[kortilla]

> Other countries manage to have public services that actually work.

Which countries have something competing with Amazon?

> I don't believe that the American people are somehow genetically predisposed to having a bad government.

All governments are bad. The American people just happen to have alternatives that have revealed how bad some of the overlapping government orgs are so they make a lot of noise about how bad government departments are.

> If you think your elected leaders are not competent and professional, then fire them and elect leaders that will improve the government. If you want a better post office, we need to FIX the post office, not destroy it.

The whole thing is fucked from an incentives perspective. No government employee has motivation to try hard or innovate. There is no shared bonus structure to bring that on in any branch of the government.

When government is competing with an industry, it’s either going to need to run at a loss and live off of other tax revenue or it just won’t be competitive for whoever the customers are.

[oblio]

Look up Eni and Enrico Mattei: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Mattei

Mattei took over the relatively small national oil company in Italy, expanded it aggressively until it was able to compete with the Seven Sisters (Exxon, BP, etc, all not state owned). State owned companies can definitely compete.

Should I add that Mattei died under mysterious circumstances?

[xyzzyz]

You should also add that said company enjoyed a government enforced monopoly on oil and gas extraction, which is basically a license to print money.

[oblio]

Italy barely has any oil and gas resources at a global level. His international deals are what grew Eni.

[wutwutwutwut]

> Which countries have something competing with Amazon?

Amazon have tried to enter the Swedish market and it has been a complete train wreck. The other businesses who were initially worried ended up just confused over how they could screw up as bad as they did.

[adventured]

Amazon has made a lot of mistakes in its history. They can keep trying at the Swedish market perpetually until they get it right.

[wutwutwutwut]

Of course. With the extreme level of incompetence they have shown so far I do wonder if people in other markets have very low standards. Of course you can provide a crappy service if there are few competitors.

[kwertyoowiyop]

Any government employee care to weigh in on whether you’re motivated to try hard and innovate? I don’t think I’m being hopelessly optimistic, believing we’ve got a lot of good people in government service, doing their best.

[confidantlake]

I have a friend that likes the mission at the gov and likes the money at FAANG so he rotates between the two. 2 years at one, 2 years at the other and switch. He could make hundreds of thousands more just be sticking to FAANG.

I worked as a lifeguard many years ago, first for a private company and then for the local government. I tried hard at both jobs, but I was more motivated working for the gov and more importantly much better trained.

The private company worked to maximize revenue which meant minimize training costs, aka one training class every 3 years. In an emergency we would have been totally unprepared.

The local gov trained us every 2 weeks (2 hours on a Saturday) plus random spot testing (threw a dummy somewhere in the pool, you would have to notice it and respond as if it were an actual drowning person). We were extremely prepared.

I certainly have my gripes with the gov (dmv I am looking at you). But the idea that no profit motive equals no one tries hard is so annoying because of how simplistic is. And I constantly hear it from otherwise smart people.

[kortilla]

You either hear from outliers then or there is systematic oppression of this innovation in you claim to hear of. If the government was filled with innovative smart people we would see innovative results.

[fragmede]

> Which countries have something competing with Amazon?

All of them? Mail-order catalogs preceded the Internet, even! If you're referring to which other countries have let capitalism run amok to the same degrees - none, we're the only ones that stupid.

[kortilla]

Then why does Amazon do so well in other countries?