"But we could similarly argue that if the government could have solved the problem, it would have already have done so."
I don't think you can, for the simple reason that the private sector contains more entities acting, thinking, and trying things in parallel than the government does. Congress literally can't vote on 10,000 issues per year, for example.
Now, *usually* people immediately demanding new government action in response to a (perceived?) problem are wrong, and oftentimes private solutions either exist but are underused or unused, or are actively prevented from arising because of past government actions. This applies in support of a whole lot of your past proposals, obviously.
True, but at every level, there are many fewer governments than there are companies or citizens who could start companies, and those governments are not experts in the fields that they'd need to understand to quickly and efficiently come up with and implement solutions to most problems. And of course being able to consult outside experts doesn't overcome that limitation, it just increases the scope of what a governing body could do if it were willing to put in additional time and money.
There are classes of problem that government can address that private industry cannot address.
Private enterprise can address a problem if:
1.) The problem is primarily a concern to people rich enough to pay to solve it. (Example problems where private enterprise alone would fail: health care for the indigent, low-quality school systems in poor communities, crime in poor communities).
2.) Private enterprise is not prevented by law from effectively acting to solve the problem (Example problems: police corruption, excess copyright terms, state highway congestion, regulatory capture).
3.) The problem does not involve a situation like tragedy of the commons where 100 people are afflicted by the problem, each person would be willing to pay up to $10 to solve the problem for themselves, but the only available solution is to pay $500 to solve it for all 100 people together, where everyone benefits regardless of whether they helped pay. (Example problems: pollution, overfishing)
4.) The problem is not the result of a failure of competition. (Example problems: excess length of TOS of online services, prices being set higher than the marginal cost of production, "confusopoly" where the customer can't figure out what is the best value, companies deliberately impairing or locking down the functionality of the products they sell).
It seems to me that the main reason people demand that the government fixes a given problem vs the private sector is simply that the government is responsible for its people, you know who they are, so this path is actionable. Whereas demanding that the private sector solve it doesn't do anything. Who specifically are you demanding it from? Do you expect some random entrepreneur to feel obligated to start a new company now? Why don't you start the company yourself?
Notice how this changes if the problem in question was caused by a specific company. For instance dumping chemicals. Then people know who they are demanding from, and will sue the company to get the problem fixed.
> When a problem is serious, and "something must be done", why do folks so often assume that it must be governments who do it?
In democratic nations, if people want something to be done, they feel the government is naturally an extension of their will. Cultural and economic forces are seen as the *source* of problems, and something must be done, they don't feel like waiting for the same cultural or economic market forces to solve that problem.
The speed of private solutions is limited by what governments will allow them to do. None of the pharma companies could have produced a COVID vaccine in just a year without the Trump Administration's "Operation Warp Speed" basically setting aside the usual FDA requirements. Wal-Mart or Amazon can't rush supplies to a disaster region if government insists things be done according to their rules.
SpaceX is an interesting case study: once Elon Musk brought adequate capital and devised a business model not dependent on NASA contracts, his company could develop rockets with amazing speed and then simply offer launch services once the vehicles were operational. Compare that to the glacial pace of aerospace contractors working for the government, who have to follow approved procedures at every stage of the project to comply with their funding conditions. How long did it take the F-35 to go from proposal to flying? A generation?
"Because if the private sector could handle it, they would already be doing so....But we could similarly argue that if the government could have solved the problem, it would have already have done so."
Here is one way to save this line of argument. Perhaps, a particular course of action is not economically efficient, at least with respect to internalized costs and benefits. Then, the private sector would not implement such action. Such action, however, could have changed in political support. It might have had insufficient political support in the past but now has sufficient support. In that case, then government could now implement such action even if it did not in the past. When people assume that government must be the one to "do something", they typically are referring to something whose political support has increased even if the underlying economic case has not necessarily gotten better.
Government can often implement any given proposed "solution" more quickly than the private sector because it does not require buy-in from many relevant parties. For example, government can spend trillions of Other People's money without their consent. Private sector solutions must pass a certain type of vetting process to ensure that they are economically efficient, at least with respect to internalized costs and benefits. In contrast, government solutions can move forward even if totally inefficient with respect to internalized and externalized costs and benefits. Bypassing vetting allows one to move faster, albeit not necessarily with good results.
If one is politically powerful or belongs to a politically powerful faction, then one can indeed often "do something" more quickly through government than through the private sector: spend more (of Other People's) money more quickly, impose more stringent requirements and policies without buy-in from other parties, and bypass market vetting and accountability.
Yes I know that this is about how fast, not how worthwhile. But private enterprise doesn't respond to a problem if the cost/benefit analysis shows that it is not worth solving. There's a miracle drug (forgive my senile memory but you may know which it is) that costs a hundred thousand a year. The wailers want to force the manufacturer to retail it for a thousand a year. Which would make it not worthwhile and the manufacturer would stop producing miracle drugs. Other wailers want to stop brewers from promoting trans acceptance in their marketing, and most brewers have indeed stopped, if they ever started. And so on.
