Sounds like Europe....
The company has a project manager with a large spreadsheet to keep track of everything so that no employee would accidentally be officially double booked because that could be detected as fraud.
Some real work was done, but the meetings with other partners were a farce. You had these tiny companies whose only existence was to feed off the European money.
One day our manager asked if the architecture document of a 100kbps modem that I had worked on could be repurposed for a 1 Mbps modem project that was European funded…
However, things are changing... As of this current government, nobody is scheming anymore. The corruption and wealth extraction happens openly. They are really testing the waters in what they can get away with. It's almost US level audacity, tho not yet as undignified. The sad part is, although people here are universally frustrated about it, they flock to the one party evidently more corrupt and incompetent than the CDU: The AfD.
Honestly, despite political disagreement, all my life I considered myself lucky to live here, but for the first time it makes me sick thinking about Germany's future, working here and paying taxes. And the base motives showing as reactionary malice by my fellow citizens disgust me. It's shameful to admit, but this country is truly ill and deeply corrupt.
In local forums, so often you see (paraphrasing a pattern) "why are the government interfering with landlords, they should stop so many barbers opening instead". That is, why are the gov interfering in property markets, instead they should interfere in property markets AND plan the economy (where economy here means 'financial system').
The people promoting planned economy without realising it are always 'right wing' 'all Communists should be shot'-types. It's fascinating.
I think a better way to look at it is people demanding the government to intervene whenever intervention is beneficial to them personally, while demanding the government leave things alone whenever intervention is detrimental to them personally. Which is just a long winded way to describe the basics of democracy - people voting in their own interest.
There are some people who care about policy, care about a generally healthy environment. Which has a strong self-interest aspect, as it should, but not narrow.
Few people manage to vote for their own narrow interests in a reliable coherent way. Even the rich and powerful reliably foot gun themselves.
I believe the vast majority, the vast majority of the time, reliably and enthusiastically vote for their group's shibboleths. Regardless of what they might say or believe their own motivations are. Even seemingly sophisticated and principled thinkers. It shows via the reliable, trivial to resolve, but reflection impervious group-coded "misunderstandings" that even "serious" people defend and nurture. The group reinforced, often meme-reflex deflected, unthinkables. Across the political spectrum.
People vote for brands.
Right, so the government should be based on brands rather than people. USA trying to make a people centric system still ended up into a brand centric republican vs democrat, just that now those brands changes dramatically every 4 years just people still vote for the brand even after it changes.
Its much more stable when you have stable political party brands like in multi party system, then a person voting for the same brand for 40 years will vote for roughly the same politics instead of it changing all the time.
CORE PROBLEMS:
A system that continually converges down to only two viable parties, rewards divisive candidates and handicaps broadly-liked third or fourth party candidates.
A system that allows one party to capture all three branches of government. Incentivizing extreme power plays/centralization in and between parties. (Usually starts within a party.)
A system that lets parties integrate at Federal and State levels, suppressing or eliminating the otherwise strong benefits of Federal/State government decentralization. Creates massive incentives for out-of-state capture of state politics.
A permissive system for players to cache out as system-undermining lobbyists after a tour of "service".
CORE SOLUTIONS:
Maximum seat-run limits for parties, forces cross-partisanship and coalitions as some level. Any is better than none.
Separation of parties at Federal and State levels. And/or limits on numbers of states a party can operate in. Use the Federalized system of decentralizing Federal/State government to achieve parallel decentralization of parties.
Take money out of politics. Hard to do perfectly, but any limits make a big difference. Brands operate on pervasive non-rational visibility and repetition, i.e. money.
Voting systems that give wide-appeal candidates an advantage.
Voluntary acceptance of a post-tour lobbying bans, as a requirement for political and policy appointments. Remove that pervasive conflict of interest machine. Disincentivize game players from public "service".
The result is mostly the same as with your explanation, except yours doesn't explain why there are primary elections and how they can be so unpredictable.
Except the moment their group changes its views, almost everyone in it does to.
That is a different effect from being taught something.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70896-the-state-is-that-gre...
They have 3 tiers. Its called 新基建 - *Xīn Jījiàn
Top tier is for essentials like food, electricity, internet/comms, water, sewer. Heavily controlled, usually state owned companies.
Middle tier is stuff that's integrated into essential tier.
Lower tier is forefront of tech, and not at all critical for life.
And a reminder that even fucks like Nestle said that water is not a human right. But every capitalist would do their damndest to put a sale price on anything they could. They'd charge breathing if possible.
In most countries, water, electricity, waste management and public transport are government controlled through and through, even if the government might sell shares to the public markets or induce competitive bidding. Except in dysfunctional countries of course.
"Borderline government entity" seems more reflective of reality.