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Why Big Tech Is More Competent Than the US Government

39 points by jger15 6y ago

Sindrome 6y ago
profits
ECA_stax 6y ago
> Is More Competent Than the US Government Not setting the bar high, are we?
duxup 6y ago
Isn't the term "big tech" just successful companies? So we ignore all the failures to get to that point and then declare them better? Isn't this like asking why the Super Bowl champs are always good at football?
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  And it’s not even big tech. It’s like 4 companies with great pr and monopoly-like market power, being judged mostly on the basis of Naive public perception and brand awareness. Oracle and SAP and Infosys are big tech companies by any reasonable definition of big. You’ll be hard pressed to find technologists who would decscribe those companies as competent. And there are some amazing teams within those orgs that do stuff which is genuinely more impressive than hacking out protobufs from 1030am to 415pm with an hour long lunch, which is just to say that even within tech there’s a lot of PR/brand sentiment shaping opinions of people who should know better. Uber is big tech, but still loses money hand over fist. And even if we limit ourselves to the few companies with the most competent PR — the faangs — are they really so competent? Or are they just extracting value from near-monopoly market power?
  - duxup 6y ago
    >Or are they just extracting value from near-monopoly market power/ Yeah I do wonder, if you somehow could, could those companies as they stand now just up and "do it again", could they? Granted that's a complex question, but I suspect the answer isn't automatically yes... and likely very much a hard no.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      Facebook has already bought its replacements a few times over, right?
  - icedistilled 6y ago
    Using a lot of oracle software is like going to the worst california dmv.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      But that can't be true! Big tech is super competent and government is broken! /s
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > Uber is big tech, but still loses money hand over fist. But whose money are they losing? Nobody holds a gun to your head and requires you to buy shares in Uber.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      That's somehow beside the point, since the topic is organizational competence.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        But it isn't, because the competition still works. Incompetent private organizations fail and go away and lose only the money of their investors and not unwilling third parties.
        throwawaygh 6y ago
        > Incompetent private organizations fail and go away I'll keep that in mind next time I read a thread about tech consulting shops or ISPs... > and lose only the money of their investors and not unwilling third parties. Well, there's also the employees, anyone invested in massively managed funds that include the private organization, etc. Who are all willing participants. But really only in the same sense that you, too, could get a graduate degree in a STEM field and immediately emigrate to another country.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > I'll keep that in mind next time I read a thread about tech consulting shops or ISPs... ISPs are as they are as a result of government regulations. I don't know what the problems with "tech consulting shops" are supposed to be, but they sound like something people should stop doing business with until they go away. > But really only in the same sense that you, too, could get a graduate degree in a STEM field and immediately emigrate to another country. Except not in that sense at all, because emigrating to another country -- which may not be any better -- is a dramatic high-cost change to your entire life, whereas not investing in or working for a particular company is the default state that happens if you do nothing.
- robbyt 6y ago
  There are several big tech companies who are not good at anything other than making and managing money. Inertia machines like IBM, Oracle, and probably some other ones you can think of...
  - duxup 6y ago
    Valid point. Some aren't very good too.
  - indigochill 6y ago
    I have no actual idea about the state of the AI industry, but I was under the impression IBM was doing pretty well there, as well as in quantum computing R&D. But that's based largely on the obvious products they provide in those fields. I don't think I'd miss Oracle if they ceased to exist tomorrow, though. Aside from VirtualBox.
- avalys 6y ago
  Congratulations, you’ve discovered the idea of competition and why it makes the free market better! Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things! Unlike in government, where failure is often rewarded with an increased budget and a chance to try again next year with more money.
  - duxup 6y ago
    I feel like that is too much of a pass for the "free market". I don't buy into the idea that the failures don't count and we just recognize the success.
  - ptmcc 6y ago
    If this were true, companies like Oracle, SAP, Infosys, etc. would have died out a long time ago. They are bureaucratic hellscapes internally that rival even the worst governmental orgs, with even less oversight. We have nothing close to a free market as idealized by libertarians. And whether we should or not is an entirely separate argument.
    - avalys 6y ago
      Those companies do have to convince people to keep paying them money, otherwise they would cease to exist. The government is unconstrained by even that requirement.
    - baggy_trough 6y ago
      Those companies probably aren't going to exist in 100 years, but the U.S. government still will (doubtless even less competent than today.)
  - dgb23 6y ago
