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I think we need to distinguish between public and private institutions here. Government was always incompetent, wasteful average at best. Cost overruns have alw

I think we need to distinguish between public and private institutions here. Government was always incompetent, wasteful average at best. Cost overruns have always been a fixture of the government machine.

GavinMcG 6y ago
That doesn't make it incompetent or wasteful if it's doing hard or novel things. Looking at the interstate highway system or trips to the moon or massive global health investments and dismissing them as over budget is absurd.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  They are also assigned all the corner cases, last mile problems, and have a limited amount of choice surrounding which problem they solve.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
I think all big organizations are wasteful and there is almost no way around it. My company is pretty successful but if every project there got reported publicly you would see a ton of totally failed projects and plenty of incompetence and internal corruption.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
Consider the Asian countries' successes against the coronaplague. Meanwhile, the West is failing and the United States worst of all.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Europe is doing worse than the US on a cases per capita bais at the moment. Not good for either of us. I don't know how I can go to the upcoming funerals
  - throw_m239339 6y ago
    Europe isn't doing worse, some European countries are doing better, some worse. There is no policy at the EU level regarding Covid-19.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Same with the US, but overall the record in Europe is worse. Some areas of the US have much better records than others. Though honestly, the difference between the US can hardly be called drastically significant. Both are doing horid.
- tartoran 6y ago
  I think it comes down to a few factors such as being more trusting of their government measures, being used to wearing masks because of poor air quality and also not having transparency. In China, for example, it's hard to tell what the situation was because reporting was very state controlled. Also I'm not sure if Asian countries are battling with disinformation campaigns/conspiracy theories as much as their western counterparts do.
  - yitianjian 6y ago
    They are, but there is still more trust in the government. Speaking for the Chinese perspective - there are objective measures that most people can evaluate to say that their government has been successful. Sure, there's always disinformation on WeChat and such, but in general the central government is seen as competent and corruption is tolerated as an acceptable part of that. Remember that for the older generation, they literally went from rationing, food shortages, no education, etc., to now what we see of Shanghai/Beijing, their kids have decent access to higher education, travel, consumer goods, etc. Even South Korea/Japan/Taiwan have an older generation who can remember the difficulties of a past era. The real question is whether this trend can continue forward. My bet is yes for the foreseeable future, but no power system lasts forever. So while we're seeing the gradual (seeming) decline of the West, we'll probably be repeating the pattern in a few decades for East Asia.
  - nradov 6y ago
    There appear to be other factors at work in Japan. Despite a high level of mask usage, a recent study found their infection rate was one of the highest in the world. Of course it wasn't a random sample so it's hard to tell what's really happening. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v...
- leetcrew 6y ago
  is the US really worst of all? in some parts yes, in some parts no. it's a big place that offers a lot of autonomy to state and local governments. my take is that coronavirus has shown the strength of the US federal model. even with the woefully incompetent POTUS leading the executive branch, my state has been free to implement a more-or-less sane response to the pandemic. we shut down pretty hard early on, but now indoor dining is back, most shops are open, and we have a very low transmission rate.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Mind sharing which state? I might move in the future, and knowing that I can find sanity somewhere might be useful info...
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      I might as well just say it, it wouldn't be too hard to figure it out from my posting history at this point. I live in maryland. I should warn you though, while the coronavirus response has been pretty good imo, there's plenty of unrelated insanity in this state. also if you're a software engineer, I hope you like working for defense contractors.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        Thanks!
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Can't find it now, but there was an article somewhere that discussed coronadeaths per capita in the last three months, because we now have some ideas about treatment. The death rate in the US was 5 times that of Europe, IIRC. That's concerning because it says something about public health and healthcare delivery.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
1) in the 1960s, we saw the rise of "operations research", a field of study specifically aimed at understanding and improving how (mostly large) human organizations operated. It was seen as part of the great hope of the future, but because it explicitly said that large organizations, including governments, could function better and do great things, it became seen as quite a problem for conservative/libertarian philosophy which wanted more support for the view that government is, as you put it yourself "always incompetent". OR is now fairly unfashionable field, and the continuing search for better ways to do things within human organizations has lost a lot of the urgency it had in the 60s and early 70s. 2) You have almost no idea how incompetent or wasteful most private organizations are, unless they are so bad that they go bankrupt and dissolve.

