The U.S. Cannot Be Run Like a Business (2017) | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. Cannot Be Run Like a Business (2017)

hbr.org

56 pointsxnx34 comments

But we're seeing in real time that it can be run like a piggybank.

I have always believed in the adage that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Agencies like USAID have been piggy banks for politicians pork projects and causes forever. I've been in public policy in Washington, DC> for 22 years. We know there is rampant fraud in the government, we know there is highly questionable spending, but we don't talk about it because nobody wants to upset a member of congress. Members of congress don't talk about it generally because of my aforementioned adage. Everyone benefits. It really takes the President and the administration to bring this stuff to light, you simply cannot depend on congers or the bureaucracy. Nobody wants to lose their jobs or get hammered down for making a stink.

Absolutely correct. The only reason to resists transparency and accountability is if you have something to hide. The american public is smart enough to know that you don't make a $200,000 per year salary and amass a wealth of multi millions. It was a fun ride for the inside while it lasted, its time to move on now.

We also know there's rampant fraud in the business world: Enron, WorldCom, Madoff, Lehman Brothers, S&L scandal, etc. etc.

Now the billionaires are gutting the government's oversight ability. Business fraud will go through the roof. But I guess that's the plan.

I can't tell if you're speaking about presidential administrations in general or the current one in particular. Trump already had four years as president, and during that time he did not fight pork spending at all. Rather he personally siphoned many millions of American taxpayers' dollars by frequently bringing government staff to stay with him on his own resort properties.

Musk is looting the government for personal gain as part of a coup. What is happening right now is bad, full stop.

You can advocate for more transparency and tamping down on corruption, but this is not how you do that.

>We know there is rampant fraud in the government, we know there is highly questionable spending, but we don't talk about it because nobody wants to upset a member of congress.

People talk about it all the time. And one man's 'fraud' is another man's policy initiative. It's easy to throw the F-word around to label any policy you don't like. And it's especially easy to handwave that there's "fraud everywhere" and use that as an excuse to loot the government yourself. You think there's "rampant fraud"? Put up or shut up, no one trusts your anonymous opinion.

If there's actual fraud, Musk should be able to show evidence of it and bring charges against the perpetrators. The President doesn't get to just point at someone and yell "fraud" and make it so. Particularly this President, hawking memecoin scams and $60 made-in-China "American" Bibles as a side hustle.

It sure can be smashed up like a piggybank.

Well till now it's been a piggy bank for a million political operatives, hacks and grifters so even if true it still might save the taxpayer money...

That take is so naive it hurts. Musk will siphon more money to himself than anybody before, because he's destroying any checks on his ability to loot the government.

Not remotely naive. Fairly obviously a large proportion of USAid, in particular, is nothing more than a Democrat slush fund that funnels taxpayer money into Democrat "charities" and the like. I don't think I'm the naive person in this conversation.

Any sources for the large portion going to Democrat charities? Would appreciate something with a table or graph if it exists.

Seriously...the information is overwhelming if you're paying attention. Do your own research.

"Do your own research," the losing argument's last resort.

Nope, seriously...do your own research.

No, I won't do my own research, you've stated something, you know how to find the information to support it much easier than I could. Provide your sources or don't bring it up if you are unable to support your statement.

Otherwise you're just spewing bullshit, why should I even care on doing research if I start to suspect you're a bullshitter?

We all know how this goes...you'll only accept partisan, left-wing "news" orgs claiming they are "objective", whilst these same orgs consistently ignore anything that might be embarass the Dems. And so if your biased left-wing orgs didnt report it, then it didn't happen right?

Here's 2 billion dollars for a "climate charity" run by a left-wing political hack (Stacey Abrams) with no background in climate (seriously do a keyword search for "climate" on her wikipedia bio), and for which the same charity a year previous had a grand total of $100 dollars in turnover.

A clearly very credible organisation.

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/icymi-administrator-lee-zel...

Nope, I'll accept aggregated data showing how the money is shared between charities and how these charities lean between partisan lines.

