> Private surveillance is so much more scary than regular government surveillance because ...
... because the private sector tends to be far more competent and able to get shit done fast and effectively.
... because the private sector tends to be far more competent and able to get shit done fast and effectively.
It's more that there's fewer legal protections, so private surveillance is a great way for governments to launder the illegal things they want to do.
Governments have to operate in a more open manner (at least those with a reasonable amount of democratic accountability do). So the dysfunction is made public more often, and likely used over decades for political point-scoring.
It's similar to open source development. Everyone moans that open source projects are full of infighting slowing down development compared to closed projects.
Then, as soon as someone comes along and gets shit done like with systemd or the Linux kernel it's the opposite complaint. The doer is now a wannabe dictator ordering everyone about.
DHS was founded in 2002, TSA was founded in 2001. CFPB in 2010, Space Force in 2019.
Even agencies that have been around “forever” aren’t that old. The EPA was founded in 1970, and OSHA was founded in 1971.
I work in fintech, at a market leader. We are wildly inefficient, but there is little interest in fixing it, because we’re making money hand over fist.
I wouldn't be so sure about this. A lot of what markets do is unnecessary overhead needed to make markets work. Maintaining enough competition means having to pay the costs of having multiple organizations doing the same thing. Each must have their own strategy, HR, marketing, etc. A lot of work is unnecessarily repeated. A lot of behavior that is forced by competition, like advertising / patent and copyright systems / hiding research instead of sharing it is very wasteful. Profits going to the owners is also an overhead cost that might not be needed in other types of economic arrangements. All these costs need to be paid at every level of the production chain.
We should also consider the goals of each type of organization. The goal of a business operating in a market is to maximize profit for the owners of the business. It's efficient at that. The goals of a government can be much more varied. They can't really be easily compared.
The government, however, has historically been constrained by a constitution that had been updated and interpreted according to the popular sentiment of the day.