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Private businesses are just as inefficient and wasteful, as anyone who's worked in a large corporate bureaucracy can attest. It's just that they have very littl

Private businesses are just as inefficient and wasteful, as anyone who's worked in a large corporate bureaucracy can attest. It's just that they have very little transparency, so you don't hear about it on the news.

buran77 4y ago
Private businesses can be just as inefficient but when they are and don't clean up their act they tend not to survive too long. Public institutions are indeed bound by some rules that force some inefficiencies. But after decades working both in the private and the public sectors I can say with confidence that the public sector is substantially less efficient, for a myriad of reasons, some legitimate and some not.
- 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
  > Private businesses can be just as inefficient but when they are and don't clean up their act they tend not to survive too long. Or they just push the inefficiencies to wherever they screw the least profitable customers, which none of their competitors especially want either.
- jasonhansel 4y ago
  > they tend not to survive too long. Usually they try regulatory capture or anti-competitive behavior first.
newsclues 4y ago
Both can be bad, but private businesses tend to be much less wasteful than government because you have to make money or you go out of business, whereas government can waste your money without any thought of profit and just tax you more next year. As someone that has worked for the Military and Fortune 500s, both are bad, but the government is in a different league when it comes to wasting money.
- richbell 4y ago
  > Both can be bad, but private businesses tend to be much less wasteful than government because you have to make money or you go out of business, whereas government can waste your money without any thought of profit and just tax you more next year. Unfortunately there are numerous private businesses that have monopolies or abuse their market dominance to knee-cap their competitors. The result is, in my opinion, worse than the government because they do have a profit motive and will agrressively drive up prices or lower wages/quality.
lispisok 4y ago
Private businesses being inefficient does not have the same moral concern since they aren't taking people's money by force like the government does.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  They are, by virtue of not paying taxes due to losses. It’s an indirect loss of the public and the publics money.
- klyrs 4y ago
  Only, the big ones have captured the government-contract market. Is there really that much difference?
jandrewrogers 4y ago
I’ve worked for the US government, large NGOs, and large corporations. The difference in waste between government and corporations is qualitative, with much more waste occurring in government. NGOs sit somewhere in the middle in my experience. The entire structure of how government operates encourages and facilitates waste, it lacks the negative feedback loops that constrain corporate waste. Not only are there no consequences to waste in government as others have pointed out, the entire incentive structure around government spending actively incentivizes waste. This waste serves an organizational function in practice, but there are many ways to achieve those functions without lighting giant piles of money on fire. In corporations, waste tends to be the product of neglect; there are significant incentives to reduce waste once it rises beyond a certain level. Corporations may be less sensitive to the threshold conditions that cause them to reduce waste than may be optimal but they are always there.
- int_19h 4y ago
  In corporations, there's plenty of waste that occurs as a result of someone trying to advance one's career (pointless projects that never ship, or worse yet, ship and then demand maintenance etc).
- jschveibinz 4y ago
  Waste is built into the system. Government departments are encouraged to spend their entire budget even if they don’t need to. They have to do this to justify the same or larger budget next year. Everyone in or around the government knows this.

buran77 4y ago

Private businesses can be just as inefficient but when they are and don't clean up their act they tend not to survive too long. Public institutions are indeed bound by some rules that force some inefficiencies. But after decades working both in the private and the public sectors I can say with confidence that the public sector is substantially less efficient, for a myriad of reasons, some legitimate and some not.

0xcde4c3db 4y ago
> Private businesses can be just as inefficient but when they are and don't clean up their act they tend not to survive too long. Or they just push the inefficiencies to wherever they screw the least profitable customers, which none of their competitors especially want either.
jasonhansel 4y ago
> they tend not to survive too long. Usually they try regulatory capture or anti-competitive behavior first.

newsclues 4y ago

Both can be bad, but private businesses tend to be much less wasteful than government because you have to make money or you go out of business, whereas government can waste your money without any thought of profit and just tax you more next year. As someone that has worked for the Military and Fortune 500s, both are bad, but the government is in a different league when it comes to wasting money.

richbell 4y ago
> Both can be bad, but private businesses tend to be much less wasteful than government because you have to make money or you go out of business, whereas government can waste your money without any thought of profit and just tax you more next year. Unfortunately there are numerous private businesses that have monopolies or abuse their market dominance to knee-cap their competitors. The result is, in my opinion, worse than the government because they do have a profit motive and will agrressively drive up prices or lower wages/quality.

lispisok 4y ago

Private businesses being inefficient does not have the same moral concern since they aren't taking people's money by force like the government does.

aaomidi 4y ago
They are, by virtue of not paying taxes due to losses. It’s an indirect loss of the public and the publics money.
klyrs 4y ago
Only, the big ones have captured the government-contract market. Is there really that much difference?

jandrewrogers 4y ago

I’ve worked for the US government, large NGOs, and large corporations. The difference in waste between government and corporations is qualitative, with much more waste occurring in government. NGOs sit somewhere in the middle in my experience. The entire structure of how government operates encourages and facilitates waste, it lacks the negative feedback loops that constrain corporate waste. Not only are there no consequences to waste in government as others have pointed out, the entire incentive structure around government spending actively incentivizes waste. This waste serves an organizational function in practice, but there are many ways to achieve those functions without lighting giant piles of money on fire. In corporations, waste tends to be the product of neglect; there are significant incentives to reduce waste once it rises beyond a certain level. Corporations may be less sensitive to the threshold conditions that cause them to reduce waste than may be optimal but they are always there.

int_19h 4y ago
In corporations, there's plenty of waste that occurs as a result of someone trying to advance one's career (pointless projects that never ship, or worse yet, ship and then demand maintenance etc).
jschveibinz 4y ago
Waste is built into the system. Government departments are encouraged to spend their entire budget even if they don’t need to. They have to do this to justify the same or larger budget next year. Everyone in or around the government knows this.