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"Of course, government spending is neither inherently good nor bad." True, but it tilts heavily toward waste. You're never as careful with someone else's money
by bennesvig 15y ago
"Of course, government spending is neither inherently good nor bad."
True, but it tilts heavily toward waste. You're never as careful with someone else's money as you are with your own.
- mcantelon 15y agoCorporations also have executives that drive companies to the ground and yet get handsome bonuses for it. Both government and private enterprise can fall prey to problems of corruption and incompetence.
- pjscott 15y agoThat problem is self-correcting as long as it's possible for the company to actually die. It's the governments, heavily entrenched mega-companies, and companies that are "too big to fail" that I'm more worried about.
- davidw 15y agoIt's self correcting in the individual company, but does it at a systematic level? It seems (although this is a case where data would be a lot better than a 'gut feeling') that there are more, and more egregious cases of "executives gone wild" in recent history as compared to, say, the 50ies. In economics, "other people's money" is called the principal-agent problem, and it's an interesting one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem
- anonymoushn 15y agoCorporations (other than large investment banks) aren't able to force taxpayers at gunpoint to continue to finance them when they are corrupt or incompetent, so it seems like that might be a less severe problem. ooh, ninja downvotes!
- mkr-hn 15y agoOf course they can. They just have to lobby to remove all the restrictions and oversight that keeps them from being big enough to use themselves as a hostage.