Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

> incompetent and wasteful actions on huge scales

As others have pointed out, this is independent of whether we're talking about the government or private sector.

Regardless, when I see workers on a road crew standing around I don't think "wasted tax dollars", I think "money going back into the economy."

Of course in my view of a fair society it would be a preponderance of idle, wealthy money that is going back into the economy.



view as:

There is a fundamental difference between public and private and that is one of consent. We have no consent when it comes to government actions.

Look at the amount of money wasted on the the war on drugs.

Where do you think wealthy money is if not in the economy?


> Where do you think wealthy money is if not in the economy?

Being leveraged to extract rents, the very enemy of productivity.


Oh, but tons of people totally believe in the war on drugs and voted for politicians who directly support that crap. So it's "kinda" consented to, in fact explicitly sought. Just like all the "tough on crime" crap we get to hear about, so many of us think it's utterly ridiculous and the absolute wrong approach, but many are also all about that philosophy and absolutely want the government enacting such policies.

>Where do you think wealthy money is if not in the economy?

How about tied up in physical assets like artwork, which they then use in a scam to lower their tax liability? That seems like one option, explored within the article under discussion.


>As others have pointed out, this is independent of whether we're talking about the government or private sector.

being able to boot people is a huge difference. You could make the company millions in one month and be fired the next month by a private company, simply because it gave them an extra dollar for their quarterly earnings statement. There's an actual process for ejecting an incompetent public sector employee, to a point that it's much easier to reassign them instead. Contractors are a whole other issue as well, especially with the ways government signs contracts.

>Of course in my view of a fair society it would be a preponderance of idle, wealthy money that is going back into the economy.

that should theoretically be a function of the stock market... we all know how that ends.


Legal | privacy