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Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

Of all the things a 250 year-old federal government serving hundreds of millions of people across the entire spectrum of services should be run like, "a start-up" is pretty close to the bottom of the list.

I'm impressed we managed to arrive on an idea more detached from the fundamentals of public governance and less worthy of trust than running government "as a business." It takes real, concerted effort to be that thoughtless and shallow.

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> as a business

This is doubly-bad when the guy at the top's "business" has a nearly 1:1 mapping to the governance of North Korea: An unaccountable dictatorship where the head directly owns everything and cannot be fired for incompetence, he executes/fires people on a whim, and meanwhile relatives and courtiers spend most the time sucking-up and backstabbing to end up with the power when he dies.

Why would any American patriot want to adopt that style? Even the people who sincerely advocate for "government like a business" draw upon a completely different type, one where the CEO is answerable to a board, the board answerable to a shareholders, and most of the shares are publicly circulating.

P.S. We're not even touching whether the business-person sucked at business, which in this case is also quite damning.

This is a tangent, but people who advocate for "government like a business" are mental. Businesses want to profit and grow. The government should never be looking to profit off of taxpayers who are already funding the government. It's always a scheme from the wealthy guy to become more wealthy, and they do a good job of getting people to repeat their nonsense.

A business has one boss who decides everything and is personally responsible if things go to shit. The employees pack up and leave to get another job.

None of this is applicable to a government- unless any American wants to find out what it means to be a refugee at the Canadian border.

If you seriously make a go at it you Americans be accepted for asylum in Mexico. There is a guy (Gavin I think? Real lanky nerdy guy) from Washington who was constantly criticizing government officials (and even Mexican ones) that was granted asylum.

I also of a guy who showed in in Paraguay, renounced his citizenship to become stateless, and then they just offered him citizenship because they didn't know what to do with him.

Perhaps at current rates, but receptivity to asylum-seekers and refugees tends to be very amount-dependent, even for relatively friendly destinations.

Historical examples in Europe circa 1933-1940 are not encouraging.

There's an additional case that can be made: Businesses want to disrupt, but they can only do so against a stable current. The governments main job in regards to the economy is stability, so that business can plan, innovate, disrupt and grow.

This important point -- business practices/goals are antithetical to governance -- is unfortunately not understood by the majority of Americans

Everyone I know who says they want government ran more like a business are actually saying "if a business was that inefficient, it would cease to exist." They are quoting $500 hammers and tossing around tax money like, well, tossing around someone else's money. They want better stewardship.

However, many who claim to want this better stewardship have no idea how wasteful businesses are. And the idea that government should profit off its services sounds good to the (capitalist trained) mind, at least on the surface. Dig an inch deep however, and it should be obvious that the government is managing cost centers by definition, and expecting a profit is asinine. The goal of being business-like quickly degrades under scrutiny. Digging an inch deeper is seemingly impossible for many.

Yeah, the idea of running it like a business should die. But I think most who say it acknowledge there are differences and what they are really wanting is stewardship.

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