[mhartl]

California is "struggling" because of atrociously bad management. It's not like the state lacks in physical or human capital. I mean, Jeebus, the Golden State is home to the capitals of two of the world's greatest industries (entertainment and technology). It takes world-class incompetence to squander such riches.

Don't blame the state government, though. The problems are structural, not personal. If we replaced the current slate of corrupt, incompetent politicians, new ones would take their place. The internal incentives of the system would see to that. In modern politics, corruption is a winning strategy.

On the other hand, if the state government of California were run more like, say, Apple, they wouldn't be in such a bind. But that would mean running California more like a for-profit business. This suggests a possibility: the problem may not be that capitalism has gone too far—it could be that it simply hasn't gone far enough.

[jarek]

What if pushing capitalism far enough results in California being run like an Enron, a Blockbuster, a Lehman, or any number of tech bubble 1.0 darling businesses instead of like Apple? Apple is pretty lean and is winning the market cap game right now, but the largest companies haven't always been as good.

[mhartl]

Such disasters could happen, and minimizing their frequency is an important engineering problem. But you have a long road to hoe if you want to argue that the average quality of private management isn't much better than the average quality of public governance.

[JamisonM]

I have not seen much evidence that private management is superior to any given civil service. I have seen absurd waste in the private sector in my time. I think that there is little empirical evidence to support either position. The civil service generally is handicapped by the fact that any waste exposed is made very public because they are accountable to, well, everyone. For example, journalists generally do not chase stories about waste or incompetence in private companies but publish such stories about government. Even audits that reveal waste in any private company are generally kept under wraps.

[jarek]

It's not the disasters we should really be concerned about, it's the normal bigcorp experience. People are promoted based on office politics and taking credit for others' work. Big useless projects to raise a manager's profile happen all the time. Consultants are hired to produce reports that say exactly what the company, or part of the company, wants them to say to cover people's asses. Market leads and shareholder value are squandered by corporations unable to adjust to changing business or consumer climates.

Plenty of people on this site quit their bigcorp jobs because they couldn't stand the wastefulness and the politics. Every time HR is brought up, HN seethes hate at their uselessness. Middle management, that most corporate of jobs, is almost universally derided.

Much better? I'd doubt it, but neither of us has data and personally I'm not sure how that would even be quantified.

[greedo]

It's not the disasters we should really be concerned about, it's the normal government experience. People are promoted based on office politics and taking credit for others' work. Big useless projects to raise a manager's profile happen all the time. Consultants are hired to produce reports that say exactly what the department, or politician, wants them to say to cover people's asses. Taxpayer funds and freedoms are squandered by politicians unable to adjust to changing business or consumer climates.

Plenty of people on this site quit their government jobs because they couldn't stand the wastefulness and the politics. Every time HR is brought up, HN seethes hate at their uselessness. Middle management, that most corporate of jobs, is almost universally derided. Much better? I'd doubt it, but neither of us has data and personally I'm not sure how that would even be quantified.

See how that works?

[jarek]

Yeah. Sounds fairly similar. You forgot to update the sentence about middle management, further strengthening my point about indistinguishability. Thanks for underlining that private sector isn't "much" better. :)