[1_2__3]

Wastefulness of government is fairly uncontroversial, yes. But you're acting like that's all he claims - he's claiming it's both wasteful and that it cannot be fixed. It's a slightly more eloquent version of "make it small enough to drown it in a bathtub".

That government cannot be made to work for the people IS controversial (and kind of un-American, really). That evidence of wastefulness weakens the usefulness of government IS controversial. That a wasteful democractic government at least ostensibly answerable to its constituents isn't better than any alternative IS controversial.

You're basically saying, "he said the sun's coming up tomorrow and we're all going to die in a horrible conflagration, and really the sun coming up tomorrow isn't a particularly controversial opinion".

[cloakandswagger]

His point that government is not subject to the same competitive forces which force private industry to adapt or die isn't wrong.

You can see this at work in industries with monopolies or duopolies: how many people are over the moon about the service and support they receive from, say, Comcast?

Carmack's point seems to be that an entity with no competition and the ability to requisition cash at a whim is inherently wasteful and broken.

[kybernetikos]

All large systems (and I very much include corporations in this) are inherently wasteful and if some level of waste is your measure then they're all broken too.

Large systems that have been able to stand the test of time and deliver good have had safety mechanisms to deal with the danger that they stop providing value.

Governments have a different (and in some ways, more competitive) check mechanism to companies probably because the catastrophic failure of government is even more traumatic than the catastrophic failure of companies.

Undermining trust in the systems (engaged citizens, the press, elections) that keep government honest is exactly the wrong way to go about solving this problem.

[wvenable]

Except government is always under pressure to lower taxes (reduce prices) and be more efficient even without free-market competition. Competition is always just one election away.

But your government is exactly a duopoly -- there is no real competition -- not because it's a fundamental property of government but because you have a very strict two party system. Do you live in a Comcast or Time Warner city? Do you live in a Republican state or Democrat state?