[RandyRanderson]

In Canada this is a huge scam. The government advertizes that it's funding incubators. Great, right?

The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation.

The cover is that the government doesn't know tech so it will give money to trusted partners and they will choose who to give the money to because they've been doing such a great job innovating in Canada. Surprise: they gave the money to themselves!

You might have wondered why all these incubators in the crypto era were desperate to get you to go to their office. You might have also wondered: what fool is paying for this nice office in downtown Toronto where the prices are crazy-high? The taxpayer.

All of that money was completely wasted and worse, little of it went to actual start ups.

[nathanhammond]

If you can read it, here's the same story happening in Hong Kong, but with outright fraud on the recipients' end.

https://thecollectivehk.com/%e7%a7%91%e6%8a%80%e5%88%b8%e8%a...

[etothepii]

Some Hong Kong money definitely goes to startups. I got flights paid for to go to a pitching competition.

[throwitaway222]

Governments should really get out of it's free money crap everywhere. Only people that care should be giving out money so that they can look at their investments and make sure they want to keep spending.

[Wowfunhappy]

Why can't we, like, hire good people to oversee this stuff? Pay them competitive wages. If they're corrupt, prosecute the corruption.

I feel like these discussions always devolve from "a government is doing a thing badly" → "governments always do things badly" → "governments should stop doing things". But governments are basically the only party that can act in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders.

So, I would much prefer "a government is doing a thing badly" → "here are ways we could fix it". This should be perfectly achievable. Of course, no bureaucracy—public or private—will ever be perfectly efficient. That doesn't mean it can't be better, or produce a net good.

Also, I do think people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research.

[Jensson]

> But governments are basically the only party that can act with the well being of citizens, as opposed to shareholders, in mind.

Founders that hasn't gone public yet and sold out are the only ones. The government has already sold out to shareholders, at least in USA.

And no its not just "hire good people", its not just "raise wages". What happens if you raise wages is that the useless people get more money, since the ones who decide who to hire are still bad at hiring, so them raising wages without hiring better people is also a form of corruption.

In the end you need to do a deep cleanse to fix it, there are no easy fixes. Root out all plants from all interest groups, everyone that has been bribed via lobbyism money etc, in the entire government...

[Wowfunhappy]

> And no its not just "hire good people", its not just "raise wages". What happens if you raise wages is that the useless people get more money, since the ones who decide who to hire are still bad at hiring, so them raising wages without hiring better people is also a form of corruption.

Why do you think this doesn't happen outside the government?

[parineum]

> Why can't we, like, hire good people to oversee this stuff? Pay them competitive wages. If they're corrupt, prosecute the corruption.

The important thing about private industry is that everyone's job is dependent not just on doing their job well but also on the company doing well.

Government programs can become corrupt because they can't fail. If a private company was giving out bloated do nothing contracts to their spouses nephew, they'd go out of business.

[pseudohadamard]

> Why can't we, like, hire good people to oversee this stuff?

We already do. They're called grants committees and similar, and have been around for decades. They're slow, bureaucratic, and self-defeating since it's so much work and so little chance of winning a grant that everyone submits massively over-valued bids in order to make it worthwhile. However they do put a lot of effort into (trying to) make sure that only legit funding allocations are made.

[gottorf]

> But governments are basically the only party that can act in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders

The best interest of shareholders can at least be defined, because it's narrow in scope. What is in the best interests of citizens, especially in diverse countries where there is not a lot of things with overwhelmingly broad agreement?

> people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research

People also tend to miss opportunity cost in government funding (where else could that money have gone, with greater positive outcomes?) as well as alternative sources of funding (could research have been funded privately, especially with lesser tax burden?).

[throwitaway222]

> government doing badly -> government always do things badly -> government should stop doing things

Well, I don't think government does ALL things badly, so this is clearly not the case. But the NGO fraud loop is now extremely well established. The thing is none of these programs existed until pretty recently. And before this time in history, we had two mostly co-existent parties in power. Now it seems like specific people will do or allow fraud all the way to the top. We also have bills like "AB 2624" that will make it harder to even find fraud. If our government is behaving this way, I find it best to cut it off from even being allowed to do it.

Go back to roads, police and safety, not funding for alphabet causes.

[AngryData]

Im perfectly fine with the government giving money to the people, not so much to existing businesses or organizations.

[kubb]

But all those VC projects are crap too.

[fidotron]

> The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation.

And the big accounting firms.

It's incredible how efficiently they divert all activity and attention from the core task, and then wonder why things don't take off.

[cogman10]

This is the crux of why neoliberal policies don't work.

Public-private partnerships are a breeding ground for corruption. The government either needs to own what it owns or completely give up and leave it to a well regulated private market.

