But then you shouldn’t extrapolate your local library spending well any more than you don’t want GP extrapolating that his local library spends poorly.
What makes you think all libraries are run as well as yours? It seems the question is “does government do well, in general, at managing money?” And having an example of your local library isn’t very helpful for predicting whether government is good or bad.
I don’t think the sentiment is “every single government in existence is horrible at managing money” and more so “in general, government is inefficient at management so is not a good investment for optimal social benefit.”
Could you please explain how your one specific example invalidates my opinion?
I am not going to answer a strawman attack; the NHS is not what we're discussing and has little to do with the topic at hand. You can't just suggest one federal agency thats performing well as indicative of all money that goes to the government being well-spent.
Your position was that money given to the government is invariably good, my position is that your statement is a bit of a reach at best and ridiculous at worst. Your response is to cite one particular organization that has performed well which does nothing to validate or refute my argument.
My initial reaction to the post was similar - but remember that government aims are different from the business world and funding works in a very different way. I've also worked in government and it does sometimes feels like money is being wasted everywhere, which I found frustrating - but I've not managed to come up with a valid argument against the way they do things. I think setting up a behavioural comparison between businesses and government is a false opposition.
You missed the point that was made. The point wasn’t that government is efficient or good but that the experiences with the IRS and DMV don’t account for the sentiment toward government services in the country. The person I responded made a claim that interactions with these two services explain the attitudes people have toward government. I think that is an overly simplistic explanation.
>So I can't point out a historic success story to bolster my point, but you can point out historic failures to bolster yours? It seems like you're stacking the deck in your favour there.
Once again, not what I said sir. I said you can't pick out one specific agency to validate your catch-all theory. You didn't say "Giving money to the government is sometimes good", you said "The greatest good for the greatest number is achieved through the state. Witholding taxes for the purposes of greed is immoral and unpatriotic." That's wrong if I can find a single counter example. The same isn't true of my position.
Your supposition that the government is ideal is only true in places where corruption and bureaucracy don't reign supreme. This is not the world we live in.
I am not arguing that Government cannot do good, I am arguing that government does not invariably do good, as your quote would suggest. Do you understand that you are attacking a position I did not carve out? I didn't say all government is bad, I said some government can be bad. YOU said government is invariably good which I can prove is false with a single example. The converse argument is not true.
Does that make sense?
Edit: To be specific, it is the dogmatic way in which you state your position that makes it difficult to accept. If you would back off just slightly and say that Government MAY be the best allocation of money, I could agree, but there's no way that the government is invariably the best distribution method for the public good. One need only look to Zimbabwe or even China to understand the error of this logic.
> Can you actually give examples of competent public spending?
I gave you an example of competent public spending and you’ve somehow transformed that in your head into “we should give government unfettered access to our wallets”. Absurd generalisations are absurd.
You’re very obviously not coming to this discussion in good faith. Feel free to argue against straw men in your own time but I won’t be wasting my time joining you.
I don't understand how we continually believe the governments know how to spend money better, HN is littered with examples of government projects that have been woefully inefficient with the money they've taken.
I left out that I meant 2 orders of magnitude in government. Comparing federal spending to what would be waste in a town or county is an example of giving into propaganda steered stupidity as an acceptable norm.
I don't disagree that this is a terrific value. I disagree with it coming up for discussion like this in absolute terms when nothing the federal government does that is blatantly absurd could ever discussed in absolute terms without seemingly like an unworldly statistic at any local level besides, maybe, in NYC.
There are 34,000 $32 million dollar units in federal discretionary spending. I'm willing to bet that if someone randomly samples another one it will be worse than this one.
That 32 million may be enough for a town to redo it its main library if it received it through complex graft using a rider (and then some kind of magic to get it to the town level) is a bizarre distraction from anything meaningful at the federal level.
I didn't mean to imply that Government is a good fit for every particular sector, only that where there's a good fit, Government tends to be more efficient. Healthcare is where this distinction is extremely stark, but it applies to pretty much all universally subscribed services.
True, but you're not taking into account the government budgeting model. Organizations in government budgets' are based on last year's budget. If the OU spends last year's budget or more, their budget is increased (because they account for inflation). If they spend less, their budget is decreased. In other words, there is a built in incentive to spend money, and anyone can find ways to justify spending money "to improve their OU". GAOs merely verify the paperwork is in order.
Don't misunderstand me. This isn't an argument against government; it's an argument against this budgeting model. There has to be a way they to structure private sector budgeting efficiency into public organizations.
Where is the evidence that the government is effective at managing money, as you imply?
I would agree with that last comment. Currently, social spending on homelessness IS wasteful. LA's Prop HHH is a joke, it's only led to the rise of the homelessness industrial complex. It's not the equity built but the red tape...
Many people here support a strong central government. However, I do not.
