> The competence of private companies in the U.S. shouldn't enrage you, that's one of the U.S.'s strengths.

That's a misleading and false generalization. You can't cherrypick one of the better prepared companies to make a statement about companies in general. Especially when there's nonsense all over the news about other companies like GameStop and Guitar Center claiming to be essential retail against all reason: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/coronavirus-esse....

This is interesting because the GP, I think, didn't intend to say "private" to mean "privately held", but I think it's worthwhile to note that GameStop and Guitar Center are publicly traded while H-E-B is still family owned.

H-E-B does a lot of things that are more benevolent than the kind of behavior that we're used to seeing from publicly-traded organizations and I can't help but wonder if the private ownership (truly private, as opposed to publicly-traded) has something to do with that.

H-E-B is one of the things I will really miss if I ever have to leave Texas. They're always there any time there is any kind of disaster, to provide relief. I've even heard that they treat their software engineers well (they bought Favor). They're really a one-of-a-kind company. I hope they never IPO.

> H-E-B does a lot of things that are more benevolent than the kind of behavior that we're used to seeing from publicly-traded organizations and I can't help but wonder if the private ownership (truly private, as opposed to publicly-traded) has something to do with that.

I think I tentatively agree with you. I work for a company that was once privately held by a small number of owners who were primarily invested in that company. The impression I got from the old-timers was that management was a lot more generous back then. However, once they sold to a publicly traded firm, the squeeze started and it's never really stopped.

Sometimes an individual person can be satisfied with their wealth and position and focus on other things, and individuals can be influenced by moral and ethical ideas. The market, on the other hand, is like an amoral monster that's always eating but never satisfied.

How is finding an anecdote a invalidate a generalization? The majority of the most powerful global corporations are US companies. They don’t (in general) get that way by being incompetent.

You can't support a point about private companies in the US in general with a point solely about powerful global corporations that are US companies.

I'd argue that once you reach a certain level of size, it's very easy to fail upwards.

See: Amazon. They are incompetent in many aspects of their business, but due to their sheer size that incompetence is shielded by their other investments.

I don't think the GP is enraged that there are competent private sector actors. I'd guess they're enraged that this competence can't be transferred to the places where it could matter 10x or 100x more. I feel kind of similarly.

An obvious example is that the president could have picked a highly competent, non-partisan manager as the head of his coronavirus team. Regardless of his competence, Vice President Pence is clearly a polarizing figure without a track record of dealing with crises of this scale.

This crisis could really benefit from a highly competent manager who could bust heads and sweep away bureaucratic hurdles. But that person would need to be someone honestly trusted by all stakeholders. We're seeing lots of actors maneuvering to gain ideological advantage even in the midst of these terrible events (shame on them). I don't even know if such a person exists any more but their non-existence would mean the US is in for serious trouble.

The public sector also has a fixed pay scale for seniority that tops out around 160k a year salary.

We could pay government employees more, but then voters would complain.

Dr. Fauci is pretty popular as a choice like that right now

I'm obviously enraged by the incompetence of the federal response, not the strength of H-E-B's.

You get what you pay for, basically. If governments were to pay top dollar and actually fire incompetent people, I'm sure our world would be a much better place.

Not everywhere though. Governments in Singapore, Japan, South Korea amongst other places have had an excellent response.

I feel that the successes in those countries result more from their cultures than their governments.

One of the common criticisms of those countries is the singular culture that creates social pressure. Social pressure can go a long way in these sorts of events.

Taking these tiny, mono-cultural, rich countries and comparing them to the world's leading superpower does not make a strong argument.

> That's government work for you

> Here are some government's where it worked

> Those don't count because otherwise I'd have to retire my tired old screed from the 90's that the government can't do anything right. The government should be run like a business, dagnabit.

Did my summary miss anything?

Countries =/= governments. In fact, countries are primarily made up by non-government people and non-government organizations.

Sometimes the great things that a country accomplishes are due to it's great people.

Comparing a large multicultural richer country does seem weird.

Indeed a tiny 126 million soul tiny country can not be compared with a country of 330 million souls. Also the USA having 1.5x the GDP / Capita does make Japan the richer country.

These countries unlike the USA have more economically and socially interventionist governments. I do wonder if the culture of Germany is closer to Japan or USA. To tackle a pandemic do you need more leadership or culture?

I mean beyond national security where is USA leadership?

Japan has high population density but a small piece of land, and it is probably the most mono-cultural population of it's size in the world.

I agree that we need in America is stronger leadership. But we shouldn't be looking to the government for leadership. The government should follow the will of the people, not lead it.

Democratic governments act when they feel the people want them to act. The reason the US government didn't act early is because the majority of Americans were not yet concerned about the coronavirus until recently, and it would have been unpopular.

Japan would not have acted so strictly and so early if their culture and respect for community weren't strong. It would have been unpopular and ineffective.

What's needed for Americans to tackle these types of issues better is more trust in the community and stronger citizen leadership.

> the USA having 1.5x the GDP / Capita does make Japan the richer country.

???

I'd guess they made a mistake in thinking that because the population ratio is greater than 1.5 (it's 2.6), therefore the GDP / Capita ratio they reference is then favoring Japan. That of course would need to be run against actual national GDP, not per capita. US per capita GDP was about 60% higher than Japan as of the end of 2019.

No, I think it was intended as sarcasm; 126 million is also not much less than 330 million.

Singapore is anything but a mono-cultural country and is only recently rich. Basically through extreme government competence they made themselves rich and yes, their society definitely has Chinese at the top but unlike the US, the society is not completely riven by racial strife.

Singapore has been in the 'first-world' economic tier for at least 30 years. Their economic success is not recent. 30 years ago their GDP per capita was on par with Hong Kong and Spain, ahead of Greece, and far ahead of Portugal or South Korea (and it was nearly 40 times higher than China).

China is a legitimate story of recent economic success. China is only now at a stage of median development that Singapore reached in the 1970s and 1980s.

Singapore is basically run like a business though, isn't it? Also, it's more of a city-state than a nation, in my mind. Same for Taiwan and Hong Kong.

How do you explain the early government-enforced shutdowns, and expansive testing programs? I think the response from the general population has also been better in some of these countries, but there is a marked difference in the government responses.

In democracies, governments are lead by their people.

The government will generally do what its people want it to do. Americans did not give a damn about corona-virus for a long time.

If the people wanted shutdowns, they would have gotten them.

The social difference is only relevant in that it results in a different governing style. US style lock-downs have so far been very voluntary in nature compared to what several other countries are doing.

That's your government's work for you.

> The competence of private companies shouldn't enrage you, that's one of the their strengths.

When you have to compete, you have to develop competence to survive. Only those that don't have to compete (monopolies) or those that survive despite incompetence (bailouts) are the exceptions.

This seems like a bit of an odd concession, considering the businesses that are being impacted the most by the coronavirus are smaller, local businesses which run on thin margins. These local businesses are also often the most competitive because of having to compete with both other local businesses and larger ones.

The competence of private companies only really applies to a very narrow subset of corporations.

need to throw the federal bureaucracy into the 'don't have to compete to survive bucket'

They fall under the category of monopolies.

that is quite the leap from a single corporation's actions.