Hacker News Reader

Comment by JaDogg | Hacker News Reader

Please do not create jobs. Seriously, this is a good way to get people related to politicians in various places that just pay a salary. Now the whole neighborhood is worse off. This will only lead to corruption and nepotism.

Helping businesses with something like an incubator is a good idea, and these businesses can create jobs instead of the government creating jobs.

Hopefully, these Chromebooks will make it easier for people to access knowledge/entertainment, leading to businesses/self-employment/more jobs naturally and sustainably.

View on HN

> Helping businesses with something like an incubator

First: helping businesses does not avoid corruption and nepotism.

Secondly: I experienced a government subsidised business incubator in New Zealand, and I can honestly say it was a 100% waste of tax dollars. (We were the only positive dollar business outcome and the incubator had very little value for us!)

First: helping businesses does not avoid corruption and nepotism. - sure. However there is a higher probability of that if gov create jobs. (I have seen Sri Lankan gov create jobs just to pay salaries for friends/etc). Incubator is going to be better than that as even if gov pick someone they like, still the market decide the outcome and someone else can take place)

I think you are imagining a tautologically good incubator.

I have been disappointed watching government initiatives in New Zealand over the years. They ostensibly are there to help businesses. However they usually are wasteful and ineffective. Government departments have no insight about what factors help small businesses. Even business oriented investors (e.g. VC) often fail to understand how to drive growth, so how can we expect policy wonks to do better than that? Governments fail badly from what I have personally experienced in an incubator (government/private mix), and I can't think of a government initiative that has helped. I have certainly experienced many negative effects of government interference. So many poor regulations that damage small businesses. Few good changes that help.

I presume there are successful government initiatives but I haven't seen any in 30 years.

Let's accept that corruption will occur in all situations. What would be the best way to use Mr. A's tax from Mr. B's perspective for Mr. C?

More transparency isn't it.. (put all documents / budgets /etc in an easy to access / easy to understand and read public website, and please hire a UI/UX person to actually do the frontend)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com