    I think you've been down-voted because your statements read like shallow (neo-liberal) propaganda rather than insightful observations. A sufficiently well functioning government is necessary for a market to be well functioning and vice versa. > Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things! This isn't generally true and is dependent on what you define as a failure. The private sector is exploiting, polluting and destroying natural resources all over the world even with regulations. Some of it are honest mistakes and ignorance, but much of it are "trade-offs". The general and consistent quality of products and services in prosperous societies is enforced by regulations. Your food is (very) healthy, your houses are solid. Similarly workers are being exploited all over the world. The only reason there are places where people are (close to) guaranteed to live decent, free lives is based on decades of activism, unions and governmental action. There are also things where the government is just strictly more efficient than markets. Mostly projects and services which are very long-term oriented such as education, police, military, infrastructure, public transport, foundational research etc. They all have two things in common: They are based on collaboration rather than competition and they achieve long-term goals. You see there is a balance here between the short-term gains of the competitive markets and the long-term stability of the collaborative governments and non-profits. As with many things this can be simply observed from nature and evolution. Both competition and collaboration are important strategies of survival.
awinter-py 6y ago
memetic immune system and hormesis are cool metaphors to use for institutions, but probably just metaphors -- not sure how to use these as specific prescriptions for change 'lack of a driving purpose' rings false -- amazon was a book company, that doesn't connect to buying whole foods or owning all of e-commerce. companies and governments both adapt and take on new projects when they're working. US government leadership dulled hanlon's razor this spring by achieving high marks in both malice and incompetence create cultural change by replacing stale process and leaders constantly
banads 6y ago
>Tech companies have a defined purpose, and they’re a vehicle for achieving that purpose. Google wants to organize the world’s information, and turning a gigantic profit while doing so is one of their operating constraints... >But the U.S. government doesn’t have a defined purpose, just a long list of functions, and those functions aren’t regularly interrogated. It’s uncomfortable for modern Americans to ask what the ultimate goal of the government is. Aside from the fact that this an "apples to oranges" comparison, I dont think the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution. >"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
- radicaldreamer 6y ago
  I've read a ton of these kinds of libertarian pieces and I'm convinced after reading most that the authors are just not very well read. I know it's daunting and difficult, but you have to read, digest, and have a dialogue with what has been written about government for hundreds (thousands really, but baby steps first...) of years, but I guess it's more fun to just write out fan fiction for Google running the world.
  - ooobit2 6y ago
    It's dangerous too. We've watched Silicon Valley completely strip industries like music, movies and gaming of a wide swath of its profitability. It's the birthplace of modern XaaS offerings. It just doesn't sit right with me that someone would suggest a conglomerate like Google is more progressive than government. It reads like a love letter to the villain in every dystopic novel.
    - isoskeles 6y ago
      I'm curious if you have a source for the claims on movies or gaming. I couldn't find anything conclusive. It is true that revenue in the music industry dropped substantially over time, although I am not sure about profitability. The music industry has moved to digital, so wouldn't that imply that the margins are better therefore potentially more profitable? Or is streaming more expensive than pressing physical cds? On a personal note, I think Spotify is freaking incompetent as hell, as I constantly have issues with basic shit like their Shuffle feature. I'm close to unsubscribing with them.
pnathan 6y ago
Because the US Gov has had a 60 year ideological assault on its validity and functioning (Goldwater was the first major presenting symptom), leading to practical results of dysfunction. This is best illustrated by Reagan's phrase: > “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" That is to say, if you wage an idea war on the idea of government, you'll have a government which doesn't work.
- creddit 6y ago
  This is an idea often trotted out in these discussions but then you should ask how regions of the country such as California which for decades now have had essentially none of that assault in meaningful amounts and yet still is a largely dysfunctional entity. Or look at San Francisco.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    In what ways are they dysfunctional (I can bet that in the majority of cases, the cause of dysfunction are not under the control of the local gov)
    - creddit 6y ago
      I think everything noted here is well under their control: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717729
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        Pretty much all of those rely on federal funding, and homelessness in SF is well documented as being impacted by other states policies.
        creddit 6y ago
        Do you honestly believe that it’s a good faith argument that housing affordability is not under control of local governments? Almost all of the “other states send their homeless to SF” stories are primarily tall-tales. I’ve yet to see anything document it as a major source of SF’s ills with anything even approaching hard data and not anecdotes. That some of the infrastructure projects receive Federal funding does not excuse the local control of those projects being massively over budget and/or behind deadlines. Not to mention the cost differential as compared to infrastructure costs in other developed countries. Are state budgets and pension obligations now primarily the realm of Federal control as well? What if I add in education outcomes? https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/06/20/public-education-in-both-california-and-texas-is-poor https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/06/20/public-e... Is this also outside of state control? What is inside state control that could be referenced to understand the successes/failures of state governments?
baggy_trough 6y ago
It's clear why this should be the case. Government is a low accountability sector (voting is an exceedingly feeble control mechanism compared to market feedback) so it will accumulate bureaucratic dead wood over time. The same thing happens in big companies but the market provides an eventual mechanism to replace them.
rubyn00bie 6y ago
