[vannevar]

I think the point is that while people have indeed groused about government waste since the dawn of government, when people actually study it, they find that the rate of fraud and waste is comparable to the private sector. See, e.g., https://www.epsu.org/sites/default/files/article/files/EN_EF... for web.pdf and https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844....

It's not that there's any more fraud or waste in government than in private business, it's that it's less tolerated. I think the main reason for this misperception is that in the private sector, people pay a la carte for particular goods and services, while in the public sector, people pay for shared infrastructure even if they rarely use it themselves. So they are left with the feeling that they aren't getting their money's worth. But of course everyone benefits economically and socially from a stable and prosperous society, even if they can't put their finger on discrete services they use. The reality is that it simply costs a lot of money to maintain a large, modern society. Indeed, it actually costs more than we are paying here in the US, as evidenced by a growing debt that has been a bipartisan creation.

Believing in the mantra of waste, fraud and abuse is comforting, because it implies we could be getting all the same benefits for less money. But there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

[potato3732842]

>it's that it's less tolerated

You say that like it's a bad thing.

If my favorite restaurant decides to hire management by nepotism and product degrades I can just not go there.

You can't just not deal with the government so of course the standards ought to be higher.

[vannevar]

If your democratically elected government spends money in ways you find unwise, you can vote for someone else, so that also tends to self-correct (albeit on a longer time scale).

The problem isn't the obvious things, in the government or your restaurant example. It's the less-obvious things---your favorite restaurant might cheat on its inspections, for instance. The rate of food poisoning there may go up, but you'll still be unlikely to be the one that gets sick. And the prices will go down slightly, as they are able to cut corners. This kind of "waste, fraud, and abuse" tends to go to an equilibrium, where the cost of finding and eliminating the fraud is similar to the cost of the fraud itself. And this equilibrium happens in both government and the private sector.

The idea that a modern technological nation of hundreds of millions of people could dramatically cut its spending and maintain its standard of living is a utopian fantasy.

[FirmwareBurner]

>If your democratically elected government spends money in ways you find unwise, you can vote for someone else, so that also tends to self-correct

Not if all the candidates choose to spend money in the same unwise ways.

[vannevar]

Then inefficiency isn't the problem, the problem is that your views aren't aligned with the country you're living in.

[Loughla]

I didn't read that at all. It reads as a statement of fact, not a values judgement.