There is clearly a spectrum here and blindly labelling all government as useless is wrong.
They refer to the fact that taxes is the pot the government will draw money from whenever any of their enterprises becomes unprofitable. If the pot is too small to fund all the projects they can simply grow out by taxing the populace more.
When an unprofitable business in the private sector runs out of investor money it sells all its assets and eventually collapses.
Tax collection is part of government and in this case is an useful counterexample to the endless "all government is bad" messages we regularly hear on HN.
>When an unprofitable business in the private sector runs out of investor money it sells all its assets and eventually collapses.
Yes, and unpopular governments get voted out (assuming they are democratic).
As an aside, I would love to read a biography of Bezos the individual, not businessman. We all too often shrink the complex lives of humans into labels that fit 280 characters. Alas, that'll likely not happen anytime soon.
(You can listen to the article thanks to the YC-backed Audm. Great content, passable app)
[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/what-je...