Full stop, it's not. There are also zero citations to numerous numbers used in the essay... It might not be totally shit, but it sure smells like it.
encoderer 6y ago
Just a guess: Better management has a lot to do with it, and not just at the executive level, but the 3+ layers of middle management below.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
Except that the US Government is answerable to the people. "Big Tech" isn't answerable to anyone.
caseysoftware 6y ago
Companies can segment their market and offer different products to different people based for different prices based on all kinds of aspects. They can even reject customers and block them from doing business at all. Governments are supposed to serve 100% of their citizens. They can't pick and choose. In some contexts, they can't even prioritize. That alone radically changes how they have to approach everything.
lostdog 6y ago
Facebook keeps making its core product worse, probably because of short termism in their corporate goals. Pretty funny to see the article hold them up as an example of good governance.
intrepidhero 6y ago
Is this even a sensible question? They have pretty different goals and purposes.
AlexandrB 6y ago
It's a grave error to confuse effectiveness with desirability. Hence the irony of the phrase: "At least he made the trains run on time." Big tech's competence is only an asset as long as their financial interests are aligned with free, democratic society. As the epicenter economic activity increasingly shifts to China, this will eventually stop being true. What then?
polskibus 6y ago
Isn't it money? The gov paying prob 1/4 what Google pays for the same set of skills?
- atlgator 6y ago
  The same set of skills? Let's just say the Government gets what they pay for.
euler_angles 6y ago
There's no one simple reason, but a big contributor is compensation. Government pay for high skill professions like computer programmer, mechanical, electrical, and aerospace engineers, etc is far below what good people in those fields can make working in private industry. Often people in those fields work on government contracts, where the US Govt will pay 3x or more than their already high total compensation for the privilege of their time. I should know, I'm one of those professionals. I started out working for the government, then eventually became a contractor (doing the exact same job in the exact same building that I had done for the government! for 30% more money!) It was hard to not take that offer of the additional money, especially when the government would go out of its way to infantilize its employees.
jdauriemma 6y ago
I object to the notion that Facebook users are Mark Zuckerberg's "constituents." They have no representation in corporate governance, no ownership of the data Facebook appropriates from them, and no rights on the platform aside from the paltry few that are guaranteed (and rarely enforced) by whatever governments they live under. Users of Facebook (and most other large corporate networks) are vassals or subjects, not constituents.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  They have the right to not do business with Facebook. This is massively more power than a citizen has over it's government. If I had the right to not pay my taxes if I was unsatisfied with government services (not actually saying this is reasonable) then the government would be a lot more responsive to my needs.
  - jdauriemma 6y ago
    There are few analogies that are unassailably perfect, but I stand by mine. Ideally, if I leave the USA and renounce my citizenship, I am no longer subject to its jurisdiction. Likewise, when I left Facebook, I should no longer have been subject to its jurisdiction. But you and I both know that neither of these statements are true. The USA has a vast surveillance network that spans the globe. Its government has a disproportionate impact on the internal politics of other nation-states. Likewise, Facebook's dominance over social networking and the internet itself means that it influences everyone, not just its own users. Facebook is run as a dictatorship from the board room down to the users. Sure, we can leave - and people have been leaving nation-state dictatorships since antiquity. But, like a powerful nation-state, just because you can stop being a Facebook user doesn't mean you escape Facebook's reach, and just because I _can_ (and did) leave Facebook doesn't mean that Facebook will somehow be responsive to the needs of its users.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      > just because I _can_ (and did) leave Facebook doesn't mean that Facebook will somehow be responsive to the needs of its users. I think this statement assumes that the majority of end users are similar to you. Perhaps you're (unfortunately) in the minority.
Animats 6y ago
".. for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the Nation is quite considerable." - Charles Wilson, CEO of GM, testifying before Congress in 1953.
avalys 6y ago
The US government has no incentive to succeed in the way that you or I understand it: i.e. by producing something of value, operating an organization efficiently, or achieving a useful result. I mean, the government as a whole might in some abstract sense, but the individuals that comprise the government certainly do not, and the individuals are the underlying reality here, not words in the Constitution or whatever. “Success” in the government is defined solely by justifying your continued budget to a bunch of other people who are largely as unaccountable for results as you are. “Great success” is achieving an expansion of your budget. And the best way to achieve an expansion of your budget is to figure out how to blame your past failures on having too small a budget. As a mentor of mine once said: “The private sector is about cost minimization. The government is about cost justification.” So the consequence is that “failure” in the government doesn’t really mean you failed to achieve your result. It means you failed to properly document and justify your costs. If you have all the proper documentation and followed all the proper procedures and yet you still failed to achieve a result, that’s okay! It’s obviously not your fault, and since you’re so good at following procedures the government will happily entrust you with more money to fail with next year. Actually judging whether you’re any good at producing results is way too complicated and subjective for any government funding office to evaluate. And subject to liability and discrimination concerns as well. But it’s easy and unambiguous to verify whether you followed the proper procedures!
