Comment by Brakenshire | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Brakenshire | Hacker News Reader

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> Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently ... [big charities] will never get another cent out of me until at least one of their large scale disaster responses works out well...Because of the total lack of end-to-end accountability with organizations like the red cross...

Your post is ideological - sweeping application of game-theory style logic, but without the evidence to suggest that the logic applies to this case.

1) 'Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently' is overly simplified. The most obvious counter-example is that the US and the UK spend the same amount of tax money as a percentage of GDP on healthcare; the former gets limited programs covering a minority of the population, the latter gets a universal health service (albeit obviously with limitations).

2) On what basis do you say that no large scale NGO disaster responses work out well? I would say that is an incredibly difficult conclusion to draw.

His post isn't ideological. Yours is.

I offer one empirical counter-example - with direct reference to easily verifiable evidence (public expenditure on healthcare as a percentage of GDP, and the differences between the levels of coverage of Medicare, Medicaid, and the NHS) - and then one request for proof, and not much else.

One of jacquesm's central assertions is extremely broad: governments are inept at spending money. No qualifications. Brakenshire's contention is that there is clearly a broad spectrum of efficiencies (and offers an empirical example), which is a call for a more nuanced view of things. I think you may need to revisit your definition of ideological.

> One of jacquesm's central assertions is extremely broad: governments are inept at spending money.

Yep.

> No qualifications.

Indeed. I've seen enough of government projects on all levels (Municipal, Provincial, Country and European) to know this to be factually true and if you would so much as read the freely available news sources you'd probably agree with that unqualified statement.

Government projects that are on-time, within the budget, useful and good value for the money spent are very rare.

> Brakenshire's contention is that there is clearly a broad spectrum of efficiencies (and offers an empirical example), which is a call for a more nuanced view of things.

There is indeed a broad spectrum of efficiencies, though I'd rather re-word that as 'there is a broad spectrum of in-efficiencies', since efficient would indicate something close to the theoretically achievable.

Really, I don't know what your experience is but I've been fairly interested in the machinations of the various governments that I've found myself a subject of over my life-time to date and efficient is just about the last term that I would use to describe any of them, and most of the literature seems to agree with that.

I have a hard time taking your unqualified assertion seriously if your source is "freely available news sources". If that's the best you've got, you are almost certainly the victim of confirmation bias, at the very least.

There's a reason that published, peer-reviewed studies are important. They're the antidote to people like you who hang around the water-cooler chat of newspapers and figure they've got a handle on extraordinarily large systems such as governance and economies. Turns out these things are nuanced and very complicated, and the fact that you don't recognize that is what makes you an ideologue.

Think about what an NDA actually usually accomplishes when you work for the government.

Looking back, my response was rude. I'm sorry about that.

Yes, you don't have to look hard to find examples of government projects that are plagued by agency problems, incompetence, and grift. However, those exact same things play out in the private sector. They're problems endemic in /any/ large undertaking.

You feel it's worse in the public sector. I feel it's just as bad in the private sector (just that it's reported much, much less). You've worked in both sectors, I've also worked in both. Only way to tell which of us is right is some sort of serious, objective research. My stance is that newspapers and other popular media are just noise, especially since government waste is such a easy go-to narrative (a good example being the "$20,000 hammer").

The difference is we all need to pay for public sector mistakes. We are all forced to pay for them. Poor, rich, doesn't matter. And the amount of money in public sector is much higher almost by definition.

In private sector, let's face it. Someone owns that business. The owner looses money if they are ineffective. Not all of us. Not all taxpayers. That's part of the reason why private business are better at not loosing too much money. Because this is Owner's money. He/she will make sure not too loose too much. Not to waste it. If he/she doesnt, more cost effective competition will take their place.

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