This anti government narrative is very simplistic. Any large organization is going to have some amount of inefficiency be it government or private.
How does anyone know how inefficient or efficient any large organization is since they are all complex and different? Without transparency and proper methodology identifying areas of inefficiency, drawing sweeping conclusions either way is more an ideological position.
Banks have just been bailed out with trillions of dollars, where is the efficiency. The pharma and telecom industry is routinely exposed for price gouging. And the corruption investigations against private educational institutes has recently been dropped by the current administration. These inefficiencies are simply transferred to the public in higher costs.
> Governments are typically terrible financial stewards
Well, no: many governments are far more responsible than most individuals. That's not true in counties were everyone criticize the government as strongly as you do in the United States, but in countries where government positions are prestigious, the most talented people work there. As recently demonstrated, financial incentives are no where as efficient as job safety and support for creative tasks, this is why a system that promote civic dedication has tremendous impact.
Yes, here's my reasoning: The Government has the ability to hire subject matter experts on a wide range of issues. They come up with plans to spend it and compete with each other about whose plan is the best and try to make compelling arguments to elected or appointed officials to get funding. The inefficiencies come from the inevitable systematic abuses of bureaucracy: nepotism, greed, personal interest, etcetera etcetera. But, they still end up doing something and it's at least been thought through.
Now, we come to my spending. I'll go through several hypothetical situations.
First, no income tax has been taken from me at all: I spend the money on stupid garbage (video games, comic books, movies, camera equipment, etcetera) or squirrel it away in an investment (as I noted, nice to have more, but I'm making investments anyway). The common good is not served, I have more stuff I probably don't need anyway, the world falls into chaos.
Second, I don't get to spend my taxed money on myself, but have to spend it towards the common good as I so choose: I put it towards a pet project that I think is worthwhile. In my case, it would be to sponsor free programming education for kids. I always thought the computer classes in school were lame and I'd like to see kids get a better introduction at a young age. Scale this up by 300 million people: Nice sounding projects to feed the homeless and provide specialized education to kids and plant gardens etcetera are supremely well funded, but there's no public police department, no public fire department, no public roads, public transportation, center for disease control, EPA, FDA, and all the other acronyms that ensure that you don't get fucking raped by some business that has enough money to buyout the private landowners to do whatever the fuck it wants to do.
Finally, I'm tasked with spending the money in such a way as to form the most ideal society as possible: Shit, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, can't someone else take care of this? Thus, the government.
So, no, I would definitely be more incompetent than the government when it comes to using money for the common good. I would be terrible.
Also, don't go telling me that the private sector would be better at it, because brother, I've worked in a private organization that's as large as a small government, and they are filled to the fucking BRIM with bullshit.
Personally, I've always been of the mind that we should be working on automated systems to handle this sort of thing. Cold, unfeeling automata dedicated towards the most efficient dispersal of public funds. Unmotivated by emotional pleas and the suffering of the individual. Steely, ruthless, determined.
But no one else seems to like that idea and I don't know how to build it.
Governments have provided numerous services and projects at phenomenal efficiencies, including Medicare in the US, national healthcare systems in most of the civilised world, highway and transportation systems, postal delivery, air traffic control systems, aircraft investigations, sewers, numerous municipal utility districts (electric, gas, phone, broadband), and more.
The government is generally bad at spending money efficiently, since they are a local monopoly and have few incentives to do so...which is why markets work better at this.
We were having a tax discussion. We both agree that gov't has gross inefficiencies, so I'm suggesting funding the inefficient organization less. When I said "it hasn't been good" I was talking in the context about efficiency.
In my next comment, I again was talking about taxes. I used communism as an example of a high tax system. I also wanted to point out that western style democracies which you call good, lean toward capitalism, where gov't have a smaller role in society - which I am using to support my lower tax argument.
It could be helpful too. If a government is being wasteful with its money and it doesn't result in more valuable services, then another area that is doing just as good of a job with lower taxes competes for that citizen.
It's one of the few ways a government can be kept in check for excessive spending.
I don't think government is terrible. I just think that if we want to tackle poverty via government, lack of funds is not the problem.
I think you believe I'm a libertarian and are arguing against their rhetoric, but I'm not - I still think the government should be responsible for most of these services, but if we're talking about them needing more money I'd say they should tackle the huge waste first.
Oh, and the reason I mentioned that number was to compare it against the average salary because it effectively means the government could employ half the country with its budget (not literally, but as a comparative measurement), which makes the huge number a bit more graspable.
What makes you think all libraries are run as well as yours? It seems the question is “does government do well, in general, at managing money?” And having an example of your local library isn’t very helpful for predicting whether government is good or bad.
I don’t think the sentiment is “every single government in existence is horrible at managing money” and more so “in general, government is inefficient at management so is not a good investment for optimal social benefit.”
reply