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If you count having lost effective control of a significant part of their country as a government having failed, there are plenty. No-one would say that Syria o

If you count having lost effective control of a significant part of their country as a government having failed, there are plenty. No-one would say that Syria or Libya have a single functioning government controlling the country at the moment, and you can throw swathes of central Africa in there as well. Other than a coup, civil war, or a foreign takeover, there isn't really a way for a government to definitely 'fail', but no-one would say that these events are unheard of.

bhupy 6y ago
> If you count having lost effective control of a significant part of their country as a government having failed, there are plenty. Losing control of a significant part of a country isn't comparable to private enterprise failure, it's more comparable to the CEO of a company being replaced. Imagine what retail would have been like if, instead of Sears being essentially replaced, we just elected a different set of leaders to run the same organization. > No-one would say that Syria or Libya have a single functioning government controlling the country at the moment, and you can throw swathes of central Africa in there as well. Right, and in general we consider that instability to be a bad thing, and a key goal of UNESCO (and adjacent organizations) is to make African nations as stable as Western democracies. That kind of stability just isn't sought out in the private sector. > Other than a coup, civil war, or a foreign takeover, there isn't really a way for a government to definitely 'fail', but no-one would say that these events are unheard of. If you were to ask me to pick a system where change happens through violence and bloodshed (civil wars, coups) vs peaceful financial transactions (M&A, bankruptcy) — I would choose the latter any day of the week.
- wang_li 6y ago
  An awful lot of this list is less than 100 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutio...
  - bhupy 6y ago
    Of the items in that list < 100 years old, the vast majority came about through violence via revolution, civil war, genocide, or regime change. That's a bug, and not a feature. Peaceful restructuring of government is rare, and when it happens, it’s noteworthy. In contrast, peaceful restructuring of private enterprise (via startup incorporation, bankruptcy, or M&A) is just a way of life. People didn't die when PanAm, TWA, and Circuit City went out of business. People didn’t die when GM was restructured.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      This criticism and comparison is ridiculous, there is no such thing as 'violent restructuring of private enterprise' because companies don't have armies, governments do. And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare.
      - bhupy 6y ago
        > This criticism and comparison is ridiculous It's really not. We have more than enough history to corroborate. > And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare. Right, and these events are rare and noteworthy also — the only other time that had happened before that was during the 1930's. The same cannot be said for structural changes in government. In addition, if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars in the Middle East, the Balkan Kosovo War, the World Wars (and Holocaust), or what's going on in Central Africa...I really don't know what to say.
        jahaja 6y ago
        > if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars There's more people dying each year due to lack of health care access in the US alone than multiples of the Kosovo War. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin... Add to that all the drug overdoses in the US for just 2019: > Drug overdose deaths in the United States rose 4.6% in 2019 to 70,980 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdose-deaths-46-2019 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdo... That's over 100k deaths per year that's definitely strongly linked to economic despair.

bhupy 6y ago

> If you count having lost effective control of a significant part of their country as a government having failed, there are plenty. Losing control of a significant part of a country isn't comparable to private enterprise failure, it's more comparable to the CEO of a company being replaced. Imagine what retail would have been like if, instead of Sears being essentially replaced, we just elected a different set of leaders to run the same organization. > No-one would say that Syria or Libya have a single functioning government controlling the country at the moment, and you can throw swathes of central Africa in there as well. Right, and in general we consider that instability to be a bad thing, and a key goal of UNESCO (and adjacent organizations) is to make African nations as stable as Western democracies. That kind of stability just isn't sought out in the private sector. > Other than a coup, civil war, or a foreign takeover, there isn't really a way for a government to definitely 'fail', but no-one would say that these events are unheard of. If you were to ask me to pick a system where change happens through violence and bloodshed (civil wars, coups) vs peaceful financial transactions (M&A, bankruptcy) — I would choose the latter any day of the week.

wang_li 6y ago
An awful lot of this list is less than 100 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutio...
- bhupy 6y ago
  Of the items in that list < 100 years old, the vast majority came about through violence via revolution, civil war, genocide, or regime change. That's a bug, and not a feature. Peaceful restructuring of government is rare, and when it happens, it’s noteworthy. In contrast, peaceful restructuring of private enterprise (via startup incorporation, bankruptcy, or M&A) is just a way of life. People didn't die when PanAm, TWA, and Circuit City went out of business. People didn’t die when GM was restructured.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    This criticism and comparison is ridiculous, there is no such thing as 'violent restructuring of private enterprise' because companies don't have armies, governments do. And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      > This criticism and comparison is ridiculous It's really not. We have more than enough history to corroborate. > And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare. Right, and these events are rare and noteworthy also — the only other time that had happened before that was during the 1930's. The same cannot be said for structural changes in government. In addition, if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars in the Middle East, the Balkan Kosovo War, the World Wars (and Holocaust), or what's going on in Central Africa...I really don't know what to say.
      - jahaja 6y ago
        > if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars There's more people dying each year due to lack of health care access in the US alone than multiples of the Kosovo War. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin... Add to that all the drug overdoses in the US for just 2019: > Drug overdose deaths in the United States rose 4.6% in 2019 to 70,980 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdose-deaths-46-2019 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdo... That's over 100k deaths per year that's definitely strongly linked to economic despair.