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Spending somebody else's money on somebody else describes a large fraction of what many employees of a business do. It looks to me as if those employees general
by gjm11 11y ago
Spending somebody else's money on somebody else describes a large fraction of what many employees of a business do. It looks to me as if those employees generally do a decent enough job of buying useful things at a reasonable price.
How can that be, given what Milton Friedman says? Two reasons. First: there are incentives in place to encourage them to do it. If they buy useless things or spend too much money, someone may notice and they may lose their job. If they find a particularly good bargain, they may be rewarded. Second: most people are not perfectly selfish utility-maximizing homo economicus, and even when spending "somebody else's money on somebody else" they do in fact prefer to do so in a way that benefits the second somebody-else at not too much cost to the first one.
Guess what? Much the same applies in government. Suppose you're a doctor in a nationally-run health system like the UK's. You examine a patient and prescribe a drug. Does the fact that you're spending "somebody else's money on somebody else" really mean that you won't prefer to prescribe a drug that actually helps the patient's problem? Does it mean you won't prefer a cheaper drug over a more expensive one that performs no better? Of course not. And if in fact you are the way Milton Friedman professes to be -- if you prescribe with blithe indifference to whether your patients live or die and to whether your national health service goes bankrupt -- then there's a real risk that someone will notice and you'll be out of a job, or pilloried in the newspapers, or something similarly undesirable.
- gjm11 11y agoAt least one person downvoted the above. If someone who did is reading this: I would be very interested to know why. (I don't at all object to being downvoted. But if I'm thinking incompetently or writing badly or being obnoxious or something, I'd like to know what's wrong so that I can fix it. And I haven't been able to figure out what's downvote-worthy in the parent of this comment.)
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoThe problem with government is that the bar to fire people is too high for it to work the way you describe. And it's that way for a reason. The system used to be that, when a party won an election, they'd fire the existing government employees, and replace them with members of their party. "To the victor go the spoils", and this was called the "spoils system". But that meant that the knowledge of how the day-to-day government functioned got lost after every election, which was non-optimal. So laws were passed to eliminate that practice, but at the price of making it hard to fire government employees. (Add in public sector unions, and it gets even harder.)
- ryandrake 11y agoAt least in a democracy, you can vote people out, so in theory, the general public has a say in what 'public good' billions are spent on. The problem with relying on philanthropy to fund the public good is: How do I, as a member of the public, influence what the Koch brothers consider to be 'public good'?
- phyrne 11y agoGreat point,never realised thats the reason,may i say it has a very negative effect when you have tolitarian type admin with no,age limit on appointments,cant admins be obliged to shift people to other sections or sack people after 12 years if results of department had a lacklustre performance ,when opposition wins? On the VC thing i think it stifles compatition and tax paying and i dont want to have any taxes diverted for somebody to go into space its not making my life any easier .id prefer all companies pay full taxes in 1)the countries where the raw materials are sourced ,2) the credit card payment,end user country ,rather than keepng money in convinient little tax places ,charity setups and all that stuff ,its getting very unrealistic feeding of other peoples hunger and poverty and thinking your doing good!