chadash 6y ago
Big Tech just happened to be at the right place at the right time right now. There’s no competence that got them there other than the fact that the entire country is in quarantine and than happens to work out well for companies that can sell to people at home. Clorox is also doing very well right, but the author doesn’t use that as an example because it’s too clear and obvious that luck is at play there. Big tech did not foresee this, it just happens to help their businesses, in part because it skews the playing field their way.
robomartin 6y ago
Private enterprise is the result of relentless evolution by natural selection. Government is not. The fact that one is able to run circles around the other should not be a surprise.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  This is pretty laughable in the context of modern startups, where a small group of VCs choose the winners in advance and no one else really has a chance to compete until many years later when the "winners" run out of VC money. But even disregarding this recent development it's not like government is immune to the influences of a shifting society - otherwise we'd all still be living in monarchies.
  - robomartin 6y ago
    As a general commentary on your style, characterizing something someone says as "laughable" does not promote dialogue. We have enough ugliness out there, let's make an attempt to be civilized. That said, the world of business if far too complex for a single rule or statement to fully encompass every aspect of it. What I can say, with absolute certainty, is that the world you are referring to, the world of VC's, and the companies they represent, are but a rounding error in the business megalopolis. Yes, sure, they have created a few massive high flying companies of great influence. And yet, if you take stock of the entirety of businesses, from the corner grocery store, through construction contractors, garbage processors, laboratories, hospitals, architects, engineering firms, transportation, manufacturing, medicine, chemical plants, shipping, publishing, household products, consumer electronics and, yes, web and software development, you will find it dwarfs the VC sphere. And yes, that ecosystem very much responds to natural selection. Brutally so. Government, by comparison, evolves at a glacial pace.
michaelt 6y ago
When it comes to state IT projects, I've got a theory that part of the reason government seems cumbersome is often the state has to serve everyone. Someone's doesn't speak English? Doesn't have a computer? Doesn't have a phone? Doesn't have an e-mail address? Doesn't have a credit card? Doesn't have a bank account? Doesn't have an address? Is completely deaf? If that means they can't use amazon.com so be it. But if it means they can't register to vote, or can't get a driving license? That's a different matter. So state projects IT have to support things like mailing Spanish-language braille-printed letters, when Amazon can just send an e-mail.
atlgator 6y ago
I thought it was the System Design interview, no? lol
epa 6y ago
I wouldnt go that far. How often do you hear product managers talk about 'scope creep', 'minimum viable product', 'launch first and fix bugs later'. The government's job is literally bug fixing and maintaining legacy code base. Big tech are not good a this, you can't rewrite social institutions via roadmap.
AndrewKemendo 6y ago
I think this weekend is as good as any for people to take time and read the US Founding documents, because it seems like a lot of the philosophy the US was founded seems to be unclear to a lot of people. This article and a lot of comments seem to misunderstand the role and purpose of the US form of Federal Republic government. Its worth reading the lot chronologically IMO. Declaration of Independence (1776): https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip... Articles of Confederation (1781): https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp US Constitution (1787):https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution Federalist Papers (1787 - 1788): https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text US Constitutional Amendments 1-12 (Bill of Rights) (1789): https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transc...
- bhupy 6y ago
  A great list. I'd also add Common Sense by Thomas Paine, which was a huge influence in the zeitgeist of the time.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sharemywin 6y ago
Comparing governments to companies is like comparing sports teams to referees. Referees have scored zero points since the inception of the game. They must suck!!!
koheripbal 6y ago
There's no question that a private corporation can be more reactive and well run than a government. ...but the reason we have government is for accountability. I can't vote for a new national search engine, or a new smartphone maker, so when we all have complaints about their abuse of power, we are SoL.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  From my point of view, government is far less accountable than a typical private corporation. Voting is occasional and highly manipulatable. The same people shuffle around different posts. It can compel revenue through pointing guns at people and locking them up in cages. It's not like a business that has to meet payroll to survive by attracting customers. That's accountability.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    In addition to this, voting means that you're participating in the same polity as people that might have completely different interests from you. Sometimes the majority is wrong (as has often been the case in history). In a democracy, there is no recourse for the minority. With the private sector, the minority in theory has the option to break away. Don't get me wrong, democracy is great, but it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
- chillacy 6y ago
  As a sibling comment pointed out there are different forms of accountability. Voting and protesting are forms we're familiar with in the US and Europe, but there are other ways too. In Singapore, you can more easily submit written feedback to the government, I've heard that things like potholes actually get fixed faster this route than in the US where you might have to string some activism to put pressure on the city.

