I’ve often heard Conservatives say, ‘The government should be run like a business.’ I have questions.
If the government is run like a business, who are the employers, and who are the employees?
Who are the consumers?
Who are the shareholders?
Who reaps the profits?
The people who say “the government should be run like a business” are usually the ones who criticize the government for acting too much like a business.
Like, take debt. If I were running a business, and I had the opportunity to borrow money at a fraction of a percent, I’d be a fool not to do so. I’d borrow every cent I could, because if I’m even slightly competent, I’ll be able to find ways to use it to expand my business that give much better returns than that. But the folks who want government run “like a business” generally claim that government debt is bad, and object strenuously to the government expanding its business.
Of course a business that has too much debt, and/or is less than slightly competent, can declare bankruptcy. A certain high-level businessman-politician sees bankruptcy as a valid business tool, and has used it more than once. That doesn’t work well for a government.
If the government is run like a business, who are the employers? The government would be the business so it would be the employeer
and who are the employees? All of the DOD, all GS and SES employee plus all of the other employment designation for the federal government.
Who are the consumers? The citizens of the US.
Who are the shareholders? The citizens of the US
Who reaps the profits? The shareholders.
I’m not necessarily a proponent of this idea but its hardly complicated.
Should not. They bare no resemblance to each other. The goal of a company is to increase the profit of the company. The goal of a government is to increase the access to the pursuit of happiness of its citizens.
A business is generally not expected to hire, or to keep as part of the business, anybody who that business decides it doesn’t need, want, or find useful.
A government is not supposed to fire/lay off its citizens, whether they are six, ninetysix, permanently unable to work, or inconveniently publicly rude to the boss. (Some of them do, of course; but I didn’t think that was what we were supposed to be aspiring to.)
If you want to run the government “like a business”, surely you’d want to expand the IRS workforce, since stricter enforcement of tax laws is very profitable.
National Review, that commie rag, says Don’t Run a Government Like a Business
If the government was run like a business there would only be one candidate for each position on the board (the Senate?) and votes would be allocated depending on how much money you have.
The Cuban government is run more like a business than ours.
Now in one case the person running for the board actually lost due to a shareholder revolt. That left the board seat empty, so the board filled the seat - with the guy who lost the election, of course.
I suspect the people who say this are conservative pundits who never have actually worked for a business.
Of course not. Government is a non-profit organization.
The US government was not designed to be run like a business, so it shouldn’t be.
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They even taught us in business school that government should not be run like a business.
The health system in many countries, most especially the United States and Western Europe has been “run like a business” for many years.
Tell me, are you customers satisfied with its response during the pandemic? Surely getting rid of slack was fine business decision, they doubtless had all the data and spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations explaining exactly how much resources were consumed, what were the “optimal” staffing levels and stock of medical equipment, drugs, and protective gear. Sure surge capacity would be limited, but come on, its was inefficient to maintain warehouses of the stuff, indefinitely, that really did not help all the effort to achieve synergy.
Well, the richest part of the richest country in the world is scouring the planet for ventilators and drugs. NYC, the center of world finance has limited PPE for its medical staff. Despite the sound business decisions made.
Are there any serious political philosophers that propose “running the government like a business”? It seems like a concept that would be completely foreign to the Founding Fathers.
A business without a profit motive doesn’t make a lot of sense. And a government with a profit motive sounds positively dystopian.
Clearly what the people saying it mean is “don’t waste money on stupid stuff”. Which of course everybody agrees with - we just don’t agree on what’s stupid.
Running the country like a business is a bumper sticker, and not a plan.
I agree on the “should not” part, but disagree on the goals of companies and governments. Companies are to attempt to maximize profits for owners, while governments provide a list of services to their citizens, not least among them is law enforcement and a judicial system as part of their legitimate monopoly on force.
In terms of what they do, it means that while a company HAS to look at all facets of its operations in terms of profit/loss in order to maximize profits, it also means that governments specifically can NOT look at its operations with a profit/loss mentality, which kind of ruins the point of running it like a business.
I mean, policing doesn’t actually generate money in an overall sense, but aspects do generate cash. So the business-type decision would be for police departments to quit doing stuff like community engagement, SWAT-team hostage rescues, etc… and concentrate on paid event security, handing out tickets and citations that generate money, and other stuff that comes with a price tag.
