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that's a common idea, but really there's no inherent quality of Governments that make that the case - I think it's more to do with how various Governments are s
by stephen_g 10y ago
that's a common idea, but really there's no inherent quality of Governments that make that the case - I think it's more to do with how various Governments are set up. Interestingly enough, I think that regulatory frameworks set up by people who have the idea that Governments are inherently inefficient can actually make it a self-fullfilling prophesy.
It's what I've seen, for example, in the Australian telecommunications and electricity markets. The parts that have been privitised are now run 'more efficiently' by underinvesting on maintenance, upgrades etc., all the time with rising cost to the consumer and rising profits, and now when Government intervention is required (you may have heard about the SA blackouts after Elon Musk offered to build them a 100MW grid scale battery within 100 days recently), the Governments can't really do everything they need because they are limited by law of interfering with the 'efficient' markets.
Of course, the idea that you could have a competitive power generation market when the cost of entry is so high is ridiculous.
- BurningFrog 10y agoI think the "inherent quality of [democratic] Governments" is this: If a government does something that causes short term pain with much bigger long term gains, it will tend to get voted out of office long before it gets to the "gains" part. The incentives for elected officials is to focus on winning the next election, or perish. Private organizations also have short term pressures, but they're not nearly as short term and drastic. Board members and stock analysts will actually do serious in depth analysis of the long term prospects. The median voter does not.