That's not to say one off contacts need to be eliminated. But when it comes to things like building and maintain roads, these private contacts end up being huge sinkholes for public funds.

[rayiner]

Public-private partnerships work very well in Asia. But the government has more oversight over the private entity and a heavier hand with policing results.

A big problem in the Anglosphere in particular is that the government is too focused on politics and catering to internal stakeholders and not enough on measurable results.

[xhkkffbf]

I've heard horror stories about some parts of Asia. There are huge cities built because some bureaucrat wanted to build it, not because anyone wanted to live there. And the buildings are largely empty. Those are the most visible examples.

That being said, there are some good examples too. And even a few good examples might be better than the partnerships in Canada.

[dwater]

Let's not forget 1MDB, where $4.5B of government money was looted under the pretense of investment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1MDB_scandal

[franze]

Sounds like Europe....

[tverbeure]

Yeah, I used to work for a large-ish company that participated in projects like this.

The company has a project manager with a large spreadsheet to keep track of everything so that no employee would accidentally be officially double booked because that could be detected as fraud.

Some real work was done, but the meetings with other partners were a farce. You had these tiny companies whose only existence was to feed off the European money.

One day our manager asked if the architecture document of a 100kbps modem that I had worked on could be repurposed for a 1 Mbps modem project that was European funded…

[cubefox]

Yes, I remember someone explaining that a similar thing happens with all kinds of research grants in the EU. Some companies specialize in writing very complex grant proposals in just such a way that they are likely accepted, and then produce some useless bullshit reports. Actual specialized companies with expertise in the matters the grant is about don't have the knowledge of how to fill out grant proposals in a way that gets them accepted by bureaucrats because they don't know how the decision process works. Depressing.

[timkam]

Indeed. Also, companies with a genuine and socially at least somewhat useful business model prefer focusing on customers buying their actual products as the main revenue source. The state- and EU-driven funding ecosystem is so convoluted that one either mostly ignores it in favor of value-creating work, or specializes in exploiting it, unfortunately.

[jijijijij]

German here, can confirm. Although, I don't think it's honest incompetence, but intentional corruption. Eg. public calls for bids tend to be a little too specific and politicians tend to get jobs where they funneled public money.

However, things are changing... As of this current government, nobody is scheming anymore. The corruption and wealth extraction happens openly. They are really testing the waters in what they can get away with. It's almost US level audacity, tho not yet as undignified. The sad part is, although people here are universally frustrated about it, they flock to the one party evidently more corrupt and incompetent than the CDU: The AfD.

Honestly, despite political disagreement, all my life I considered myself lucky to live here, but for the first time it makes me sick thinking about Germany's future, working here and paying taxes. And the base motives showing as reactionary malice by my fellow citizens disgust me. It's shameful to admit, but this country is truly ill and deeply corrupt.

[cs02rm0]

https://www.plexal.com/our-partners/

[elzbardico]

Sounds like Brazil...

[pbhjpbhj]

People want more government control, but when governments take more control the press tells the people that it's bad and the people acquiesce.

In local forums, so often you see (paraphrasing a pattern) "why are the government interfering with landlords, they should stop so many barbers opening instead". That is, why are the gov interfering in property markets, instead they should interfere in property markets AND plan the economy (where economy here means 'financial system').

The people promoting planned economy without realising it are always 'right wing' 'all Communists should be shot'-types. It's fascinating.

[Xirdus]

I know a lot of left win Europeans who promote planned economy without realising it. So there's that.

I think a better way to look at it is people demanding the government to intervene whenever intervention is beneficial to them personally, while demanding the government leave things alone whenever intervention is detrimental to them personally. Which is just a long winded way to describe the basics of democracy - people voting in their own interest.

[Nevermark]

> people voting in their own interest.

There are some people who care about policy, care about a generally healthy environment. Which has a strong self-interest aspect, as it should, but not narrow.

Few people manage to vote for their own narrow interests in a reliable coherent way. Even the rich and powerful reliably foot gun themselves.

I believe the vast majority, the vast majority of the time, reliably and enthusiastically vote for their group's shibboleths. Regardless of what they might say or believe their own motivations are. Even seemingly sophisticated and principled thinkers. It shows via the reliable, trivial to resolve, but reflection impervious group-coded "misunderstandings" that even "serious" people defend and nurture. The group reinforced, often meme-reflex deflected, unthinkables. Across the political spectrum.

People vote for brands.

[Xirdus]

I think people overwhelmingly voting in line with their group is the effect, not the cause. People start off by being in a group, and their group teaches them what's good and what's bad, as well as how different policies will affect them personally. Mind you, they're most often taught wrong - but uniformly wrong within their group. They're similarly taught about WHO's good and WHO's bad, and how different political parties will affect them personally. Loaded with all these misconceptions, they apply the self-interest mindset and end up with a voting pattern that to an external observer doesn't look like self-interest at all. That's an oversimplification of course, everybody is part of multiple overlapping groups at every point in time and joins and leaves groups frequently, creating a gradient of opinions in a society. But the main mechanism is the same.

