This is an odd conclusion to draw. You're saying that people call the government incompetent, and now they're demonstrating incompetence, and you're convinced that the causality flows from the former to the latter?
As an external observer, I think it's not so much about whether the current US government is incompetent or not, although of course that does play some role. The key point is that a large fraction of USians have a purely ideological belief that government cannot ever be good.
As a consequence, too large a fraction of the population and of political leadership don't even try to make government institutions better, and are instead actively standing in the way of people who do try. Instead, they end up dismantling institutions or making them worse when they fail to dismantle them. (Note that this is the semi-official policy of one of your major parties. They call it "starve the beast".)
And yes, this is genuinely different from other countries. Over here, while trust in institutions is often lower than it would ideally be, the vast majority consensus at least of political and media leadership is that government can and should be good. As a consequence there's a significant number of people over here genuinely trying to make better government happen, to at least some success.
It's really no surprise that US government is so dysfunctional, and it's entirely self-inflicted by bad culture.
> As an external observer, I think it's not so much about whether the current US government is incompetent or not, although of course that does play some role. The key point is that a large fraction of USians have a purely ideological belief that government cannot ever be good.
I'd be wary of outgroup homogeneity bias here. I'm a fairly big-government guy; there are plenty of things the market is sorely ill-equipped to handle where active, competent govt can do tons of good.
But unlike most people on the big-govt side of the discussion, I don't think that it's blasphemy to question why the US govt is so especially incompetent in certain areas (infra construction is a glaring example, etc). Waving it away as "they don't have enough funding to do good things" is undetermined, the kind of answer that people reach for because it seems obvious, not because it's correct (or rather, complete).
While I've decided that big govt is, in many cases, worth the inefficiency, it's still worth asking _why_ it's inefficient and whether we can improve this. I also don't begrudge some very smart friends of mine who've decided that its inefficiency means that decentralizing power is a better path forward. I can guarantee you that all the people I've talked to who feel that way have given it far more thought than the simple-minded stereotypes the GP comment engages in.
As a consequence, too large a fraction of the population and of political leadership don't even try to make government institutions better, and are instead actively standing in the way of people who do try. Instead, they end up dismantling institutions or making them worse when they fail to dismantle them. (Note that this is the semi-official policy of one of your major parties. They call it "starve the beast".)
And yes, this is genuinely different from other countries. Over here, while trust in institutions is often lower than it would ideally be, the vast majority consensus at least of political and media leadership is that government can and should be good. As a consequence there's a significant number of people over here genuinely trying to make better government happen, to at least some success.
It's really no surprise that US government is so dysfunctional, and it's entirely self-inflicted by bad culture.