It's a bit hilarious that there are attempts to convince people on a board for hackers and startup founders that state owned enterprises are great and amazing!!

Well, this is a forum where some degree of openmindedness is encouraged.

There have been far many more economic and capital systems on this rock than just American capitalism.

I use to think it’s open mindedness but I think it’s more hubris.

The other day a guy was complaining about being in jail for a time and how unfair it was that he had a criminal record. Lots of open minded people praising him.

Then a new user called him out for trying to get with a 12 year old. Yikes.

Regardless, China figured out some formula that has been incredibly successful the last couple decades. While I have doubts about this approach being sustainable, hindsight is 20/20 and we can’t predict the future.

The "formula" was capitalism, introduced by Deng Xiaoping, which lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty.

However, Deng also introduced China's 1-child policy (decidedly not capitalism), which is now beginning to seriously strain the system. The future is indeed uncertain.

Sure, then by all means share your evidence or data for a successful foreign state owned enterprise vs private enterprises in that country and other countries

Aramco

Aramco’s not a perfect example, as it was built up as a private corporation, and only nationalized as a relatively mature corporation. It also has a state-sanctioned monopoly on a very low-cost, high-price commodity. On the other hand and to be fair to Aramco, the Venezuelans managed to make a mess of their state oil monopoly.

Believe it or not but not everyone shares your enthusiasm towards the idea of privatizing United States Postal Service.

The idea? It’s already a private corporation.

Read the first line: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service

There you go.

For some reason I thought it was a quasi-private company owned partially by the government.

I'm going to assume that you're American.

You may find insight after reflecting on why a non-American knows this detail about the USPS while you don't.

I'm actually not.

I'm wondering why you know an obscure fact about postal service in a country you don't live in?

Because it is important to understand how the world works and America is a very influential country.

I think it’s good to be clear headed and acknowledge empirical evidence when it’s there. Context is useful in understanding the mechanisms of society!

“This thing goes against my orthodoxy therefore I refuse to see it” is exactly the sort of attitude that gets you far away from success.

For the record, I was merely saying it’s possible for a state owned enterprise to do things quickly, even if in practice most of them don’t. So much of the world is just about having the right kind of people at the right place, and that’s true in the public sphere and the private one.

Sure, then by all means share your evidence or data for a successful state owned enterprise vs private enterprises

I invite you to share your evidence that all private enterprises are strictly superior to any state owned enterprises, as that is clearly the stronger (and less likely to be valid) position.

I mean the topic of this thread is basically on how we have a bunch of well performing, pretty fast Chinese companies. This is happening despite these companies having a lot of buy-in from the state (down to outright ownership).

One might start trying to say "well a bunch of money from the state isn't enough to consider it a state owned enterprise", but then the contention is a bit more specific than just about being state owned.

It shouldn't take much effort, the results speak for themselves...

We did get to the moon with "state owned enterprises" anyway...

no profits involved in the moon effort, was not competing with any private enterprise at that time

State owned enterprises will outperform private in this environment when there is no option to compete as a private structure

> Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!

They can ... until they don't and there's no market correction in place anymore to keep them in check.

It's going to take another decade to feel this effect but it'll be there in full force.

This is sound analysis sans ideological bs. The system lacks a self-correction mechanism.

The profit driven system is supposed to self-correct. We see this today, with Boeing for example (yes /s).

Now beyond snark, we can ask is the same thing happening to us that happened to the "commies" with the 'defense and national security' establishment raising troubling doppelgangers of "state industry" from the body of "market driven" neo-liberal capitalist societies?

So, we see issue is not really "ownership" but rather establishments ..

In fairness, there is a good chance Boeing is self-correcting now. After deaths and lawsuits. If it were a governmental entity, it’s plausible that would not happen and the company would continue as before.

At least that’s the idea, I think. May as well steel man the argument.

> The profit driven system is supposed to self-correct. We see this today, with Boeing for example (yes /s).

I'd argue that Boeing is exactly what happens when some company becomes too big to fail and is close to state owned without any correction mechanism.

The company starts losing touch with the reality pretty quickly because they don't need to.

The danger when it's too close to the state is to double down and keep the problems to continue further.

Eh, Boeing is a defacto state owned enterprise. Check out their board composition if you don’t believe me.

Or are you more complaining about the lack of honesty in these defacto situations?

In China, any company larger than a tiny one is state controlled anyway - someone from the CCP needs to have a board seat, and everyone knows what happens if you anger the party.

>Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!

But it's extremely unlikely, given how often the opposite occurs instead in historical data.

How often does it really occur? In historical data, not in "free market" ideological narratives...

Considering the the stated goals of the Chinese government and past actions, I can’t see how anyone would consider the state owning a major share of a Chinese company to be either a net negative or neutral at best.

When you are subsidized by a billion tax payers, you better beat the private sector!

The more important question is if it is worth it, since money spent is zero sum.

It's not "zero sum" if you have exports...

Also, we could use more zero sum that redistributes wealth towards huge masses, even if that means some billionaires will have fewer billions...