[notquitetrue]

>Large business wastes just as much money as govt, but when a business makes a mistake they just stop talking about it. In govt it ends up on CSPAN.

The other difference is that the business has to compete with other businesses and turn a profit (or convince investors it will eventually turn a profit) to survive. In any given year they might get away with waste. If you’re a mega corp in an oligopolistic business, maybe even a decade or two. But eventually, you live or die by the bottom line. By contrast, a government keeps existing no matter how poorly it manages its finances. Look at Zimbabwe, Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, Greece, etc.

[GabeIsko]

No, businesses absolutely collude to get out of each others way, and it happens a lot more than you think. Even businesses that are "competitors" often have different aims and goals in the long run. And generally their are banks an wall street that are willing to pick up the tab for businesses that are big enough, even if they are failing. Look at a company like yahoo, or oracle, or IBM. How do they keep existing, when they are essentially zombies running on funding through the public market?

[sokoloff]

Oracle’s revenue last year was just under $50B. IBM’s was a little over $60B. Free cash flows were around $8.5B and $9.5B, respectively.

Those are not the financials of zombies running on money from the public market.

[eastbound]

IBM is laughing stock to everyone. Whoever would want to work there, it’s not young ambitious people.

But it’s also a 100-year oligopoly, it will take more time to die.

It’s also a golf company - its main activity is channeling golf courses to government members and management teams. You wouldn’t classify ClearQuest or DrWatson are serious pieces of software. DrWatson can be reproduced with a small python script, that’s why it sells so well: You sell the idea of AI to the press since 1995 and it gives a good image.

The business of IBM is mainly funneling money from governments to government members; from corporations to higher managers. It makes corruption legal. This kind of businesses thrive well in general.

[throwawaysleep]

Oracle and IBM print money from the processes in the article.

[malermeister]

>But eventually, you live or die by the bottom line. By contrast, a government keeps existing no matter how poorly it manages its finances. Look at Zimbabwe, Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, Greece, etc.

That's just survivorship bias. Some counterexamples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26th_of_July_Movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Albanian_civil_unrest

[JadeNB]

This is an interesting counterpoint, but I'm not sure it's a counterexample: those governments kept existing, in the sense that the, say, Cuban government existed both before and after; they just had radical changes of direction and leadership. The same can and does happen to companies, and I think many casual observers would say that the business has survived.

[malermeister]

That is a fair point! As a full counterexample, East Germany stopped existing after the wall fell.

[JadeNB]

> That is a fair point! As a full counterexample, East Germany stopped existing after the wall fell.

Ah, good example.

[jjoonathan]

Incompetence has to bridge the moat to matter. Private moats are not tiny and government moats are not infinite.