[themgt]

I'm taking a wait-and-see approach in general, but I do find Yang one of the most interesting candidates so far. Just to respond to this specific point, Yang wrote recently on Twitter [1]:

There are lessons and principles that government can take from business - like treating customers well and resource efficiency. But anyone who says they are going to “run government like a business” is dumb. They require very different forms of leadership.

As a CEO you can pretty much tell people what to do. You are their boss. You are paying them. If you say we are doing something then it generally happens. The downside is no one tells you unpleasant truths.

In government most all of the time you are building consensus. You provide a vision and try to rally people around it. You build relationships. You compromise. You appeal to common goals. Things often happen more gradually. But when big things happen they can improve many lives.

[1] https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1107126100163858432

[awinder]

> like treating customers well

This has come up with the current president's most-dimwitted son and it's so hysterical it bears repeating. US taxpayers and voters are not the customer. They're the board.

[wgerard]

Don't take this as a tacit defense of whichever son it was by any means, but: There are plenty of situations where the interaction between the government <-> constituents is very much like a business <-> customer relationship, and it's not totally insane to think that it could be a better/friendlier/more efficient one.

Example: Interactions with TSA, IRS, DMVs (state government obviously but a government nonetheless), etc.

I get what you're saying, but I think you also have to understand what Andrew Yang is implying (not particularly interested in looking up the quote from whichever son).

[dragonwriter]

> This has come up with the current president's most-dimwitted son and it's so hysterical it bears repeating. US taxpayers and voters are not the customer. They're the board.

A closer analogy would be that the US government is a non-exclusive consumer coop, and the citizens are the customer-owners, non-citizen residents, visitors, and other tax-or-fee payers a lotre non-owner customers, and Congress is the board.

[jrs235]

>US taxpayers and voters are not the customer. They're the board.

I think you mean the shareholders. Who elect the board (Congress). And vote for the CEO (President) who is accountable to the board and shareholders.