39 points by jger15 6y ago

Sindrome 6y ago

profits

ECA_stax 6y ago

> Is More Competent Than the US Government Not setting the bar high, are we?

duxup 6y ago

Isn't the term "big tech" just successful companies? So we ignore all the failures to get to that point and then declare them better? Isn't this like asking why the Super Bowl champs are always good at football?

throwawaygh 6y ago
And it’s not even big tech. It’s like 4 companies with great pr and monopoly-like market power, being judged mostly on the basis of Naive public perception and brand awareness. Oracle and SAP and Infosys are big tech companies by any reasonable definition of big. You’ll be hard pressed to find technologists who would decscribe those companies as competent. And there are some amazing teams within those orgs that do stuff which is genuinely more impressive than hacking out protobufs from 1030am to 415pm with an hour long lunch, which is just to say that even within tech there’s a lot of PR/brand sentiment shaping opinions of people who should know better. Uber is big tech, but still loses money hand over fist. And even if we limit ourselves to the few companies with the most competent PR — the faangs — are they really so competent? Or are they just extracting value from near-monopoly market power?
- duxup 6y ago
  >Or are they just extracting value from near-monopoly market power/ Yeah I do wonder, if you somehow could, could those companies as they stand now just up and "do it again", could they? Granted that's a complex question, but I suspect the answer isn't automatically yes... and likely very much a hard no.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Facebook has already bought its replacements a few times over, right?
- icedistilled 6y ago
  Using a lot of oracle software is like going to the worst california dmv.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    But that can't be true! Big tech is super competent and government is broken! /s
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Uber is big tech, but still loses money hand over fist. But whose money are they losing? Nobody holds a gun to your head and requires you to buy shares in Uber.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    That's somehow beside the point, since the topic is organizational competence.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      But it isn't, because the competition still works. Incompetent private organizations fail and go away and lose only the money of their investors and not unwilling third parties.
      - throwawaygh 6y ago
        > Incompetent private organizations fail and go away I'll keep that in mind next time I read a thread about tech consulting shops or ISPs... > and lose only the money of their investors and not unwilling third parties. Well, there's also the employees, anyone invested in massively managed funds that include the private organization, etc. Who are all willing participants. But really only in the same sense that you, too, could get a graduate degree in a STEM field and immediately emigrate to another country.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > I'll keep that in mind next time I read a thread about tech consulting shops or ISPs... ISPs are as they are as a result of government regulations. I don't know what the problems with "tech consulting shops" are supposed to be, but they sound like something people should stop doing business with until they go away. > But really only in the same sense that you, too, could get a graduate degree in a STEM field and immediately emigrate to another country. Except not in that sense at all, because emigrating to another country -- which may not be any better -- is a dramatic high-cost change to your entire life, whereas not investing in or working for a particular company is the default state that happens if you do nothing.
robbyt 6y ago
There are several big tech companies who are not good at anything other than making and managing money. Inertia machines like IBM, Oracle, and probably some other ones you can think of...
- duxup 6y ago
  Valid point. Some aren't very good too.
- indigochill 6y ago
  I have no actual idea about the state of the AI industry, but I was under the impression IBM was doing pretty well there, as well as in quantum computing R&D. But that's based largely on the obvious products they provide in those fields. I don't think I'd miss Oracle if they ceased to exist tomorrow, though. Aside from VirtualBox.
avalys 6y ago
Congratulations, you’ve discovered the idea of competition and why it makes the free market better! Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things! Unlike in government, where failure is often rewarded with an increased budget and a chance to try again next year with more money.
- duxup 6y ago
  I feel like that is too much of a pass for the "free market". I don't buy into the idea that the failures don't count and we just recognize the success.
- ptmcc 6y ago
  If this were true, companies like Oracle, SAP, Infosys, etc. would have died out a long time ago. They are bureaucratic hellscapes internally that rival even the worst governmental orgs, with even less oversight. We have nothing close to a free market as idealized by libertarians. And whether we should or not is an entirely separate argument.
  - avalys 6y ago
    Those companies do have to convince people to keep paying them money, otherwise they would cease to exist. The government is unconstrained by even that requirement.
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    Those companies probably aren't going to exist in 100 years, but the U.S. government still will (doubtless even less competent than today.)
- dgb23 6y ago
  I think you've been down-voted because your statements read like shallow (neo-liberal) propaganda rather than insightful observations. A sufficiently well functioning government is necessary for a market to be well functioning and vice versa. > Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things! This isn't generally true and is dependent on what you define as a failure. The private sector is exploiting, polluting and destroying natural resources all over the world even with regulations. Some of it are honest mistakes and ignorance, but much of it are "trade-offs". The general and consistent quality of products and services in prosperous societies is enforced by regulations. Your food is (very) healthy, your houses are solid. Similarly workers are being exploited all over the world. The only reason there are places where people are (close to) guaranteed to live decent, free lives is based on decades of activism, unions and governmental action. There are also things where the government is just strictly more efficient than markets. Mostly projects and services which are very long-term oriented such as education, police, military, infrastructure, public transport, foundational research etc. They all have two things in common: They are based on collaboration rather than competition and they achieve long-term goals. You see there is a balance here between the short-term gains of the competitive markets and the long-term stability of the collaborative governments and non-profits. As with many things this can be simply observed from nature and evolution. Both competition and collaboration are important strategies of survival.