You're the one making the claim, if so you had to have access to this data to make such claims and I would like to see it. If you have access to this data then it's much easier that you share it so we both have a common ground to develop from instead of forcing me to go look for it without even knowing where you are getting it from.

You are burdening me for no reason, it's either you don't have such data and are making claims based on something else or just attempting to make me waste time.

Share the data and sources so we have a common ground, otherwise your argument can be considered bullshit. I won't be wasting time to debunk bullshit, as the corollary goes it will take me at least 10x the effort to debunk it than you spewing it.

This indirectly substantiates my theory that the single biggest problem in the US federal government is congress. When a institution does not wield power (righteously for its customers) the power vacuum is filled by (1) lobbies (2) big business coercion that congress folds on (3) the executive branch doing what congress should be doing and (4) with trump probably incompetently with conflicts of interest.

Folks systemic break down is no joke.

The congress modus operatum:

Tell you I'm an outsider () tell you I care about kitchen table issues () bloviate on and raise money on wedge issues (*) repeat

is woefully bad, and is a major part of the problem starting to pick one point N. Gingrich. (If newt was a dem same issue same result).

If you have ever watched a private equity firm acquire and systematically destroy a profitable company, you know exactly why the government should not be run like a business.

HBR throws the baby out with the bathwater.

The government can't be run like a business because the government is for everyone. That said, it doesn't need to be run like a non-profit.

For a long time the US government has spent $4 for every $3 it took in.

This is not sustainable.

2017

The constitution gives us the right to pursue happiness, but no mention of attaining it.

That means spending trillions on ways to achieve what comes from within if we just look there.

About your downvotes: you sure are in a mean mood today! Find your inner happiness.

Yes, zen hard enough and food will be in your stomach, viruses will be studied, and nuclear weapons will be safe.

Not that I disagree, but people thought Twitter would crash and burn in a matter of weeks if not days after workforce reduction.

Be prepared to be wrong, and the political consequences if you are wrong about this.

I think the current valuation of twitter is around $9B? Which answers the age-old question "How do you make $9B?"

You start with $40B

But I don't know what metrics you're judging by other than general ~vibes~ but 75+% loss of valuation is a pretty clear crash and burn. Additionally people are still leaving the site because it's such a cesspool, so yeah running a site into the ground with fewer users and is way easier than running a site with more users.

I've been using Twitter since the early days and while it hasn't crashed and burned it definitely performs worse than it used to. The only bots now are the ones willing to play dirty so every one of my tweets typically gets liked by at least one "adult" account with 18+ material on it. I go to my lesser used accounts (that I have for my business) and 90% of the ads are for scams, NFTs, outright porn, and sleezy mobile games.

Let alone the technology itself. Someone liked one of my tweets the other day and it showed up in my notifications but it took hours to show up on my page as a like. Sometimes I tweet and it doesn't show up for a long time and I don't even know if it successfully posted. And every single one of my notifications is right wing, not a single liberal notification on most days.

Not even mentioning that Musk has been pretty eager to ban people he disagrees with. Which is the opposite of what he said he would do. And "tweet" was a "verb"... you know how hard it is to get your own verb as a product? But he just threw that brand equity out.

So yeah, it may not have crashed and burned but from a technology and a culture perspective it is not what it used to be.

This comment was at least +5. It is 100% factual based on my actual experiences. Yet now it is at 0 with no replies overnight.

How about we do what HN was made for and actually have intelligent debate on the topic? If you downvoted it you must have an opinion. Unless of course you're a bot or a voting ring.

The only thing I can see a legitimate downvote for is the right vs liberal promoted tweets. But that's not actually a political statement. My Twitter account is 100% tech no politics AT ALL yet somehow 90% of my recommended tweets it shows me notifications for are FAR right (not even center right). That should be concerning no matter what party you're in. That is beyond coincidence. It is definitely not showing me them based on my interests as I have shown no interest in tweets like that. So what is it using to show them to me?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com