GavinMcG 6y ago

That doesn't make it incompetent or wasteful if it's doing hard or novel things. Looking at the interstate highway system or trips to the moon or massive global health investments and dismissing them as over budget is absurd.

jrumbut 6y ago
They are also assigned all the corner cases, last mile problems, and have a limited amount of choice surrounding which problem they solve.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

I think all big organizations are wasteful and there is almost no way around it. My company is pretty successful but if every project there got reported publicly you would see a ton of totally failed projects and plenty of incompetence and internal corruption.

HarryHirsch 6y ago

Consider the Asian countries' successes against the coronaplague. Meanwhile, the West is failing and the United States worst of all.

bluGill 6y ago
Europe is doing worse than the US on a cases per capita bais at the moment. Not good for either of us. I don't know how I can go to the upcoming funerals
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  Europe isn't doing worse, some European countries are doing better, some worse. There is no policy at the EU level regarding Covid-19.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Same with the US, but overall the record in Europe is worse. Some areas of the US have much better records than others. Though honestly, the difference between the US can hardly be called drastically significant. Both are doing horid.
tartoran 6y ago
I think it comes down to a few factors such as being more trusting of their government measures, being used to wearing masks because of poor air quality and also not having transparency. In China, for example, it's hard to tell what the situation was because reporting was very state controlled. Also I'm not sure if Asian countries are battling with disinformation campaigns/conspiracy theories as much as their western counterparts do.
- yitianjian 6y ago
  They are, but there is still more trust in the government. Speaking for the Chinese perspective - there are objective measures that most people can evaluate to say that their government has been successful. Sure, there's always disinformation on WeChat and such, but in general the central government is seen as competent and corruption is tolerated as an acceptable part of that. Remember that for the older generation, they literally went from rationing, food shortages, no education, etc., to now what we see of Shanghai/Beijing, their kids have decent access to higher education, travel, consumer goods, etc. Even South Korea/Japan/Taiwan have an older generation who can remember the difficulties of a past era. The real question is whether this trend can continue forward. My bet is yes for the foreseeable future, but no power system lasts forever. So while we're seeing the gradual (seeming) decline of the West, we'll probably be repeating the pattern in a few decades for East Asia.
- nradov 6y ago
  There appear to be other factors at work in Japan. Despite a high level of mask usage, a recent study found their infection rate was one of the highest in the world. Of course it wasn't a random sample so it's hard to tell what's really happening. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v...
leetcrew 6y ago
is the US really worst of all? in some parts yes, in some parts no. it's a big place that offers a lot of autonomy to state and local governments. my take is that coronavirus has shown the strength of the US federal model. even with the woefully incompetent POTUS leading the executive branch, my state has been free to implement a more-or-less sane response to the pandemic. we shut down pretty hard early on, but now indoor dining is back, most shops are open, and we have a very low transmission rate.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Mind sharing which state? I might move in the future, and knowing that I can find sanity somewhere might be useful info...
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I might as well just say it, it wouldn't be too hard to figure it out from my posting history at this point. I live in maryland. I should warn you though, while the coronavirus response has been pretty good imo, there's plenty of unrelated insanity in this state. also if you're a software engineer, I hope you like working for defense contractors.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Thanks!
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Can't find it now, but there was an article somewhere that discussed coronadeaths per capita in the last three months, because we now have some ideas about treatment. The death rate in the US was 5 times that of Europe, IIRC. That's concerning because it says something about public health and healthcare delivery.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

1) in the 1960s, we saw the rise of "operations research", a field of study specifically aimed at understanding and improving how (mostly large) human organizations operated. It was seen as part of the great hope of the future, but because it explicitly said that large organizations, including governments, could function better and do great things, it became seen as quite a problem for conservative/libertarian philosophy which wanted more support for the view that government is, as you put it yourself "always incompetent". OR is now fairly unfashionable field, and the continuing search for better ways to do things within human organizations has lost a lot of the urgency it had in the 60s and early 70s. 2) You have almost no idea how incompetent or wasteful most private organizations are, unless they are so bad that they go bankrupt and dissolve.