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Democratic governments make the largest and riskiest investments. I've provided quite a few examples in the last century. Do you have any evidence or theory as
by dumbfoundded 5y ago
Democratic governments make the largest and riskiest investments. I've provided quite a few examples in the last century. Do you have any evidence or theory as to the contrary?
- WalterBright 5y agoWhat's risky about building a highway?
- gameman144 5y agoDemocratic government could very well make the largest and riskiest investments, but I find it hard to believe that they make the most efficient investments. Government need to get a job done, but they also need to appease voters and play politics to be able to achieve long-term goals. Businesses self-select for efficiency in the long-term, because those that aren't efficient go bankrupt or get overtaken by a more efficient upstart.
- ModernMech 5y agoWhen making long-term investments, it's often a bad idea to optimize for efficiency (if we want to measure efficiency as return on investment), because it's difficult to predict ahead of time which projects will work out the best in 10 or 30 years. Sometimes the best bets are the ones no one thinks will work out, and therefore no one wants to make. I think PG has spilled a lot of ink about this in the context of VC investment, but the same idea doubly applies to government funding because their time horizons are even longer term. If all you do is optimize for next quarter, next year, or even the next 5 years, you're going to miss the things that at first seem innocuous or useless, but then in 30 years blow up into something huge.
- dumbfoundded 5y agoActually the opposite. Just look at fundamental science research. The LHC cost $9B. Why didn't Bezos make his own instead of funding his 3rd rate rocket ride?