Interop requirements may serve better than direct government control.

At the very least, it’s worth being clear eyed with respect to the quality of government run services.

What would be necessary for the government to run a service like Amazon successfully? Is our government today capable of doing such a thing? I think the answer is clearly no.

Government run services can be absolutely excellent though. It’s not a pure truth that government run = subpar.

You're absolutely right. They can be.

With that critical truth that you've touched on said... American civilian resident-facing government services tend to be organized and run with all the strong incentives being to make it good for everyone but the residents. Usually the workforce has a strong union and management has their goals, but us users have no strong force to exert except distant oversight in the form of Congress.

Some organizations escape this. Others do so partially at best. Most do not. State DMVs are notorious pits of utter misery, and this is generally an honest reflection of experience.

You can report a passport lost online, but you have to file a DS-11 in black ink at a post office to request a new one. This process can be easy or hard unpredictably, depending mainly on how nice the postal worker feels that day. There are few to no organizational incentives towards better customer service.

Why black ink? Because the State Department says so. And they don't have to care what you think.

> What would be necessary for the government to run a service like Amazon successfully?

Anti-corruption measures to stop politicians from sabotaging those services. E.g., USPS.

Idk if USPS is truly an example of excellence, even if they are an example of govt excellence. In 2020 they shipped 70 billion packages, of which 90% was spam.

> In 2020 they shipped 70 billion packages, of which 90% was spam.

Is that their problem, though? I don't think anyone expects the post to police package contents.

They do police package contents to a degree, but only for actual crimes. Postal spam isn't a crime (and probably shouldn't be, as much as I'd like to get rid of the spam).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspectio...

They do police package contents, pretty heavily even. They allow spam (presorted bulk mail in post office terms) because the spammers have a strong lobby.

Well 90% of products on amazon are shit too, maybe some made with child labour. Are you sure this comparisom will be favourable?

The GPS has like no downtime, same for the enrgy grid and the post office.

Not that i see calue in nationalising Amazon, but i thi k it would be fine

> What would be worse in that situation?

It would be by far worse to not have Amazon, or dump their market share to shady chinese competitors like ali express.

Aliexpress is Ebay, not amazon. That being said, both feature a decent return policy, shitty and invariably wrong item description, no ability to properly filter goods and fake reviewes.

The only dailight I see between them is the shipoing time and language.

You said "X would be great" but didn't explain why, so a response like "No, X would be bad" is equally lacking in details. Its hard to discuss anything without an underlying basis for the conversation. There is no precedent for the US government providing services comparable to Amazon at comparable cost/benefit.

I explained why, commercial goods and services would have a safe sponsored forum to sell their wares without worrying about a profit hungry giant measuring their success, cloning their business and driving them to bankruptcy.

You have identified a goal, which is a great start, and is definitely worth considering. However, I see a few gaps when connecting the dots. At present, there is nothing stopping one vendor from cloning another vendors products and services and marketing them outside of Amazon. So many products these days are just white-label goods made in China and rebranded elsewhere. Also, should the government really be in involved in managing logistics, storing and shipping smartphones and sneakers all over the world? I don't see this as the best use of our tax-dollars.

When was the last time you used government-run software? Was it a good experience?

All the time. Yes. I've also had bad experiences with plenty of private companies.

Less than a month ago, to sign up for my COVID vaccine. Yes, it was a good experience.

Yes actually, I recently signed up for my vaccination online via the GoVAX system, was flawless and painless: https://massvax.maryland.gov/

I've used plenty of for-profit software that did essentially the same thing but which fell flat on it's face in terms of UI/UX.

Amtrak is great. I generally like government-run services. Have you tried dealing with your local cable monopoly? It's a nightmare -- why not get the government involved so things work more smoothly and there is more competition?