Your post is ideological - sweeping application of game-theory style logic, but without the evidence to suggest that the logic applies to this case.
1) 'Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently' is overly simplified. The most obvious counter-example is that the US and the UK spend the same amount of tax money as a percentage of GDP on healthcare; the former gets limited programs covering a minority of the population, the latter gets a universal health service (albeit obviously with limitations).
2) On what basis do you say that no large scale NGO disaster responses work out well? I would say that is an incredibly difficult conclusion to draw.
Yep.
> No qualifications.
Indeed. I've seen enough of government projects on all levels (Municipal, Provincial, Country and European) to know this to be factually true and if you would so much as read the freely available news sources you'd probably agree with that unqualified statement.
Government projects that are on-time, within the budget, useful and good value for the money spent are very rare.
> Brakenshire's contention is that there is clearly a broad spectrum of efficiencies (and offers an empirical example), which is a call for a more nuanced view of things.
There is indeed a broad spectrum of efficiencies, though I'd rather re-word that as 'there is a broad spectrum of in-efficiencies', since efficient would indicate something close to the theoretically achievable.
Really, I don't know what your experience is but I've been fairly interested in the machinations of the various governments that I've found myself a subject of over my life-time to date and efficient is just about the last term that I would use to describe any of them, and most of the literature seems to agree with that.
There's a reason that published, peer-reviewed studies are important. They're the antidote to people like you who hang around the water-cooler chat of newspapers and figure they've got a handle on extraordinarily large systems such as governance and economies. Turns out these things are nuanced and very complicated, and the fact that you don't recognize that is what makes you an ideologue.
Yes, you don't have to look hard to find examples of government projects that are plagued by agency problems, incompetence, and grift. However, those exact same things play out in the private sector. They're problems endemic in /any/ large undertaking.
You feel it's worse in the public sector. I feel it's just as bad in the private sector (just that it's reported much, much less). You've worked in both sectors, I've also worked in both. Only way to tell which of us is right is some sort of serious, objective research. My stance is that newspapers and other popular media are just noise, especially since government waste is such a easy go-to narrative (a good example being the "$20,000 hammer").
In private sector, let's face it. Someone owns that business. The owner looses money if they are ineffective. Not all of us. Not all taxpayers. That's part of the reason why private business are better at not loosing too much money. Because this is Owner's money. He/she will make sure not too loose too much. Not to waste it. If he/she doesnt, more cost effective competition will take their place.
I would like to recommend watsi: https://watsi.org/
You can donate to concrete people and, they give you an accurate report, after the fact, of what happened. I think we need more charities like them. Maybe something with education?
Disclaimer: I'm not related except as a donator.
Most manufacturers these days run super-lean, often not stockpiling inventory at all.
All kind of charity organizations have problems with accountability.
> More than 80 per cent of the money you donate goes directly to our humanitarian activities.
Interesting that you mention that. Charity evaluator Givewell has evaluated hundreds of charities based on whether they actually deliver results for your money. One of their top rated organizations is GiveDirectly, which does almost exactly what you describe. Here's their evaluation page for it:
http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-dir...
Givewell is a bit bearish on disaster giving, by the way. See #6 in this list:
http://blog.givewell.org/2013/11/12/6-tips-on-disaster-relie...
If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might look in to the Effective Altruism movement, which I consider myself a part of:
I think this is a great tool for doing that in places that might need it more then my local community here in the US.
Most whalers were probably offshore when the tsunami striked thus not so damaged. I'll bet that this $30M where for families that lost their relatives or houses, instead to buy better whalers, but i'm just guessing...
They'll never get another cent out of me until at least one of their large scale disaster responses works out well. If they can't spend a few million in a direct, useful and efficient way then I don't see how they could spend orders of magnitude more.
Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently (well, maybe not quite this inept but there is plenty of incompetence there too), but we can't avoid paying into the tax coffers and where applicable we do get roads, healthcare, education, national defence, a police force and social security in return.
Because of the total lack of end-to-end accountability with organizations like the red cross and others like it there is nothing to stop them from squandering what they rake in. It would be a lot more efficient to mail an envelope with cash to a random address in a disaster area than it is to expect these organizations to make a go of it. They really ought to be ashamed of themselves rather than belligerently defensive such as illustrated in the article.
Security situation indeed, I think he meant 'job security'.