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mirmor23today at 8:21 PM3 repliesview on HN

> This is such a ridiculous, preposterously self-confident claim. Claims like this give HN (and engineers in general) a bad reputation.

all you've done is use some fancy words to discredit OP's claim.

what makes you think people who have built all the extremely complex and robust technical infrastructure are unable to comprehend of this amazingly complex government that you seem to be putting on a pedestal, let alone design a better one?

how about even a simpler question: why are almost all governments inefficient (except may be few like tax department) and are full of red-carpet paper pushers?


Replies

kybernetikostoday at 9:51 PM

> why are almost all governments inefficient

Efficiency is not the aim of government, except in constrained ways. Efficiency would generally run contrary to governance, transparency, innovation, responsiveness, general applicability, justice, rule following, considering the long term and not just the short term, recognition of human dignity, security etc.

All those things have a cost that takes away from maximum delivery efficiency, but generally societies decide that the cost is worth it.

georgeecollinstoday at 9:20 PM

>> how about even a simpler question: why are almost all governments inefficient (except may be few like tax department) and are full of red-carpet paper pushers?

That you can just assert that as though it is a fact universally known says a lot where your head is at. If the private sector is so efficient, how come US health care is so much more expensive than some public health systems with better outcomes? How come public utilities are sometimes cheaper than private ones? Why do public fire departments exist at all, why not have contractors? Etc.

I agree government is often inefficient. The world is just obviously more complicated then you are considering.

SepiaSapienttoday at 8:43 PM

us-east-1 goes down and half of the "extremely complex and robust technical infrastructure" that Silicon Valley types have built stops working.

The average computer toucher with delusions of grandeur would kill themselves if they had to moderate a public assembly or do a public facing job in a municipal office. Of course you believe that's peon work and your superior intellect with unlimited power as leader would build something better, cue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project