[weberc2]

> Many people think there is no inherent value in government because that has been sold to them for the past 50+ years.

I think most Americans' experience with government is bad. Especially with taxes--they won't even tell you what you owe them. Often the electronic systems are just broken (Illinois' form a couple years back required a driver's license to submit payment, but the field only accepted 8 digits while IL DL numbers are 12 digits long). I personally don't have a problem with tax or government if there's a sane value proposition.

[malyk]

No. Most Americans have no idea when they are interacting with government.

Safe water, safe food, safe(ish) drugs, roads, less air pollution, the mail, airplanes that fly safely, cars that are safe, fuel efficiency in cars, and thousands of other things are all generally good interactions with government that most people don’t attribute to government.

Yes, going to the DMV sucks. Doing your taxes is annoying. Thats about all most people think about when they say the government is bad.

[weberc2]

You're right that people only notice the things that don't work well, but I think it's a lot more than going to the DMV and taxes. Road construction that cones-off 2 lanes out of 3 for 40 miles and 6 months while there's about a week of actual construction. Tollway systems that forbid you from knowing what toll you missed or how much you owe until after the "late payment" period. Nepotism and other kinds of government corruption. Extortionist property assessment practices. The broken/unusable/inaccurate state of most government websites. Insane turnaround times for construction permits. Pointless building restrictions. High fees for almost every interaction. Extortionist traffic violation practices. Terrible appeals processes. Abusive, rude bureaucrats. Broken or delapidated infrastructure. These are experiences I've had or observed in the last few years.

I don't have these experiences when I deal with the private sector, and those dealings are also quite a lot cheaper than with the public sector.

This isn't to say that privatization is the answer or the only answer; I've had really good experiences with the governments of other countries and even in the US, value varies across agencies.

[afuchs]

> ... I don't have these experiences when I deal with the private sector, and those dealings are also quite a lot cheaper than with the public sector. ...

You are aware that much of what you just described, road construction, government websites, and many forms of traffic enforcement, is handled by private sector contractors?

[weberc2]

Who do you suppose hired those contractors? Why does the government have worse luck than the private sector when it comes to hiring competent contractors? Why is there a meme among contractors about how easy it is to overcharge the public sector? I voted for Obama, but his administration owns the disasterous rollout of healthcare.gov.

[repolfx]

Because none of those things are done by governments. They're done by companies that provide water, food, medicine, airplanes, cars etc.

Governments mostly just insist that good results happen, and can easily cause problems doing even that. Meanwhile other things run directly by governments do have a long track record of being worse than the private sector equivalents, and taxpayer interactions is clearly an important component of that.

[afuchs]

> Because none of those things are done by governments. They're done by companies that provide water, food, medicine, airplanes, cars etc.

Before the US federal government forced companies to act the country's polluted rivers caught fire repeated. The pollution that caused those rivers to catch fire didn't stop because of those companies' own will or because of the market's influence. The government needed to intervene, otherwise the pollution and fires would have continued.

> Governments mostly just insist that good results happen, and can easily cause problems doing even that. Meanwhile other things run directly by governments do have a long track record of being worse than the private sector equivalents, and taxpayer interactions is clearly an important component of that.

This is political dogma and not fact.

Services provided by governments optimize for vastly different outcomes than the private sector. It also seems that many people harshly judge government services while they ignore real problem that occur when those services are privatized.

[weberc2]

> Services provided by governments optimize for vastly different outcomes than the private sector. It also seems that many people harshly judge government services while they ignore real problem that occur when those services are privatized.

I'm not the parent but I started this subthread. I didn't bring this topic up to advocate for privatization; I brought it up to note that advocates for more/bigger government might enjoy more political support if they focused on improving government ROI. Lots of countries have competent governments; I'm certainly sympathetic to those who think we should improve the efficiency of our government before we raise taxes.

[murphysbooks]

I came across this sentence today on a page for a public swimming pool. "Recent ADA changes have required the installation of entry steps and a power lift." [0] It reminded me of this thread.

Most of the value in government is setting standards so that society is more fair to those that have been ignored in the past. It struck me as odd in how they phrased this sentence. Now, I have to admit that the person that wrote the copy for this page has some kind of fetish for sharing building footprint measurements, but not height. So, I don't think copy editing is high on their list of skills.

The federal government was actually designed to be pretty inefficient in order to keep it small and out of people's hair. Government wasn't supposed to be good at making roads. It was supposed to be good at saying how wide those interstate highway lanes should be.

Don't even get me started on federal contract law and the FAR. I think it says somewhere around page 1312 in the FAR that government contracting should be as efficient as possible.

[0] https://www.bristoltn.org/202/Haynesfield-Aquatic-Center