[nine_k]

How many are the examples when the federal government was more efficient (as in effect per unit money) than a commercial company? Certainly there are some. How many examples are there when it was the other way around?

Asking unironically, because in a monopsony situation when there's only one buyer, a state or federal agency, commercial companies compete in materially different ways than in a free(r) market.

[PuppyTailWags]

Veteran's Affairs, the postal service, social security benefit enrollment and payment processing, the irs, and public education is generally more efficient than commercial offerings at multiple points in their historical existence. Many of them are currently hampered by underfunding though, so I don't know how efficient they are now (being unable to invest enough to maintain themselves would force them to make long-term inefficient tradeoffs).

[nine_k]

This is a good list. But doesn't "underfunded" mean "the society refuses to pay the whole price of the service"? That is, it's sort of more expensive, but is kept both starving and alive by fiat?

Regarding public transportation, for instance: New York's MTA receives about half of its financing as a subsidy. London Tube is a statutory corporation, and can cover only 90% of its expenses from fares. Tokyo Metro is a private entity that shows a healthy profit, and Moscow metro also used to be profitable for a long time. Both Moscow and Tokyo underground infrastructure and service at least are not inferior to NYC's and London's (from my personal experience with 3 of the 4 of them).

[mrguyorama]

No, underfunded means republicans (and occasionally democrats) have hampered these groups for decades, under the guise that "government can't do anything", and then point to the kneecapped government actions as reason to believe the government can't do anything.

If you disallow the government to pay its bills, or effectively haggle, or build the kind of teams it needs, of course it will do a bad job. Meanwhile lots of countries have shown you can have in house teams in the government who make great things.

People will say "the government can't do anything" while cashing their social security check, after driving on the federal highway, drinking their usually clean water, and yelling at their kid's teachers for stupid reasons. We have had 60 years of starve the beast, this was all intentional.

[Firadeoclus]

There is no reason public transport should aim to be financed entirely by fares, or to make a profit from fares. It benefits people who rarely or never use it.

[verall]

It is not always comparable between cultures. If the Tokyo Metro was found to be blatantly profiteering, the president of the company would probably resign due to the cultural shame. In the US, it would be, "welp, that's the governments fault..."

[PuppyTailWags]

I didn't include public transportation in the list so idk.

[jimmaswell]

Aren't VA hospitals hopelessly corrupt with such a low standard of care that any veteran avoids them like the plague if they're able?

[tnel77]

Corrupt? I haven’t heard about widespread corruption at VA hospitals. Do you have a source for this claim?

[PuppyTailWags]

Please read my entire post.

[Firmwarrior]

VA hospitals were like that 50 years ago too though

[PuppyTailWags]

Please read my entire post. I never cited a specific time of efficiency. I only said that there exists a point in time that a service was more efficient than equivalent, private sector services. If you want to disagree you will have to prove that in the entirety of the VA's existence it has never been more efficient in any of its services (they cover housing too) than private sector.

[Firmwarrior]

Yeah, fair enough.. I don't want to get into a big flame war here, but you should look up the concept of the "motte and bailey" fallacy or "moving the goalpost"

You pop into a conversation about private industry vs government and insist that government organizations have often been much better historically, but they're underfunded now so they're all suffering. Then someone points out that one of your examples is grossly terrible and has always been terrible, and you retreat back to a nearly-meaningless interpretation of your argument: "Oh, I wasn't saying we should actually have the government run things, I just wanted to say that possibly there have been good government bureaus at some point in the past! If you very carefully cherry-pick just the right instant in time and space!"

To that, all I can say is ".. OK"

I don't think you set out to be a troll or anything, and the post office is a pretty good example of exactly what you're trying to say. But you're getting really combative and watering down your core argument that "The Government CAN get things done and has in the past" by attacking people in defense of the nearly-universally-hated VA

[pessimizer]

> How many are the examples when the federal government was more efficient (as in effect per unit money) than a commercial company?

The real question I think is whether there are examples where larger companies gain efficiencies, and if the most efficient way to do something is at a national or international scale, do you want to depend on a massive private companies (likely heavily subsidized) to do it?

