I think the idea that one organization existing to make the entire world a better place is utopian, but governments are much better equipped to bring positive change than private companies are because citizens are the direct beneficiaries of government resources. For example, a municipal government’s purpose is to administer public services, and a municipal government answers to its citizens. A private company, on the other hand, has a fiscal duty to its shareholders.
I’m not arguing that any organization is perfect because such an organization does not exist, and that’s true for companies and governments.
> how are those orgs doing in terms of impact and scale?
Let’s use various governments response to the coronavirus outbreak as an example. The US government opted to defer much of it’s responsibility to private companies and state governments, which has resulted in less testing, less access to PPE, and more reported deaths than any other country. Testing hasn’t scaled, and there have been numerous reports of corruption and interference in the medical community, some of which was alleged to have come directly from the White House.
Contrast that response with countries like Taiwan, who moved quickly to provide necessary resources and communicate effectively to mitigate the transmission of the virus.
The US has operated one of the most private-industry focused responses to this outbreak, and we’re likely to see 3k deaths per day by June. That’s a 9/11 death toll every single day.
I'd counter that if private companies were completely left in charge, the response may have been better (I would not have said this in January).
Private companies were called in because our public efforts failed. If private companies were leading the charge from day 1, I struggle to see how our response could have been worse than it is today. And I completely disagree that our poor response can be attributed to involvement of private companies.
in the u.s, how about other countries?
it seems like, uniquely among first-world countries, the u.s the govt (local or otherwise) is pretty inept at a lot of things (especially now)...
That's the distinction being drawn. Pretending there's not a fundamental distinction between the two types of entities is disingenuous.
There are actually some "fundamental distinctions" between government and business. For example, most governments (democratic or not) are slow, monolithic, and effectively immortal. Since governments have tax and police authority, they can survive bad periods, including those caused by their own errors, for longer periods of time. Most businesses do not have tax and police authority and must face the market test on a daily basis. The businesses that fail the test typically die and new businesses replace them.
they would if they could...
The only thing that keeps businesses from claiming tax and police authority is the government monopoly on violence; they'd happily take if they could. Same goes for having to face the "market test": businesses certainly don't want to that and would happily get rid of it if governments allowed them to (or did not exist).
If there was something that inherently made governments to be “good” actors more than a person or a business, we wouldn’t need checks and balances.
That can lead to good or bad outcomes in your judgment depending on your values. But it’s fundamentally a different dynamic than a for profit entity.
Have you looked at how Disney built Disney World, and the way they... govern... Disney World? There's a lot of similarities in Google's plan and their requests with what Disney built with the Reedy Creek Improvement District[0]. Essentially a company territory with government, policing, and regulation all managed by the company.
And did EPCOT actually create a world of tomorrow? No. But Disney World has made Disney a lot of money.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_Distri...