this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Economics pop quiz! Fill in the blanks with the words “private” and “public”!
Answer Key
The private sector is inherently wasteful and corrupt. The waste is built in and considered a good thing, it’s called “profit.” Dollars invested to value produced, the public sector wins and it’s not even close.
No, you see, "waste" is any money that doesn't flow upward to fill the pockets of the chosen few. That amount, obviously, must be curtailed.
The private sector is so efficient it has several companies making functionally meaningless varieties of the same goods, all having to dance around red tape due to IP laws they lobbied to have instated.
I mean the single biggest line item in our discretionary budget is "giveaways to the war profiteers" so there needs to be a caveat for public sector (when not run by absolute demons)
We all know that’s not getting cut and that’s not what Melon is referring to here
At the risk of being a , I think it still illustrates the principle. Waste, fraud, and abuse aren't inherently the domain of the private sector and the bourg are just as adept at using the public sector to extract value from the public.
The private sector is so much worse though. What we call "nepotism" or corruption in the public sector is just "good networking" or "reliable connections" in the private. The tolerance is much higher.
The public sector can be wasteful, absolutely, but in the private sector that waste is inherent and even considered good.
Also most (not all but most) of the waste in the public sector is because the public sector outsources things to private companies. Like, the NIH doesn’t have shareholders and it’s executives don’t make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the waste in the NIH is when they hire contractors instead of real staff and outsource things to private companies instead of doing it in house.
This is even true with the military, most of the corruption and waste goes to weapons companies and contractors. If the US government made all of its weapons itself with federal workers in government owned factories it would spend a lot less.
Tbf most of that public waste is because they’ve outsourced everything to private companies lol. Even arms manufacturing.