Ineffably Inefficient
Is the private sector actually better run than the public sector?
There’s a common trope that government is inefficient as compared to the private sector. For some, this was the central idea that landed Trump in the White House – “we need a businessman in charge” – the argument went, someone who could cut through the red tape, steamroll the bureaucrats, and get things done.
[Side note 1: The current civil trial in New York that has found the Trump Organization engaged in fraud when valuing its property holdings – increasing valuations to attain loans from banks and decreasing valuations to reduce tax liability – has shown that Trump’s business acumen was more fiction than fact.]
At first look, the claim of an efficient private sector and inefficient public sector feels true. We’ve all experienced the DMV or the post office and lamented what a kafkaesque shitshow it tends to be. Conversely, we have all (I hope) experienced the service at a nice restaurant or a spa or a vacation resort and found that, comparatively, the private sector is just so smooth and accommodating.
It doesn’t take much, however, to poke holes in this “truism.” For instance, if the DMV were put on wheels, it would be Greyhound Bus Lines – a fetid, dingy, socially sobering hell ride.
[Side note 2: I was once catching a Greyhound bus from Tampa, Florida up to NYC. A particularly vocal, aggressive, and intoxicated passenger-to-be was making the boarding process, let’s say, uncomfortable. A fellow rider, standing in the jumbled boarding line, told the drunk guy to “shut the fuck up.” The drunk guy said something back and immediately took a right hook to his chin from the shut-the-fuck-up guy. It was a perfect punch. Drunk guy crumbled like ash falling from a cigarette, blood on the pavement, shocked silence in the crowd. What happened next was we all continued getting on the bus, the driver closed the door, and away we went. We were all complicit in fleeing the scene of a crime. We were none of us ever going to learn whether that man got back up or died from a brain hemorrhage. You want to see the sad psychosis of modern America? Do a long distance trip on Greyhound.]
Okay, Greyhound feels like cheating. It sucks. But we don’t need to rely on such low hanging fruit to find examples of private sector inefficiency. Just ask anyone you know who works at a private organization that’s larger than say 250 people. Ask them how efficiently it’s run. Ask how quickly new programs get instituted, how effective those new programs are at addressing the problems they’re meant to solve, ask how responsive leadership is to workforce concerns, how readily processes that are clearly broken, over-complicated, or just inane get fixed. Humans are inefficient whether they work in bottomless public bureaucracies or free markets.
The critical difference between government work and private sector work is that governments are saddled with demands that private companies are not: providing service to EVERYONE. Private sector companies have the luxury of choosing an audience. It’s the difference between throwing a dinner party for four omnivores versus throwing a dinner party for 100 people, some of whom are lactose-intolerant, vegan, raw food devotees, celiac disease sufferers and toddlers who only eat white things in square shapes.
This is probably most easily exemplified in our education system. Public schools are tasked with educating anyone who walks through their doors. Private schools, on the other hand, select those they wish to educate. From an efficiency standpoint, the mandate to educate all-comers increases the difficulty factor exponentially. Socio economics, learning disabilities, ESL populations, kids who are fucking HUNGRY. It’s a monumentally more complicated task to educate everyone than to educate a select few. It should therefore come as no surprise that public schools are often less efficient and less effective.
I get people’s frustration with government. It isn’t particularly easy to work with. It doesn’t invest in customer service. Its employees are often sullen and unhappy. Our tax dollars seem to get frittered away and we have little recourse except voting or going to nightmarish open mics and yelling at local officials - neither of which seem to fix much.
But let’s please stop pretending that the private sector has a monopoly on efficiency and common sense. The mortgage-backed security crisis, the block-chain implosion, the pandemic supply chain breakdown, and on and on prove that the private sector is not a magic realm of perfect market economic efficiency. At the end of the day, it’s people all the way down and despite our voluminous craniums, we’re all quite petty and disappointingly dumb.
Internet of the day
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The Good:
Anyone remember those old Reese’s peanut butter cup commercials where chocolate and peanut butter come together – by some ridiculous accident – to form a perfect union? Well it’s happening right now on Netflix. Roald Dahl’s adult stories are delightful - mildly scandalous, mildly rebellious, and wildly smug. Wes Anderson’s movies are delightful - painstakingly designed, intentionally idiosyncratic, and charmingly ridiculous. Both can be too much of a good thing ( I know. Trust me, I know). But when Wes Anderson works with Dahl’s stories - it’s a perfect blend of twee and glee. Check out these shorts.
Speaking of Netflix, the new selection of Michelle Wolf stand up (kind of a comedy special in multiple parts) is very good. She’s perhaps an acquired taste, but I find her insightful, uncompromising, and hilarious.
I hate running. Which is why I’m fascinated by running. Ever heard of a backyard ultra marathon? It’s ingenious in its insanity. The course is a little over a 4 mile loop. Runners have an hour to complete the loop. There are no stoppages. Every hour on the hour runners either show up to the starting line or they’re out of the race. The last person to step up wins. Pure physical and psychological endurance. And get this – the record is 105 loops. That’s over 400 miles and over 4 full days of basically non-stop running. What?!?!?!!?!
The Bad:
Good reporting about horrible stories is hard to categorize. But seeing as this story happened to real people and is both a real life horror film and a psychological and legal clusterfuck, it’s definitely bad. I present the tale of Yale’s fertility clinic and women’s continued abuse at the hands of our medical establishment: a podcast from the Serial team. Yikes!
The Ugly:
Putting 8 year olds in jail. So interesting that those who espouse a light government hand and revere personal liberty can simultaneously believe that a juvenile judge should act as surrogate mom to an entire county of children and proscribe “time outs” that involve jumpsuits, solitary confinement, and iron bars. [Serial - let’s talk endorsement deals.]
And finally:
