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Comment by kvathupo | Hacker News Reader

This 2019 article [1] interestingly remarks that Amazon is one of the few companies that has been able to maintain efficiency with scale. Within the context of its foray into government contracting, perhaps the US government can learn a thing or two about cutting its obscene bureaucratic bloat?

As an aside, I would love to read a biography of Bezos the individual, not businessman. We all too often shrink the complex lives of humans into labels that fit 280 characters. Alas, that'll likely not happen anytime soon.

(You can listen to the article thanks to the YC-backed Audm. Great content, passable app)

[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/what-je...

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Government will never be efficient because the players knows there are free money to grab and efficiency is not the goal of all the decision makers involve.

I don't know. In the UK I can submit my taxes online, the whole thing is straightforward even including dividends and capital gains tax. It spits out the calculations for you and avoids needing an accountant. You could do it all manually but why would you when it is so efficient.

There is clearly a spectrum here and blindly labelling all government as useless is wrong.

The parent commenter didn't refer to efficiency of tax collection.

They refer to the fact that taxes is the pot the government will draw money from whenever any of their enterprises becomes unprofitable. If the pot is too small to fund all the projects they can simply grow out by taxing the populace more.

When an unprofitable business in the private sector runs out of investor money it sells all its assets and eventually collapses.

>The parent commenter didn't refer to efficiency of tax collection.

Tax collection is part of government and in this case is an useful counterexample to the endless "all government is bad" messages we regularly hear on HN.

>When an unprofitable business in the private sector runs out of investor money it sells all its assets and eventually collapses.

Yes, and unpopular governments get voted out (assuming they are democratic).

It is easy to believe that “all government is bad” when the only government you’ve interacted with is the US government. Thanks for highlighting a counter example.

Eh, most companies in the world aren't as efficient as Amazon. I know it's fashionable to complain about big government, but I think everyone can learn from Amazon. The idea that it's only the government that is inefficient is such a strange thing to me

That assumes government wants less of itself...

True! There's a parallel here between government bloat and corporate bloat. In the case of corporations, failing to eliminate bloat reduces competitiveness leading to disruption. The corp may survive at least temporarily by bullying or buying disruptors, but its just delaying the inevitable.

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