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Re:Big government does not need to be reinvented, but elimin... by techsupporter on Friday January 03, 2014 @08:20PM (#7009418)
"Rather big government needs to be eliminated. Full stop. And the entrepreneurs in the private sector need to be unleashed."

When the entrepreneurs in the private sector choose not to tackle problems that aren't "sexy" or "novel" or "profitable," what then? When those capable businesses choose not to serve a particular segment of the population because those folks are "difficult" or "expensive" or "not sufficiently numerous," what then? The problem is that in a government bound[1] by equal protection, it must, in all reality, be at least equally available to all people. Skipping this step is a luxury afforded to private enterprise.

I can understand why no one wants to be a federal government employee these days. They are constantly demeaned as being leeches on society, as being incompetent, and used as political footballs. It's no wonder that government, at any level, can't attract talent. This is a bad thing, in my opinion, as it prevents the efficient functioning of a system that does have a role in a country of 300+ million people. The exact contours of that role have been in debate for approximately the last 230 years or so, but the essential question of whether or not a government should exist has rarely been in doubt. Instead of drowning it in a bathtub, how about making our government be worth a damn?

1 - Carping about whether or not the U.S. government adheres to the Constitution can be inserted here.

Re:Big government does not need to be reinvented, but elimin... by jborica on Friday January 03, 2014 @08:36PM (#7009490)
As bad as first semester philosophy majors can be with oversimplifying problems with governance, they hold no candle to the silicon valley libertarianpreneurs such as this. This is a Fox News rant filtered for a wealthier audience.
Re:Big government does not need to be reinvented, but elimin... by leggo2m on Friday January 03, 2014 @08:54PM (#7009542)
But we just need to 'unleash' all the awesome private sector entrepreneurs who are successfully tackling the problem of the lack of affordable healthcare for millions of Americans.

Oh wait, there are no private sector entrepreneurs who succeeded in solving that problem? It must be because of all the 'big gubmint' and their regulations.

How does this trash make it into my HN feed?

Re:Big government does not need to be reinvented, but elimin... by mcgain on Friday January 03, 2014 @08:31PM (#7009471)
"Anyone who has worked for a true startup knows that the most "agile" form of software development environment is a small group of private sector engineers with a vision and a desire to create a product that will make them all fabulously wealthy. It is only in such an environment that all members of the team work long hours with a common purpose, jumping into the breach to address any and all problems without regard for immediate compensation or consideration of "who's responsibility it is." The private startup company is the only truly "agile" development environment."

Agile != Working long hours. It is also perfectly possible to be 'agile' in small teams within a larger organization.

Re:Big government does not need to be reinvented, but elimin... by res0nat0r on Friday January 03, 2014 @08:09PM (#7009381)
> It describes how the federal government, after the epic failure of the healthcare.gov rollout, is reviewing how it manages high-tech projects.

FYI: The reforms enacted by the ACA does not consist solely of the healthcare.gov website, it is a small portion of a much larger picture. So I wouldn't paint ObamaCare as a epic failure just because the website was having issues the first few months of it's rollout.

Re:Big government does not need to be reinvented, but elimin... by xname on Friday January 03, 2014 @08:24PM (#7009435)
The quoted sentence says "the epic failure of the healthcare.gov rollout". It did not "paint ObamaCare as a epic failure just because the website was having issues the first few months of it's rollout".

However, I do agree the healthcare.gov website is just a small portion of a much larger picture, so we can also expect an epic epic epic ... epic failure of the "much larger" whatever.