the path of least resistance. As long as the paperwork is in order there's nothing to worry about. And even if it's not, there are ways around that too. Best quote I ever heard from an government employee was an unopened letter often answers itself

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The public sector isn’t in general unproductive, except maybe in the US where one major party has been working hard to sabotage it for the last 40 years or so. What might surprise some people is that remuneration isn’t what foremost motivates , e.g., teachers or nurses.

Big companies are often as unproductive as the public sector, with whole departments often existing just to make some managers feel important.

That phenomenon is the reason old established big companies get disrupted. No one disrupts the public service, they are the permanent only business in their sector.

> No one disrupts the public service, they are the permanent only business in their sector.

That's not necessarily true. Governments frequently intervene in the running of public companies. Also, many public companies compete against privately run businesses.

I think you misread. The "public service" here is a reference to the government, not to public companies (which are still privately-run businesses despite being listed on public stock exchanges).

Large private enterprises, publicly-traded or otherwise, that fall prey to inefficiency get disrupted. Governments do not get disrupted short of foreign invasion or revolution, so the inefficiency remains entrenched.

Actually, by "public companies" I meant "publicly owned/run companies". I can see now that this was poorly worded.

> Governments do not get disrupted short of foreign invasion or revolution

And also elections. This is especially true in countries that don't have a two-party system.

Hm. I can't think of any significant examples here of a company owned or run by the government. I know that such things are more common elsewhere, but at least in my mind I tend to classify them as extensions of their respective governments rather than as anything like private corporations. I suppose the real question in this context is whether that government would let them be disrupted and replaced with a competitor they perhaps have less influence over.

> And also elections.

Sure, in theory. I suppose if an election actually changed things enough to be considered "disruptive" then you could consider that a form of revolution, but disruption of that sort generally has exactly the opposite effect: Everything becomes much less efficient as the new party struggles to take control, and then gradually returns to baseline as they realize that it's the masses of unelected bureaucrats that really run things on a day-to-day basis. Even if they were explicitly running on a platform of improving the efficiency of public services, it's not as if there is any actual competition in the provision of those services. People aren't choosing between two or more proven service providers; at best they have the current entrenched system with its known issues and a bunch of vague promises regarding a half-cooked proposal for a replacement which the candidate may never see implemented and which probably wouldn't work as advertised even if it were.

This, so much this. I have been working as a cunsultant at both large companies and the public sector. And they are often unproductive - and for the same reasons. Loads of middle management that needs to be included in every decision-making, but noone that dares to actually make a decision without first asking their managers.

In my eyes, the reason much of the public sector is unproductive is not because it is not motivated by profit. But rather that it is too similar to large companies with loads different management-levels.

I once worked in the public sector when they embraced real autonomous teams with leaders that could actually make decisions when the team needed it. It was just as efficient as the best agile teams I have worked at in the private sector.

The real insight here (which you allude to) is that (all else being equal) large organisations are inherently inefficient. If you take the classic libertarian view that government is inefficient and extend the logic to apply to all large organisations (and indeed individuals who control large amounts of wealth) then you end up at a very interesting political position that can provide a unified critique of both modern capitalism and soviet style communism by explaining the failings of both as being due to concentration of power (state power in the case of communism, economic power in the case of capitalism).

Neither is inherently inefficient. It’s just that both types of organisations can afford inefficiencies, while a small private company usually can’t afford it.

That doesn’t mean that small companies always are more efficiently run in all aspects. I expect my local McDonalds be much more efficient than the small sushi place around the corner, which can afford being inefficient due to low rent and probably close to minimum salary for the owner.

My brother works in HR at a fairly high level at HUD. He reminds me that most large government agencies have to expect that 1/2 of their employees have below average talent and motivation. So they design many of their processes to function under this assumption.

While HUD is certainly less productive (per capita) than a small team of highly talented people, turns out that in most large organizations half the people are below average talent/motivation. And designing for this instead of pretending that all of your staff is above average allows them to have higher productivity.

No need for the American exceptionalism here.

> The public sector isn’t in general unproductive, except maybe in the US where one major party has been working hard to sabotage it for the last 40 years or so.

Do you realize that (1) half of all government spending is at the state and local levels; and (2) many states and cities have been run by “the other party” (not the bad one) for decades? Cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore, etc., have been run by Democrats for longer than many posters on HN have been alive. If there was any truth to the notion that the US public sector is poorly managed because “one major party” “sabotages” it you should see a marked difference in the states run by the other party. But you don’t. Indeed, the major population trend in the US is people leaving Democrat-run states and moving to Republican-run states.

Last time I checked, more than the majority of what I pay in taxes go to the federal government, not state or local, where it is re-distributed to other parts of the country most of whom have elected representatives from "the other party" and whose disproportionate representation changed a national election.