The result is mostly the same as with your explanation, except yours doesn't explain why there are primary elections and how they can be so unpredictable.

[Nevermark]

> their group teaches them what's good and what's bad

Except the moment their group changes its views, almost everyone in it does to.

That is a different effect from being taught something.

[Jensson]

> People vote for brands.

Right, so the government should be based on brands rather than people. USA trying to make a people centric system still ended up into a brand centric republican vs democrat, just that now those brands changes dramatically every 4 years just people still vote for the brand even after it changes.

Its much more stable when you have stable political party brands like in multi party system, then a person voting for the same brand for 40 years will vote for roughly the same politics instead of it changing all the time.

[Nevermark]

Branding effects are not the core problem, they just make the core problems worse.

CORE PROBLEMS:

A system that continually converges down to only two viable parties, rewards divisive candidates and handicaps broadly-liked third or fourth party candidates.

A system that allows one party to capture all three branches of government. Incentivizing extreme power plays/centralization in and between parties. (Usually starts within a party.)

A system that lets parties integrate at Federal and State levels, suppressing or eliminating the otherwise strong benefits of Federal/State government decentralization. Creates massive incentives for out-of-state capture of state politics.

A permissive system for players to cache out as system-undermining lobbyists after a tour of "service".

CORE SOLUTIONS:

Maximum seat-run limits for parties, forces cross-partisanship and coalitions as some level. Any is better than none.

Separation of parties at Federal and State levels. And/or limits on numbers of states a party can operate in. Use the Federalized system of decentralizing Federal/State government to achieve parallel decentralization of parties.

Take money out of politics. Hard to do perfectly, but any limits make a big difference. Brands operate on pervasive non-rational visibility and repetition, i.e. money.

Voting systems that give wide-appeal candidates an advantage.

Voluntary acceptance of a post-tour lobbying bans, as a requirement for political and policy appointments. Remove that pervasive conflict of interest machine. Disincentivize game players from public "service".

[Xirdus]

In practice, multi-party systems rotate their brands in and out with much higher frequency than two-party systems.

[nickff]

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” ― Frederic Bastiat

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70896-the-state-is-that-gre...

[nekusar]

Properly planning the economy, ala the Chinese tier system, is a good thing.

They have 3 tiers. Its called 新基建 - *Xīn Jījiàn

Top tier is for essentials like food, electricity, internet/comms, water, sewer. Heavily controlled, usually state owned companies.

Middle tier is stuff that's integrated into essential tier.

Lower tier is forefront of tech, and not at all critical for life.

And a reminder that even fucks like Nestle said that water is not a human right. But every capitalist would do their damndest to put a sale price on anything they could. They'd charge breathing if possible.

[consensus1]

This is not that dissimilar to the US. The government either controls directly or is very heavily involved in all those things you listed in the top tier.

[fakedang]

The fact that PG&E exists is a clear contradiction to your statement.

In most countries, water, electricity, waste management and public transport are government controlled through and through, even if the government might sell shares to the public markets or induce competitive bidding. Except in dysfunctional countries of course.

[consensus1]

It's the opposite of a contradiction. PG&E must have its pricing and capital expenditures approved by the government. It is a borderline government entity.

[bboygravity]

Canadian fraud is on another level. When I worked for a Dutch company my boss forced me to take a sales pitch from some Canadian startup. They claimed to have some new magic wireless electricity technology using new unreleased quantum physics principles or whatever and had actually managed to get a significant contract from some part of the Canadian government (that was the only part of the pitch that was not a lie). The website was screaming scam with: crypto AI quantum compute, etc. The sales pitch was an actual live videocall where they just told us a bunch of lies straight to our face.

First and last time I ran into something so blatant. We didn't fall for it btw.

[Scoundreller]

Meanwhile they haven’t raised the HST/GST threshold to start collecting from the $30k in sales it was since the tax was launched in the early 90s.

You know, just something that could provide a little leg up to every small business until they’re not small anymore. But no, inflation doesn’t exist!

[chollida1]

I'd never heard of this. Can you provide a link?

I'd be very interested in reading about this fraud.

[mannanj]

This happens in the US, too. Maybe with different drivers, though certainly money moves to people close to the problem.

Now wouldn't it be interesting to dive into how old the extortion tactic of creating the problem you solve goes?

[ransom1538]

Canada has the same GDP as Texas (well worse). It is a 2nd world economy. You are better off getting a job in El Paso.