awinter-py 6y ago

memetic immune system and hormesis are cool metaphors to use for institutions, but probably just metaphors -- not sure how to use these as specific prescriptions for change 'lack of a driving purpose' rings false -- amazon was a book company, that doesn't connect to buying whole foods or owning all of e-commerce. companies and governments both adapt and take on new projects when they're working. US government leadership dulled hanlon's razor this spring by achieving high marks in both malice and incompetence create cultural change by replacing stale process and leaders constantly

banads 6y ago

>Tech companies have a defined purpose, and they’re a vehicle for achieving that purpose. Google wants to organize the world’s information, and turning a gigantic profit while doing so is one of their operating constraints... >But the U.S. government doesn’t have a defined purpose, just a long list of functions, and those functions aren’t regularly interrogated. It’s uncomfortable for modern Americans to ask what the ultimate goal of the government is. Aside from the fact that this an "apples to oranges" comparison, I dont think the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution. >"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

radicaldreamer 6y ago
I've read a ton of these kinds of libertarian pieces and I'm convinced after reading most that the authors are just not very well read. I know it's daunting and difficult, but you have to read, digest, and have a dialogue with what has been written about government for hundreds (thousands really, but baby steps first...) of years, but I guess it's more fun to just write out fan fiction for Google running the world.
- ooobit2 6y ago
  It's dangerous too. We've watched Silicon Valley completely strip industries like music, movies and gaming of a wide swath of its profitability. It's the birthplace of modern XaaS offerings. It just doesn't sit right with me that someone would suggest a conglomerate like Google is more progressive than government. It reads like a love letter to the villain in every dystopic novel.
  - isoskeles 6y ago
    I'm curious if you have a source for the claims on movies or gaming. I couldn't find anything conclusive. It is true that revenue in the music industry dropped substantially over time, although I am not sure about profitability. The music industry has moved to digital, so wouldn't that imply that the margins are better therefore potentially more profitable? Or is streaming more expensive than pressing physical cds? On a personal note, I think Spotify is freaking incompetent as hell, as I constantly have issues with basic shit like their Shuffle feature. I'm close to unsubscribing with them.

pnathan 6y ago

Because the US Gov has had a 60 year ideological assault on its validity and functioning (Goldwater was the first major presenting symptom), leading to practical results of dysfunction. This is best illustrated by Reagan's phrase: > “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" That is to say, if you wage an idea war on the idea of government, you'll have a government which doesn't work.

creddit 6y ago
This is an idea often trotted out in these discussions but then you should ask how regions of the country such as California which for decades now have had essentially none of that assault in meaningful amounts and yet still is a largely dysfunctional entity. Or look at San Francisco.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  In what ways are they dysfunctional (I can bet that in the majority of cases, the cause of dysfunction are not under the control of the local gov)
  - creddit 6y ago
    I think everything noted here is well under their control: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717729
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      Pretty much all of those rely on federal funding, and homelessness in SF is well documented as being impacted by other states policies.
      - creddit 6y ago
        Do you honestly believe that it’s a good faith argument that housing affordability is not under control of local governments? Almost all of the “other states send their homeless to SF” stories are primarily tall-tales. I’ve yet to see anything document it as a major source of SF’s ills with anything even approaching hard data and not anecdotes. That some of the infrastructure projects receive Federal funding does not excuse the local control of those projects being massively over budget and/or behind deadlines. Not to mention the cost differential as compared to infrastructure costs in other developed countries. Are state budgets and pension obligations now primarily the realm of Federal control as well? What if I add in education outcomes? https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/06/20/public-education-in-both-california-and-texas-is-poor https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/06/20/public-e... Is this also outside of state control? What is inside state control that could be referenced to understand the successes/failures of state governments?

baggy_trough 6y ago

It's clear why this should be the case. Government is a low accountability sector (voting is an exceedingly feeble control mechanism compared to market feedback) so it will accumulate bureaucratic dead wood over time. The same thing happens in big companies but the market provides an eventual mechanism to replace them.

rubyn00bie 6y ago

Full stop, it's not. There are also zero citations to numerous numbers used in the essay... It might not be totally shit, but it sure smells like it.