You're overlooking sales, property, and business taxes that folks don't see directly (e.g. property taxes built into rent), which go to the state and local governments. But overall, about half of all government spending in the U.S. is at the state and local levels: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/reg_cit_glance-2018-41-e....

For many of the things people complain about (transit, housing, education, policing) 90% of funding and 99% of oversight authority happens at the state and local level. Republicans in national government have pretty much zero say over say affordable housing policy in California. Trying to pin California's failures in those areas on Republicans in Kansas is specious.

First of all, you're only talking about income taxes, which as you rightly pointed out are concentrated in the Federal government. Once you factor in property and sales taxes, the distribution is roughly 50-50.

Second of all, even if you only take into account income taxes, Federal income taxes aren't re-distributed to other parts of the country in the way that you think.

The biggest line items in the Federal budget is (in decreasing order) are:

- Social Security

- Medicare + Medicaid

- Defense

Social Security isn't really "distributed" to other parts of the country, it's mostly concentrated in regions where retirees happen to live. Ditto Medicare.

You could argue that Medicaid is "distributed", however it is funded by both States and the Federal government[1].

The comment to which you are replying is correct: most public sector services like education, electricity, water, sewage, libraries, law enforcement, fire departments, etc are all funded predominately at the state and local level.

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/federalstate-sh...

I don't think the case you're trying to make is as clear as you want it to be. Most cities have mayoralties dominated by Democrats; Democrats are the urban party. Pennsylvania has bounced back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans for decades; people are leaving San Francisco because it's too successful. Chicago and Illinois are, to their detriment, run by a Democratic machine, but I think that's the best example you have, and it's not like there aren't basket case Republican states for me to rebut with.

You can massage the data to tell any story you want.

To your point about city mayoralties, on average, Republican-led metros have lower inequality and higher cost-of-living-adjusted incomes than Democrat-led metros[1][2].

There isn't really a strong correlation between successful government and the predominant governing party. What you'll find is that things are not so simple that you can pin all of our problems on a single party in a neatly packaged way.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-are...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/upshot/red-blue-diverging...

I agree, at least with regards to local politics.

> To your point about city mayoralties, on average, Republican-led metros have lower inequality and higher cost-of-living-adjusted incomes than Democrat-led metros[1][2].

Isn't it just that they are smaller and less successful?

There doesn't appear to be a size/population correlation.

> less successful?

That depends on what your criteria for "success" is. San Francisco has among the highest per capita GDP of any city in the Union as well as a thriving technology economy, but also has the highest rate of homelessness, as well as the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line. What does "success" mean?

It seems a little weak, for instance, to call out the success of Provo, which is indeed Republican-led, but is part of the Democratic-led SLC combined statistical area. Yes: lots of suburbs and exurbs are Republican-led! They're also drafting off the larger economies of other urban areas.

I'm not sure that it's fair to say that Provo is drafting off of the Salt Lake economy. It's not just a bedroom community for Salt Lake; it's got its own universities (plural), hospitals, and tech scene. About the only thing it doesn't have is an airport.

It's as far from SLC as Elgin is from Chicago. Claremont has a bunch of different colleges; it's still part of LA metro. The point is that Provo wouldn't have the economic advantages it's taking advantage of without the economy of SLC in close proximity.

All true. And yet, Provo is far more independent than your examples, both geographically and socially/economically.

How big is Claremont? How big is the LA metro area? How big is Elgin compared to Chicago? Provo is maybe half as big as Salt Lake.

When you're in Claremont, and you want a night out, do you stay in Claremont? Do you in Elgin? In Provo, you're more likely to stay local than go up to Salt Lake. As I said, it's geographically more distinct, but there's also a more insular mindset. "Claremont" is a legal entity, and it's a collection of colleges, but it's not much of an entity in peoples' minds. It's just part of the LA metro area, sharing LA's smog. Provo, in contrast, has a separate identity from Salt Lake, and even has separate smog.

Provo is about as big as Elgin, which also has a separate identity from Chicago (as, of course, does Claremont).

Colorado Springs is probably the better example for the argument.

All right, let me put it this way. Provo isn't just a suburb of Salt Lake. Provo has its own suburbs (most of Utah County). Claremont doesn't. (I don't know about Elgin.)

Colorado Springs does. It has a much more independent existence. It's across the Palmer Divide from Denver. It probably depends on the Air Force at least as much as it depends on Denver. In the same way, Provo probably depends on BYU as much as it depends on Salt Lake. (Whereas Elgin and Claremont are much more tied in to Chicago and LA, respectively.)

How many residents of Elgin work in Elgin? I suspect the fraction is much higher in Provo (and Colorado Springs).

The data from the linked articles explicitly compares urban centers, not suburbs/exurbs.

And also, as another commenter pointed out, suburbs/exurbs can also be net producers themselves.

I took Provo from the lede of the article you provided.