That's not handing a public function to the private sector for the sake of finding efficiencies or to fund emergent innovation through competition, that's handing risk-free concessions to a cronies.

[m000]

> How many are the examples when the federal government was more efficient (as in effect per unit money) than a commercial company?

Here is the thing: commercial companies have incentive to stay efficient as long as there is viable competition from a public agency, which provides a baseline in terms of cost and quality.

As soon as public agencies are out of the picture, then there is little incentive for private companies in staying lean and efficient: Why deliver what you promised when you can go over-budget? The threat that an expensive project will be left unfinished gives you leverage to ask and approve excess costs. Why compete with other companies when you can collude with them and laugh together on your way to the bank?

[lumost]

If the government is a monopsony for a good like “subways” or “highways”. It’s advisable to have an in-house alternative to the commercial sector. Commercial firms are obligated by incentive to increase profits over time - whereas in-house teams are obligated to increase organizational size/pay over time.

Competition between the two should lead to an equilibrium between organizational bloat and profit taking.

[yummypaint]

Read up on the design and construction of the pentagon and los alamos national laboratory. The relationship between the US federal government and private sector changed tremendously over the 20th century.

[pirate787]

Amtrak is a disaster, both inefficient and undercapitalized and dangerous. The U.S. Congress nationalized passenger rail in 1971, gave Amtrak the extraordinarily Northeast Corridor backbone, and yet America has easily the worst passenger rail in the developed world. Amtrak's cost per passenger mile is 3x or 4x higher than flying with a worse safety record.

[stetrain]

We nationalized the passenger services that were losing money, that’s why the railroads wanted to get rid of them.

Most of Amtrak’s service runs on track they don’t own, at the mercy of the freight railroads for scheduling and track maintenance.

They are pressured to keep their long distance trains that lose money as a public good, but they aren’t given consistent public funding in return. We treat them as a company that should turn it own profit. We don’t expect the DOT to turn a profit on highways, because we recognize the greater economic impact of having useful highways.

The Northeast Corridor is the exception and notably seems to be the best performing part of the Amtrak network.

Seems to me like the standard American public-private practice of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses, and then complaining about how the government loses money.

[jcranmer]

> The Northeast Corridor is the exception and notably seems to be the best performing part of the Amtrak network.

And, interestingly, the worst part of the Northeast Corridor is the part that's not owned by Amtrak (the Metro North territory between NYC and New Haven).

[kwhitefoot]

> the standard American public-private practice of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses

It isn't only the US that suffers from this. The UK has a bad case of it and even Norway is in danger of doing it.

[olivierduval]

Same for France sadly... but we always take US worst ideas ;-)

[cratermoon]

That's because there's a poison pill in the Amtrak world. With few exceptions, Amtrak doesn't own any of the rail network they use. They run on rails owned by BNSF, Norfolk-Southern, or Union Pacific.

It was on HN just two months ago. The One Tiny Law That Keeps Amtrak Terrible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34336653

[ghaff]

Amtrak trains could run on precise schedules--while probably slowing down cargo--and long routes would still be underutilized because most people don't want a more expensive days long train trip rather than a few hour flight.

[cratermoon]

Yes but properly speaking Amtrak should have cross-country high speed rail routes and lower costs than flying. Amtrak can't even imagine high speed rail as long as they are stuck renting routes where they are limited to 140km/h, less than half the speed of high speed rail in other countries. Even Amtrak's fastest lines, the Acela in the NE corridor, only manage 240 km/h along one or two sections.

[vikingerik]

Framing the comparison as cost-per-passenger-mile is unfair to Amtrak, though. Amtrak on the NE corridor enables many trips between nearby cities in ranges of tens of miles that are too short for an airline to serve. Using passenger-miles as the denominator misframes Amtrak's strength as a downside. Amtrak is serving a very useful service there in displacing those trips from cars or buses.

It's true that Amtrak isn't all that useful beyond the NE corridor, although that's as much a function of the scale of the US as of Amtrak itself.

[louky]

Something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

[analog31]

I'm thinking health care and education.