encoderer 6y ago

Just a guess: Better management has a lot to do with it, and not just at the executive level, but the 3+ layers of middle management below.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

Except that the US Government is answerable to the people. "Big Tech" isn't answerable to anyone.

caseysoftware 6y ago

Companies can segment their market and offer different products to different people based for different prices based on all kinds of aspects. They can even reject customers and block them from doing business at all. Governments are supposed to serve 100% of their citizens. They can't pick and choose. In some contexts, they can't even prioritize. That alone radically changes how they have to approach everything.

lostdog 6y ago

Facebook keeps making its core product worse, probably because of short termism in their corporate goals. Pretty funny to see the article hold them up as an example of good governance.

intrepidhero 6y ago

Is this even a sensible question? They have pretty different goals and purposes.

AlexandrB 6y ago

It's a grave error to confuse effectiveness with desirability. Hence the irony of the phrase: "At least he made the trains run on time." Big tech's competence is only an asset as long as their financial interests are aligned with free, democratic society. As the epicenter economic activity increasingly shifts to China, this will eventually stop being true. What then?

polskibus 6y ago

Isn't it money? The gov paying prob 1/4 what Google pays for the same set of skills?

atlgator 6y ago
The same set of skills? Let's just say the Government gets what they pay for.

euler_angles 6y ago

There's no one simple reason, but a big contributor is compensation. Government pay for high skill professions like computer programmer, mechanical, electrical, and aerospace engineers, etc is far below what good people in those fields can make working in private industry. Often people in those fields work on government contracts, where the US Govt will pay 3x or more than their already high total compensation for the privilege of their time. I should know, I'm one of those professionals. I started out working for the government, then eventually became a contractor (doing the exact same job in the exact same building that I had done for the government! for 30% more money!) It was hard to not take that offer of the additional money, especially when the government would go out of its way to infantilize its employees.

jdauriemma 6y ago

I object to the notion that Facebook users are Mark Zuckerberg's "constituents." They have no representation in corporate governance, no ownership of the data Facebook appropriates from them, and no rights on the platform aside from the paltry few that are guaranteed (and rarely enforced) by whatever governments they live under. Users of Facebook (and most other large corporate networks) are vassals or subjects, not constituents.

travisoneill1 6y ago
They have the right to not do business with Facebook. This is massively more power than a citizen has over it's government. If I had the right to not pay my taxes if I was unsatisfied with government services (not actually saying this is reasonable) then the government would be a lot more responsive to my needs.
- jdauriemma 6y ago
  There are few analogies that are unassailably perfect, but I stand by mine. Ideally, if I leave the USA and renounce my citizenship, I am no longer subject to its jurisdiction. Likewise, when I left Facebook, I should no longer have been subject to its jurisdiction. But you and I both know that neither of these statements are true. The USA has a vast surveillance network that spans the globe. Its government has a disproportionate impact on the internal politics of other nation-states. Likewise, Facebook's dominance over social networking and the internet itself means that it influences everyone, not just its own users. Facebook is run as a dictatorship from the board room down to the users. Sure, we can leave - and people have been leaving nation-state dictatorships since antiquity. But, like a powerful nation-state, just because you can stop being a Facebook user doesn't mean you escape Facebook's reach, and just because I _can_ (and did) leave Facebook doesn't mean that Facebook will somehow be responsive to the needs of its users.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    > just because I _can_ (and did) leave Facebook doesn't mean that Facebook will somehow be responsive to the needs of its users. I think this statement assumes that the majority of end users are similar to you. Perhaps you're (unfortunately) in the minority.

Animats 6y ago

".. for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the Nation is quite considerable." - Charles Wilson, CEO of GM, testifying before Congress in 1953.

avalys 6y ago

The US government has no incentive to succeed in the way that you or I understand it: i.e. by producing something of value, operating an organization efficiently, or achieving a useful result. I mean, the government as a whole might in some abstract sense, but the individuals that comprise the government certainly do not, and the individuals are the underlying reality here, not words in the Constitution or whatever. “Success” in the government is defined solely by justifying your continued budget to a bunch of other people who are largely as unaccountable for results as you are. “Great success” is achieving an expansion of your budget. And the best way to achieve an expansion of your budget is to figure out how to blame your past failures on having too small a budget. As a mentor of mine once said: “The private sector is about cost minimization. The government is about cost justification.” So the consequence is that “failure” in the government doesn’t really mean you failed to achieve your result. It means you failed to properly document and justify your costs. If you have all the proper documentation and followed all the proper procedures and yet you still failed to achieve a result, that’s okay! It’s obviously not your fault, and since you’re so good at following procedures the government will happily entrust you with more money to fail with next year. Actually judging whether you’re any good at producing results is way too complicated and subjective for any government funding office to evaluate. And subject to liability and discrimination concerns as well. But it’s easy and unambiguous to verify whether you followed the proper procedures!

chadash 6y ago

Big Tech just happened to be at the right place at the right time right now. There’s no competence that got them there other than the fact that the entire country is in quarantine and than happens to work out well for companies that can sell to people at home. Clorox is also doing very well right, but the author doesn’t use that as an example because it’s too clear and obvious that luck is at play there. Big tech did not foresee this, it just happens to help their businesses, in part because it skews the playing field their way.

robomartin 6y ago

Private enterprise is the result of relentless evolution by natural selection. Government is not. The fact that one is able to run circles around the other should not be a surprise.

