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Why does government need to be efficient? The entire point of a government service is that it helps everyone in society, which is necessarily inefficient. Priva

Why does government need to be efficient? The entire point of a government service is that it helps everyone in society, which is necessarily inefficient. Private companies can afford to be efficient because they can refuse service or refuse to enter certain markets.

Loughla 6y ago
Just as a note - I'm someone who advocates that government should absolutely be run at a complete loss. But inefficient and providing service to everyone are not necessarily the same thing. Planned inefficiencies is what are important. For example - the college I work at knows that we're going to lose our shirts on every nursing student, something to the tune of 25k loss for every student, every year in that program. And because that is what the area needs, that is what we do. It's massively inefficient. It would, at a for-profit, be the first program to get cut. But we can plan for that loss, and make up for it in other areas. That's an efficient and effective inefficiency.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
A government needs to be efficient so that instead of spending $2 billion on a bridge to nowhere, or a bureaucracy that spends millions of hours pushing papers but accomplishes nothing of merit by doing so, or a public housing authority that pays its workers to sleep on the job rather than inspect or repair the boilers, or a public employee pension program that gives away millions when you game the system with excessive overtime your last year, or any other myriad ways to waste society’s resources achieving nothing and worse than nothing - instead of that, it gets something valuable done, and society can benefit from that something. Waste is not virtuous and you cannot prosper by continually breaking and repairing the same windows.
- minikites 6y ago
  Why is the default assumption that these things are rampant in government and wholly absent in the private sector?
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I think anyone who's had a job must realize that some waste goes on in the private sector. but a business that wastes more than it profits will eventually be sold for parts. a government isn't subject to the same constraints and can raise taxes or print money for a long time to paper over the rot. there's also the argument that it's worse for a government to waste money than it is for a business. if someone runs their own business inefficiently, they are just wasting their own money. if the executives run a publicly-traded business inefficiently, this is a bit worse as they are wasting the shareholders' money. but an inefficient government is wasting everyone's money that they are compelled to contribute.
    - minikites 6y ago
      I disagree with every premise of your argument so I'm not sure if we're just going to talk past each other, but overall I could not disagree more: >a business that wastes more than it profits will eventually be sold for parts How many startups linked on this very site throw VC money into furnaces and have nothing to show for it (not even parts) after a few years? Where did all the Yik Yak money go? >a government isn't subject to the same constraints and can raise taxes or print money for a long time to paper over the rot Overall that may be true but individual departments and programs are certainly subject to those constraints. >an inefficient government is wasting everyone's money that they are compelled to contribute I'm not thrilled about the billions that have been wasted developing the F-35 but that's exactly how representative government works. I don't get a vote in the decisions of Google or Apple.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    In this case, it is no particular assumption, but merely the parent comment celebrating public-sector waste.
    - minikites 6y ago
      That's an incredibly uncharitable way of reading my comment and I think you know it.

Loughla 6y ago

Just as a note - I'm someone who advocates that government should absolutely be run at a complete loss. But inefficient and providing service to everyone are not necessarily the same thing. Planned inefficiencies is what are important. For example - the college I work at knows that we're going to lose our shirts on every nursing student, something to the tune of 25k loss for every student, every year in that program. And because that is what the area needs, that is what we do. It's massively inefficient. It would, at a for-profit, be the first program to get cut. But we can plan for that loss, and make up for it in other areas. That's an efficient and effective inefficiency.

fennecfoxen 6y ago

A government needs to be efficient so that instead of spending $2 billion on a bridge to nowhere, or a bureaucracy that spends millions of hours pushing papers but accomplishes nothing of merit by doing so, or a public housing authority that pays its workers to sleep on the job rather than inspect or repair the boilers, or a public employee pension program that gives away millions when you game the system with excessive overtime your last year, or any other myriad ways to waste society’s resources achieving nothing and worse than nothing - instead of that, it gets something valuable done, and society can benefit from that something. Waste is not virtuous and you cannot prosper by continually breaking and repairing the same windows.

minikites 6y ago
Why is the default assumption that these things are rampant in government and wholly absent in the private sector?
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I think anyone who's had a job must realize that some waste goes on in the private sector. but a business that wastes more than it profits will eventually be sold for parts. a government isn't subject to the same constraints and can raise taxes or print money for a long time to paper over the rot. there's also the argument that it's worse for a government to waste money than it is for a business. if someone runs their own business inefficiently, they are just wasting their own money. if the executives run a publicly-traded business inefficiently, this is a bit worse as they are wasting the shareholders' money. but an inefficient government is wasting everyone's money that they are compelled to contribute.
  - minikites 6y ago
    I disagree with every premise of your argument so I'm not sure if we're just going to talk past each other, but overall I could not disagree more: >a business that wastes more than it profits will eventually be sold for parts How many startups linked on this very site throw VC money into furnaces and have nothing to show for it (not even parts) after a few years? Where did all the Yik Yak money go? >a government isn't subject to the same constraints and can raise taxes or print money for a long time to paper over the rot Overall that may be true but individual departments and programs are certainly subject to those constraints. >an inefficient government is wasting everyone's money that they are compelled to contribute I'm not thrilled about the billions that have been wasted developing the F-35 but that's exactly how representative government works. I don't get a vote in the decisions of Google or Apple.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  In this case, it is no particular assumption, but merely the parent comment celebrating public-sector waste.
  - minikites 6y ago
    That's an incredibly uncharitable way of reading my comment and I think you know it.