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Comment by whatever1 | Hacker News Reader

All government spending is a waste, as it should be. Governments should not be in the business of making profit, after all they are bad at it. They are in the business of creating the “raw materials” for wide development like infrastructure, educated citizens, research, ensuring fair game (by legislating and enforcing), protecting their resources with military. The more left wing folks, are also interested in providing directly for the ones in need.

As long as the spending is in these directions is good for the country, KPIs be damned.

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I think you used “waste” improperly. Try “net zero cash”?

> They are in the business of creating the “raw materials” for wide development like infrastructure, educated citizens, […]

Absolutely. Run & improve the positive sum systems, that work best at national scale, that really do pay for themselves, by delivering greater value to citizens than the taxes taken from citizens.

When people imagine a tiny government with tiny taxes, they haven’t understood how much fewer of us could survive without those positive sums. How much more of their life’s time value it would take to pay for an egg.

(Just as the private sector organizes, and reorganizes, to create and grow a stream of positive sums, at a higher variety and speed, at less than national scales.)

Fair, I exaggerated for argument’s sake. But really the profit expectation today from the companies has a quarterly horizon. I cannot think of any government program that can yield tangible societal profit within a quarter.

All government spending is not “waste”. All government spending should be unprofitable (for the reasons you eloquently describe). Which is a different thing entirely.

Agreed. Government should stop giving silicon valley companies billions of dollars to build electric cars whose effect on climate change is debatable, or build rockets to go to Mars which won't materialize in our lifetime and when Mars itself is uninhabitable anyway. Oh wait...

> after all they are bad at it

This is really strange framing. Profit is a form of inefficiency. It's quite easy to generate profit—just take from others. How we came to view it as something that makes more sense to structure society around than zero-margin services is bewildering. There isn't a single responsibility government has I don't trust private enterprise to deliver less competently and at greater cost.

We need some kind of theme park village where everything is privatized.

Sounds expensive as hell.

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