[samastur]

I am tired of this shtick where when companies fail, it is a beauty of free market at work, but when government projects do, it is because government is inefficient and same people who keep expounding how you have to put money into all sorts of ridiculous ideas because you can't tell which one will work, turn around, lose all humility and just know how they could do better governing.

[fuzz4lyfe]

When government projects fail everyone involved walks away with money, not so when it comes to private sector projects. In fact take a look at some of the big consulting firms like IBM, they get paid more when governmental projects fail because they are paid first to implement them and second to fix the implementation they failed at delivering in the first place. The politicians who voted for the project are generally reelected and the cycle continues into the next major project.

[AnimalMuppet]

When companies fail (because they're providing a service that not enough people want, or because they provide it too inefficiently), those companies stop using resources, which frees up those resource so that someone else can use them (presumably more efficiently, or to provide something that more people actually want/need).

But when government projects start to fail, the first thing that usually happens is that they get considerably more money to try to make it work, and that goes on for years. And when government programs don't work, or don't do something that enough people need or want, those programs far too often just keep going, for years and even decades, wasting resources that could better be used for something else.

[pcstl]

The main difference is that companies fail with their own cash (or that of private investors) and everyone who loses money in the process had contributed that money voluntarily.

When government fails, it’s with the money of taxpayers who had no choice of not contributing and who might in fact have been heavily opposed to the failed project.