But we’ve spent 45 years hollowing out those organizations in the US.
It is run by commissioners chosen by the mayors of the cities they serve and a few are chosen by the county.
They all have graduate degrees in engineering. The employees are similarly qualified.
I suspect the reason they do such a good job is that theyre insulated from the rest of government.
Bureaucracies make change happen slowly. They preserve the status quo.
And yes, we've been busy gutting the gov't status quo for decades.
My point wasn't that all governments fail at sewer maintenance but that governments aren't automatically superior at long term planning, and in many ways have structural problems that can inhibit long term planning, whereas a private sector company may not have those same mal-incentives.
Furthermore, private companies can fail, be sold for scrap and parts to competitors, and go nonexistent whereas governments don't. If pets.com loses too much money, they can go get a little more and extend the runway, but eventually they go out of business and other companies get their market share. If my government loses too much money, greater amounts are borrowed, taxes are raised, and the money furnace continues to be fed.
Look at price/earnings ratios. They have crept up from the 80s which means investors are willing to pay more for each dollar of future earnings. Look at individual companies like Amazon that was extremely valuable while losing money for years and even now its very thin. Look at all the VC companies throwing money at companies with just an idea. How about private industry, like billions of trees being planted every year by private businesses just so they can harvest them in a few decades.
This doesn’t come anywhere near passing the sniff test.
There are plenty of companies with very bad business models that still have a decent stock price (Spotify, Uber, Lyft).
Yes I know that you can’t have a P/e without a profit.
And some of the most valuable companies are in the oil industry extracting non renewable resources.
bureaucracies that are not allowed to die do not face this evolutionary mechanism of creative destruction- this includes governments but also a lot of business edge cases like PG&E for example.
But politics, (at least democracy) has the double edged sword of election cycles. This heavily incentivizes short term thinking.
Ex. Should the mayor pour millions into sewer system maintenance or millions in flashy projects and waste?
If the sewer maintainance is done right, none of the electorate notices. But the electorate will see the flashy spending and vapid superficial projects. And who cares if we defer sewer maintainance, that will only cause issues 20 years from now.