Governments would scrap money-sinks like the departments that help the homeless, elderly, disabled, air quality, water quality, etc… and they’d concentrate on the ones that make money. And if they were truly being run like a business, they’d also levy new taxes/fees to make more money.
Now presumably this is also assuming that the citizens are somehow getting dividends back from this- otherwise, this whole “run the government as a business” would be wildly unpopular- more so than it already would, as the government would just be in the business of raking in cash through fees, citations, tickets and taxes, and providing services that can be charged for.
Running the government like a business is a simile not an actual plan. Businesses have to seek out efficiencies because without happy customers and fiscal discipline they will go out of business. Government does not have to please its customers or be fiscally disciplined. This is why much of the government is wasting a lot of money and getting very little accomplished. So when advocates say that government should be run like a business they just mean that they should try to do a better job and waste less money.
Usually they mean a little more than that; there’s usually a fair push to change the mentality as well- stuff like managing to metrics, six-sigma, streamlining, etc… Some of it makes sense, but it’s not universally pertinent.
Like I was saying in a different thread, procurement rules often hamstring governments from being ‘run like a business’. In particular the whole idea that you have to put it out to bid screws IT departments like nobody’s business. Rather than defining your problem, evaluating software packages, and then deciding on the best one, you often have to define your problem and then try to define guardrails that will ensure that the solution of whoever bids lowest will actually meet your needs. Companies don’t do this- they get demos, and they get pilots, and they don’t contract for years on end.
The flip side is that often the procurement process can work for government workers instead of against them; for example since starting work for a municipal government, I’ve noticed that a lot of creature-comfort type things are much better in government offices than in private companies. We have better pens, better chairs, better computers, etc… and they do stuff like clean the carpets more often, etc… This, I believe, is because private companies have to pay for that stuff directly- someone sees a year-end line for “carpet cleaning” and pitches a shit-fit. Government just bakes that into the budget every so often, and the carpets get cleaned.
There’s also a different mentality among the rank and file. In my experience most private company workers are always working with a level of fear and avarice- fear that they’ll lose their job, and avarice that they’ll get rewarded. Government doesn’t really have either- people don’t get fired easily, but nor is there much difference in rewards either. So motivation is different; lots of people do their jobs, but with a recognition that without the fear of being fired or lust for rewards, they have the freedom to go home at 5, or go to their kids’ performances, or go to the doctor or whatever without having to sweat worrying how that’ll affect their job. And they can to some degree not put up with BS from the public either, if it comes to that- they can send people who didn’t fill out the right forms away, and the fact that those people are pissed doesn’t matter- there’s no alternative.
So work gets done, but in a more measured, more employee-centric kind of way. Personally it’s refreshing; I HATED the fear/greed motivators at private companies- yeah, people get stuff done, but it’s a horrid environment for your employees’ health and mental state.
I think a lot of it is just the faith that the right has that private is always superior to public, which is a baseless religious belief and shouldn’t be used to run important institutions.
A major flaw with business is that nobody has any loyalty to the business. Not the employees, not the management and not the executives. They just want to get paid and go home, and if the business fails after they find a new job most won’t care. A lot of higher level executives will institute changes that offer short term benefits but damage the business long term. Since they know they won’t be there when it finally hits, its a price they are willing to pay. Most low level employees have no loyalty past their paycheck, and who can blame them. They know they’re expendable and replaceable.
A government should not be run like that. Ideally everyone in a government should want what works long term, even if there is a short term price to pay. Also government should look out for people where there is no financial incentive to look out for them. There is no financial incentive to provide health insurance to the elderly (since they can’t afford it) which is why we have programs like medicare. There is no financial incentive to provide electricity to small towns, which is why we had rural electrification programs under FDR.
How many politicians run for office saying they can cut taxes without affecting services by eliminating waste? And how many have found big sources of waste to eliminate?
Of course the current administration eliminated the Pandemic board as wasteful. How did that turn out? Having empty positions in Treasury saved lots of money. Now when there is a crisis people are doing three jobs, all badly because they are overloaded.