Hacker News Reader

This is why I roll my eyes when I see people suggest that government is wasteful and should be run like a business. It's like they have never worked a job in their lives.

View on HN

As someone whose done both they don’t compare. One is bad, one is even worse.

exactly. Reason is, businesses that engage in lots of inefficiencies get outcompeted, and if the inefficiencies/mistakes are egregious they go out of business. Government has the ultimate monopoly, where the only remedy available for most "shareholders" is to vote out the "CEO" and "directors" once every couple of years. In the private market, you can take your business to a competitor if you don't like how one company treats you. Or as a shareholder you can sell your shares in company A and buy company B instead. The only real remedy against government incompetence is to emigrate, and then you find yourself in a new one that also acts like it's the only game in town for it's citizens - because it is.

Maybe this would be true if there were thousands of competing businesses in a market. In this world of oligopolies businesses only have to be slightly more efficient than competitors to survive, and even then they can make up for the bullshit job related inefficiencies with different pricing models.

If you're waiting for elections to make your opinions about governance known you're leaving "money" on the table. And if you think you can do anything on that level with businesses you're fooling yourself, they don't care -- and you probably won't even know about the bullshit jobs they're propping up, anyway. If you don't believe me, why not email the CEO of Proctor and Gamble and see what he or she does?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com