Comment by fixxer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fixxer | Hacker News Reader

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Have you found large institutions to be more responsible and efficient? I have not. I have found the opposite.

Large orgs always have stories like this. Management and accountability are hard to scale and the problem is as true for the private sector as it is for public.

Customs is a straw man for the argument at large, but nevertheless the statement works: I prefer small government because I've seen the collassal fuckups they are capable of at scale.

(My favorite government entity is the USGS)

@fictioncircle: no reply available, so I'll address your question here: no, we should not ban large business. We should provide basic structure to support competition. Since government is not something we can frame competitively (we can't pick which government to use once one is established without substantial "frictions"), we should just keep them small and out of the way.

The notion that regions where government is poorly funded or barely present perform better in terms of due process is so counterfactual that it's hard to know what to say about it.

"The same is true of businesses. Should we ban large corporations since the same logic applies?" @fictioncircle:

Ban? No. But an end to bailouts would sure be a nice change. Large size should bring additional risk, not a governmental assurance that you'll never have to face any consequences for misbehavior.

> we should just keep them small and out of the way

Large businesses also cause colossal problems when unregulated. Consider the Great Depression and Great Recession, the two greatest economic calamities of the last century.

The answer to the problem of large institutions isn't to give some unfettered power.

> Customs is a straw man for the argument at large, but nevertheless the statement works: I prefer small government because I've seen the collassal fuckups they are capable of at scale.

The same is true of businesses. Should we ban large corporations since the same logic applies?

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