I've heard this phrase on-and-off for the last 20 years or so. "We should run the U.S. government like a business."
I was thinking about how it's really a horrid idea, in practice. Does anyone really think about how American business operates today?
Well, for one, it's bureaucratic and monolithic. We invent a lot of things, sure. But once we get that corporation going, we get just as monolithic and complacent as we accuse government of being. Like Atari, for instance. This was the company that, more or less, put video gaming on the map. So what does it do? It got fat and happy, and decided that it never had to change. Then the entire industry crashed, and if it had not been for the Japanese (Nintendo, in this case), video gaming would probably be as dead as disco.
As I see it, Atari isn't an isolated circumstance either. All the American automakers are fat, poorly managed, and behind the times. Sure, they like to blame their union workers for everything, but hey...union workers make whatever you tell them to make. It's up to management to come up with the ideas. Yet it seems that management is the only people who never suffer, and even get bonuses for driving their companies into the ground in bankruptcy court. How does that even make sense?
But speaking of "bankruptcy court," that's pretty much how "American business" operates. Let's rack up a huge debt, make crappy products, and declare bankruptcy. And if it isn't bankruptcy, it's the long list of mergers.
So, I guess, unless we want America to declare bankruptcy, which would decimate the global economy, or we start soliciting for someone to acquire us (a consortium of wealthy Middle Eastern emirates maybe?), why the hell would we want to run the U.S. government like a business?
Of course, we're already seeing the result of 30 years of businessmen gradually supplanting lawyers as the primary demographic in government. And you see what you get too: a bunch of shrill, histrionic idiots who haven't the slightest idea how run a government, but know how to run party fundraisers to get elected and reelected. After all, it's all about quarterly profit, right?
Melon
I was thinking about how it's really a horrid idea, in practice. Does anyone really think about how American business operates today?
Well, for one, it's bureaucratic and monolithic. We invent a lot of things, sure. But once we get that corporation going, we get just as monolithic and complacent as we accuse government of being. Like Atari, for instance. This was the company that, more or less, put video gaming on the map. So what does it do? It got fat and happy, and decided that it never had to change. Then the entire industry crashed, and if it had not been for the Japanese (Nintendo, in this case), video gaming would probably be as dead as disco.
As I see it, Atari isn't an isolated circumstance either. All the American automakers are fat, poorly managed, and behind the times. Sure, they like to blame their union workers for everything, but hey...union workers make whatever you tell them to make. It's up to management to come up with the ideas. Yet it seems that management is the only people who never suffer, and even get bonuses for driving their companies into the ground in bankruptcy court. How does that even make sense?
But speaking of "bankruptcy court," that's pretty much how "American business" operates. Let's rack up a huge debt, make crappy products, and declare bankruptcy. And if it isn't bankruptcy, it's the long list of mergers.
So, I guess, unless we want America to declare bankruptcy, which would decimate the global economy, or we start soliciting for someone to acquire us (a consortium of wealthy Middle Eastern emirates maybe?), why the hell would we want to run the U.S. government like a business?
Of course, we're already seeing the result of 30 years of businessmen gradually supplanting lawyers as the primary demographic in government. And you see what you get too: a bunch of shrill, histrionic idiots who haven't the slightest idea how run a government, but know how to run party fundraisers to get elected and reelected. After all, it's all about quarterly profit, right?
Melon