AlexandrB 6y ago
This is pretty laughable in the context of modern startups, where a small group of VCs choose the winners in advance and no one else really has a chance to compete until many years later when the "winners" run out of VC money. But even disregarding this recent development it's not like government is immune to the influences of a shifting society - otherwise we'd all still be living in monarchies.
- robomartin 6y ago
  As a general commentary on your style, characterizing something someone says as "laughable" does not promote dialogue. We have enough ugliness out there, let's make an attempt to be civilized. That said, the world of business if far too complex for a single rule or statement to fully encompass every aspect of it. What I can say, with absolute certainty, is that the world you are referring to, the world of VC's, and the companies they represent, are but a rounding error in the business megalopolis. Yes, sure, they have created a few massive high flying companies of great influence. And yet, if you take stock of the entirety of businesses, from the corner grocery store, through construction contractors, garbage processors, laboratories, hospitals, architects, engineering firms, transportation, manufacturing, medicine, chemical plants, shipping, publishing, household products, consumer electronics and, yes, web and software development, you will find it dwarfs the VC sphere. And yes, that ecosystem very much responds to natural selection. Brutally so. Government, by comparison, evolves at a glacial pace.

michaelt 6y ago

When it comes to state IT projects, I've got a theory that part of the reason government seems cumbersome is often the state has to serve everyone. Someone's doesn't speak English? Doesn't have a computer? Doesn't have a phone? Doesn't have an e-mail address? Doesn't have a credit card? Doesn't have a bank account? Doesn't have an address? Is completely deaf? If that means they can't use amazon.com so be it. But if it means they can't register to vote, or can't get a driving license? That's a different matter. So state projects IT have to support things like mailing Spanish-language braille-printed letters, when Amazon can just send an e-mail.

atlgator 6y ago

I thought it was the System Design interview, no? lol

epa 6y ago

I wouldnt go that far. How often do you hear product managers talk about 'scope creep', 'minimum viable product', 'launch first and fix bugs later'. The government's job is literally bug fixing and maintaining legacy code base. Big tech are not good a this, you can't rewrite social institutions via roadmap.

AndrewKemendo 6y ago

I think this weekend is as good as any for people to take time and read the US Founding documents, because it seems like a lot of the philosophy the US was founded seems to be unclear to a lot of people. This article and a lot of comments seem to misunderstand the role and purpose of the US form of Federal Republic government. Its worth reading the lot chronologically IMO. Declaration of Independence (1776): https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip... Articles of Confederation (1781): https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp US Constitution (1787):https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution Federalist Papers (1787 - 1788): https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text US Constitutional Amendments 1-12 (Bill of Rights) (1789): https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transc...

bhupy 6y ago
A great list. I'd also add Common Sense by Thomas Paine, which was a huge influence in the zeitgeist of the time.

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sharemywin 6y ago

Comparing governments to companies is like comparing sports teams to referees. Referees have scored zero points since the inception of the game. They must suck!!!

koheripbal 6y ago

There's no question that a private corporation can be more reactive and well run than a government. ...but the reason we have government is for accountability. I can't vote for a new national search engine, or a new smartphone maker, so when we all have complaints about their abuse of power, we are SoL.

baggy_trough 6y ago
From my point of view, government is far less accountable than a typical private corporation. Voting is occasional and highly manipulatable. The same people shuffle around different posts. It can compel revenue through pointing guns at people and locking them up in cages. It's not like a business that has to meet payroll to survive by attracting customers. That's accountability.
- bhupy 6y ago
  In addition to this, voting means that you're participating in the same polity as people that might have completely different interests from you. Sometimes the majority is wrong (as has often been the case in history). In a democracy, there is no recourse for the minority. With the private sector, the minority in theory has the option to break away. Don't get me wrong, democracy is great, but it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
chillacy 6y ago
As a sibling comment pointed out there are different forms of accountability. Voting and protesting are forms we're familiar with in the US and Europe, but there are other ways too. In Singapore, you can more easily submit written feedback to the government, I've heard that things like potholes actually get fixed faster this route than in the US where you might have to string some activism to put pressure on the city.