Big things are more likely to be inefficient and lack accountability. Governments are big, so are big corporations.

My experience working my way up from small companies didn't really bear this out. Budgets at my bigish company are strict and audited; having a contractor results in regular check-ins from managers to see if it can be cut off. The smallest companies I worked for were family slush funds.

Interestingly enough there is also evidence, that a government structure with much smaller parts (decentralization) is even more inefficent, and especially prone to corruption.

Yes, this. It's worth emphasizing whenever someone trots out the inefficient-government dogma.

Big corporations are inefficient and lack accountability. Governments are like big corporations in that manner, but also can't be held accountable by the market.

Corporate monstrosities can get away with being inefficient insofar as they can stay out of the red overall. Governments can get away with being inefficient insofar as we are forced to continue funding them via taxation. Note: giant, unaccountable, inefficient corporations usually became so large through monopolies created through government force (i.e. regulation).

Getting bigger any organization inevitably achieves a level of complexity where it becomes less, and less efficient by spending increasingly more resources on communication, and politics (in wider meaning of the word, not electoral). Do you think governments are small organizations? UPD: Apperently, I'm not the only one here who came to the same thought :-)

Right - the government is the world's largest employer, with all the inefficiencies that come with that title.

Which government? Which world?

I'd assume in almost every country, their federal government is the biggest employer, but that'd actually be interesting data to try and find.

The world's three largest employers are apparently the US DOD, the PLA of China, and ... Walmart.

Pretty much every government's budget is a significant fraction of a country's GDP. By significant I mean 30% or higher.

Governments lack accountability because there is no incentive to be sustainable. They just tax people more or run a higher deficit.

If Whole Foods wastes their money and goes out of business, I don’t care. I’m not being forced to pay them to make up for it.

At least private companies are losing their own earned money when they're inefficient, not someone else's.

Private companies are also dependent on a highly developed society to make everything they do possible.

There are many reasons that Google and Amazon didn't exist a thousand years ago, and it isn't solely due to the lack of computing technology.

And so it is entirely sensible that everyone should contribute towards keeping the highly developed society functioning as best as it can.

That has no relevance to whether google got money under the threat of violence (government taxation) or whether it’s money that was voluntarily given to them for goods/services.

Google wasting money is no different than my neighbor wasting money. The government wasting money is upsetting because it was taken from me supposedly to help the country.

Your perspective might be different if you pay very little in taxes.

How are dollars I have paid to the government any more mine than dollars I have paid to a company?

The government isn't supposed to run a profit. Therefore it becomes very difficult to know which part of it is wasteful and which isn't. Companies simply fail if they don't make a profit or have an outside funding source.

Not nearly quickly enough to be a curb on wasteful behaviour at large companies, and these are the ones that affect public policy.

Much faster than waste at a government is curbed, which is essentially not until the country’s currency collapses.

a company is accountable for the dollars you pay to it, and has to provide a commensurate value, or you take your business elsewhere. dollars paid to the government keep coming in no matter how wasteful their practices

That's not how people choose which health insurance policy is offered by their employer, or which private company won the contract to deliver their electricity.

You're right, at least in the case of highly regulated markets and when the state creates artificial monopolies (e.g. electricity).

I'll correct my original comment then:

At least private companies that compete in a relatively free market are losing their own earned money when they're inefficient, not someone else's.

That claim assumes a free market with perfect information, which is more than even Adam Smith was willing to do.

It’s still not right.

Private companies are losing money on behalf of their owners or shareholders.

You could say that the owners/shareholders are losing it themselves, because they voluntarily invested in the company, as opposed to the state, which takes your money even if you don't want it to.

I think most VCs would have some thoughts on the idea that a start up they just pumped millions into has lost "the start-ups money" in some stupid experiment and not theirs.

a key difference is that the largest shareholders are proportionally affected by the waste, and have a proportionately large amount of power to do something about it.

Those are some of the most regulated industries in existence. Those companies are "private" in the sense that private individuals reap profits, but their funding is secured by proxy through force (legislation/forceful-taxation).

Move to a location with multiple electricity providers. They exist all over.

If you don’t like your employer healthcare, quit and find another or buy it on your own. There is choice there and you just don’t like it.

I think you’ve confused a discussion about how individuals make choices about their purchases for a complaint about the results of my personal choices?

government has people with guns to force its income stream. corporations do not.

Corporations lobby the government to change laws to boost their profit. Those laws are enforced by guns.

It is a myth that corporations like free markets.

Which law forces me to pay google money?

There’s laws to make you buy insurance. (Not taking a side here pro or con)

yeah, more like any 'large organizations' without a dictator