In the context of government “solutions”, your example of a fast-acting government is politicians cancelling your government funded program in one day after receiving mass complaints from constituents. From this we are supposed to infer that governments are capable of solving real world problems just as quickly?
When current government policies are what are slowing or preventing private actors from dealing with a problem, and a solution is for the government to get out of the way, after which private solutions will be developed, one might describe the situation as calling for a “government solution”: the government needs to *act* by *canceling its current policies*. Unfortunately, governments are usually very reluctant to take such action.
With respect to out medical issues, they need to quit building,increasing the population. Then the hospital would be of size to service. Now the emergency doors are closed with no beds. Great read. Thank you
Even people who believe that government is generally good and private industries usually driven by greed are also biased to suppose that it is greed that will climb every mountain and turn over every stone. Thus, the question isn't speed off the block, but whether or not anyone is even on the block getting ready to start. Also deep down, I believe that most folks who want to get the government involved know that their solutions will not be popular and will need to be imposed by force. I don't believe they are likely to admit this to themselves or to anyone else though.
Their are a myriad of factors to consider for govt. not responding to a problem.
The lack of speed in response to an issue is based on position retention to public sentiment on issue intensity. If a Senator can avoid missing a golf game by not doing research, or committee brainstorming to solve an issue they will provided polling says the lawyer/bancer can maintain their seat next election.
If private sector does not respond to a problem they have done the due diligence to either Know their current profit model is not effected, or if the issue could effect their profit model what are the costs to advertise/manipulate opinion/acceptance of said difficulty.
The prevalent view that govt. should, or is responsible to solve a problem is only Royal court / Serf social tradition handed down by parents and public school factory worker mentality programming.
You of all people are well aware, probably known since high school, the hierarchy/caste shiny object 'culture' of the biped is a farce
Your welcome.
p.s. the Domestication comment on Ryan Graves Merged 'cast, his face... in accepting chatteldom/pen stock/petri dish denizen... almost made me spit my coffee.
"But we could similarly argue that if the government could have solved the problem, it would have already have done so."
I don't think you can, for the simple reason that the private sector contains more entities acting, thinking, and trying things in parallel than the government does. Congress literally can't vote on 10,000 issues per year, for example.
Now, *usually* people immediately demanding new government action in response to a (perceived?) problem are wrong, and oftentimes private solutions either exist but are underused or unused, or are actively prevented from arising because of past government actions. This applies in support of a whole lot of your past proposals, obviously.
But there are many governments; not everything needs to be done at national level. And the private sector also has capacity limits on its actions.
True, but at every level, there are many fewer governments than there are companies or citizens who could start companies, and those governments are not experts in the fields that they'd need to understand to quickly and efficiently come up with and implement solutions to most problems. And of course being able to consult outside experts doesn't overcome that limitation, it just increases the scope of what a governing body could do if it were willing to put in additional time and money.
There are classes of problem that government can address that private industry cannot address.
Private enterprise can address a problem if:
1.) The problem is primarily a concern to people rich enough to pay to solve it. (Example problems where private enterprise alone would fail: health care for the indigent, low-quality school systems in poor communities, crime in poor communities).
2.) Private enterprise is not prevented by law from effectively acting to solve the problem (Example problems: police corruption, excess copyright terms, state highway congestion, regulatory capture).
3.) The problem does not involve a situation like tragedy of the commons where 100 people are afflicted by the problem, each person would be willing to pay up to $10 to solve the problem for themselves, but the only available solution is to pay $500 to solve it for all 100 people together, where everyone benefits regardless of whether they helped pay. (Example problems: pollution, overfishing)
4.) The problem is not the result of a failure of competition. (Example problems: excess length of TOS of online services, prices being set higher than the marginal cost of production, "confusopoly" where the customer can't figure out what is the best value, companies deliberately impairing or locking down the functionality of the products they sell).
It seems to me that the main reason people demand that the government fixes a given problem vs the private sector is simply that the government is responsible for its people, you know who they are, so this path is actionable. Whereas demanding that the private sector solve it doesn't do anything. Who specifically are you demanding it from? Do you expect some random entrepreneur to feel obligated to start a new company now? Why don't you start the company yourself?
Notice how this changes if the problem in question was caused by a specific company. For instance dumping chemicals. Then people know who they are demanding from, and will sue the company to get the problem fixed.
„Something must be done” calls for a collective action. What is more it suggests coercion in some form.
> When a problem is serious, and "something must be done", why do folks so often assume that it must be governments who do it?
In democratic nations, if people want something to be done, they feel the government is naturally an extension of their will. Cultural and economic forces are seen as the *source* of problems, and something must be done, they don't feel like waiting for the same cultural or economic market forces to solve that problem.
Another possibility is that there is no real need to solve the problem at this point in time.
The speed of private solutions is limited by what governments will allow them to do. None of the pharma companies could have produced a COVID vaccine in just a year without the Trump Administration's "Operation Warp Speed" basically setting aside the usual FDA requirements. Wal-Mart or Amazon can't rush supplies to a disaster region if government insists things be done according to their rules.