Are people leaving San Francisco because the city government is too successful? That doesn't seem to be my understanding from reading and talking to people from that city.

It seems to me the biggest reason people are leaving San Francisco seems to be the rent is too damn high which is a pretty straightforward effect of the city's housing policies.

I think it's pretty clear that the Republicans party doesn't have a monopoly on poorly run government at the city and state level. (At the federal level there does seem to be a large gap in the ability to govern between parties.)

One small correction, which is that the housing crisis in SF is a function of the region's housing policies, not just the city's failures. Some of the governance problems here are just structural, that there's no one with authority to tell Palo Alto that they can't be a leafy suburb anymore and need to build high-rises.

Whenever people point out how poorly government services are run everywhere in America, someone replies (like OP) that it’s because Republicans “sabotage” the operation of government. My point isn’t that Republicans could run it better; my point is that you can’t blame dysfunctional government on Republican “sabotage” when so many state and local government services controlled by Democrats is also dysfunctional.

We’re seeing this happen with police. Police funding and administration is almost entirely a local matter. If Chicago PD is running CIA-style interrogation sites (or what’s happening in Baltimore or Atlanta or Minneapolis) you can’t blame Republicans. If schools aren’t good or transit is bad, or housing is expensive, you can’t blame Republican “sabotage.”

It’s a perverse argument. It’s saying to disregard Democrats’ obvious failures to run government services—it would all be better if you just gave Democrats more power. (That is not to say that Republicans would run things better. For the most part, they wouldn’t even claim to, and would point to that as justification for doing less. My recently-red/trending purple Maryland county has pretty good government services, but mostly because it doesn’t try to do much.)

That you are wrong about small pieces of this is what makes your comments interesting. :)

I take your broader point that it's unproductive to pin the productivity concerns of the public sector on Republicans; especially in state government, I probably agree with you in sort of assigning good governance and management to the GOP, and expanding public employment and benefit rolls to Democrats.

But, like, I think you'll have a hard time making the argument that run amok policing isn't at least somewhat attributable to Republican voters. It's not "sabotage", in the mostly-mythical Grover Norquist sense, but it's a public policy mistake they mostly own.

> But, like, I think you'll have a hard time making the argument that run amok policing isn't at least somewhat attributable to Republican voters. It's not "sabotage", in the mostly-mythical Grover Norquist sense, but it's a public policy mistake they mostly own.

I’m not sure I understand. Baltimore just revealed a new budget that contains zero cuts to the police budget.

Blarg. Half thought. I mean, Baltimore just revealed a budget that contains zero police cuts. All 15 council members are Democrats. How is this Republicans’ fault?

Under funding and subsequently under staffing federal organizations to "defang" them or to show them as being ineffective to support a position of reorganization and subsequent merger with another organization to alter who has oversight (as a power play) or to just remove them completely has been a long-time page in the political playbook. This is an sub element of the "starve the beast" approach and has been well documented [1]. To be clear, I'm not here to argue the efficacy of this approach but merely to point out it is real and is happening.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

When rayiner says unproductive I think he means inefficient. And understaffing and budget cuts shouldn't drive efficiency lower, if anything they should drive it higher. Similar to how corporations get more efficient after layoffs.

“Starve the beast” is a rhetorical boogeyman. Conservatives tried it, and we just decided to run a structural deficit instead. Nobody’s budget ever gets cut. CDC’s budget, for example, has tripled since 1992, adjusted for inflation.

But my point is, even if you think that phenomenon actually exists in practice rather than theory, shouldn’t Democrat-run state and local-level places be a counter-example? School, police, transit, etc. are all mainly state-level services. In places like Illinois and New York and California, it’s Democrats that set the taxes and Democrats that set the budgets and Democrats that oversee spending. In those places, you should see a marked difference between federal services (where big bad Republicans have a say) and state and local services (where it’s all controlled by a one-party Democratic system). But you don’t.

Local spending is generally where I see the most obvious productivity from government spending.

Local government spending is what educates the children, paves the roads, keeps my house from burning down or getting robbed, runs the parks and libraries, etc.

"Everyone's an employee, all the way to the top"

A lot of established public companies are like that.

Yes and they wither away as a result then that's when layoffs happen and hostile takeovers etc

Neither Apple or Microsoft are managed by the original founders - and they seem to be doing OK. I've worked for public companies that are pretty old (50+ years) and they had superb management.

They have both had to adjust to competitors along the way and faced disruption. Apple nearly looked like going out of business at one stage before they brought Jobs back. They operate in a world where the Mac and the iPhone have to compete with a major rivals. Microsoft have had to develop their Cloud business as Windows becomes less important. The Public Sector never needs to do anything like that.

I'm not sure that my experience of the public sector and the private sector in the UK quite aligns with the ideological position that private sector automatically means better managed, better services and better motivated people.

In fact, the most insanely motivated people I've ever met were in the public sector.

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