SpaceX is an interesting case study: once Elon Musk brought adequate capital and devised a business model not dependent on NASA contracts, his company could develop rockets with amazing speed and then simply offer launch services once the vehicles were operational. Compare that to the glacial pace of aerospace contractors working for the government, who have to follow approved procedures at every stage of the project to comply with their funding conditions. How long did it take the F-35 to go from proposal to flying? A generation?
"Many problems are best solved by ending or reducing something we have."
Yep. I'm so tired of hearing about "growth" and "building" as self-evident paths to all that ails us.
https://hbr.org/2022/02/when-subtraction-adds-value
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y.epdf?sharing_token=sBIjOy0dsTgoGKxzOJxtE9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0POYT0vYG1qrnyNcjjIPoEnrc2_WIm0F6hOw5r07NBlwAD7UMSCV_9sRCN--9sDKkJsiTNo7Ghqe6Oml7jhfeDhPnIFQhn7Rsqhc3wXahuKZdJO2i9MGOFvVC7Az6wfEatlm_Nb_QYE2GY-prPkSiTb5OM8iF3Zpx3Xwmx7_1-u4l9439NNbi1GZuRSzsGxXgg%3D
"Because if the private sector could handle it, they would already be doing so....But we could similarly argue that if the government could have solved the problem, it would have already have done so."
Here is one way to save this line of argument. Perhaps, a particular course of action is not economically efficient, at least with respect to internalized costs and benefits. Then, the private sector would not implement such action. Such action, however, could have changed in political support. It might have had insufficient political support in the past but now has sufficient support. In that case, then government could now implement such action even if it did not in the past. When people assume that government must be the one to "do something", they typically are referring to something whose political support has increased even if the underlying economic case has not necessarily gotten better.
Government can often implement any given proposed "solution" more quickly than the private sector because it does not require buy-in from many relevant parties. For example, government can spend trillions of Other People's money without their consent. Private sector solutions must pass a certain type of vetting process to ensure that they are economically efficient, at least with respect to internalized costs and benefits. In contrast, government solutions can move forward even if totally inefficient with respect to internalized and externalized costs and benefits. Bypassing vetting allows one to move faster, albeit not necessarily with good results.
If one is politically powerful or belongs to a politically powerful faction, then one can indeed often "do something" more quickly through government than through the private sector: spend more (of Other People's) money more quickly, impose more stringent requirements and policies without buy-in from other parties, and bypass market vetting and accountability.
Yes I know that this is about how fast, not how worthwhile. But private enterprise doesn't respond to a problem if the cost/benefit analysis shows that it is not worth solving. There's a miracle drug (forgive my senile memory but you may know which it is) that costs a hundred thousand a year. The wailers want to force the manufacturer to retail it for a thousand a year. Which would make it not worthwhile and the manufacturer would stop producing miracle drugs. Other wailers want to stop brewers from promoting trans acceptance in their marketing, and most brewers have indeed stopped, if they ever started. And so on.
In the context of government “solutions”, your example of a fast-acting government is politicians cancelling your government funded program in one day after receiving mass complaints from constituents. From this we are supposed to infer that governments are capable of solving real world problems just as quickly?
When current government policies are what are slowing or preventing private actors from dealing with a problem, and a solution is for the government to get out of the way, after which private solutions will be developed, one might describe the situation as calling for a “government solution”: the government needs to *act* by *canceling its current policies*. Unfortunately, governments are usually very reluctant to take such action.
With respect to out medical issues, they need to quit building,increasing the population. Then the hospital would be of size to service. Now the emergency doors are closed with no beds. Great read. Thank you
Even people who believe that government is generally good and private industries usually driven by greed are also biased to suppose that it is greed that will climb every mountain and turn over every stone. Thus, the question isn't speed off the block, but whether or not anyone is even on the block getting ready to start. Also deep down, I believe that most folks who want to get the government involved know that their solutions will not be popular and will need to be imposed by force. I don't believe they are likely to admit this to themselves or to anyone else though.
Robin,
Their are a myriad of factors to consider for govt. not responding to a problem.
The lack of speed in response to an issue is based on position retention to public sentiment on issue intensity. If a Senator can avoid missing a golf game by not doing research, or committee brainstorming to solve an issue they will provided polling says the lawyer/bancer can maintain their seat next election.
If private sector does not respond to a problem they have done the due diligence to either Know their current profit model is not effected, or if the issue could effect their profit model what are the costs to advertise/manipulate opinion/acceptance of said difficulty.
The prevalent view that govt. should, or is responsible to solve a problem is only Royal court / Serf social tradition handed down by parents and public school factory worker mentality programming.
You of all people are well aware, probably known since high school, the hierarchy/caste shiny object 'culture' of the biped is a farce
Your welcome.
p.s. the Domestication comment on Ryan Graves Merged 'cast, his face... in accepting chatteldom/pen stock/petri dish denizen... almost made me spit my coffee.
good one.