
Why Big Tech Is More Competent Than the US Government - jger15
https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/01/why-big-tech-is-more-competent-than-the-us-government/
======
banads
>Tech companies have a defined purpose, and they’re a vehicle for achieving
that purpose. Google wants to organize the world’s information, and turning a
gigantic profit while doing so is one of their operating constraints...

>But the U.S. government doesn’t have a defined purpose, just a long list of
functions, and those functions aren’t regularly interrogated. It’s
uncomfortable for modern Americans to ask what the ultimate goal of the
government is.

Aside from the fact that this an "apples to oranges" comparison, I dont think
the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution.

>"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America."

~~~
Consultant32452
The Constitution is meaningless without a culture that backs it up. For
example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an
abortion in this country than you do a firearm. That's not an argument or a
judgement about the state of things, just an observation.

Right now there's a big debate about whether our government is structurally
functioning for the purpose of literally murdering black people. To put it
lightly, that's a very different function than to "promote the general
welfare."

~~~
ianmobbs
> The Constitution is meaningless without a culture that backs it up.

This is true for corporate charters as well, but it doesn't mean that either a
corporation or a government "don't have purpose" without a culture that drives
towards that purpose. You could also say that in spite of any corporate
charter, the only true purpose of any public corporation is to provide value
for shareholders, and the culture of many companies is often not aligned with
that.

> you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a
> firearm

This is blatantly false.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> This is blatantly false.

Is there anywhere in the US that an adult needs a permit to get an abortion?
Can your right to an abortion be taken away upon conviction of a non-violent
crime? Does the government reserve some categories of abortion for itself and
deny them to you?

Not every true statement is politically expedient.

------
pnathan
Because the US Gov has had a 60 year ideological assault on its validity and
functioning (Goldwater was the first major presenting symptom), leading to
practical results of dysfunction.

This is best illustrated by Reagan's phrase:

> “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
> government is the problem"

That is to say, if you wage an idea war on the idea of government, you'll have
a government which doesn't work.

~~~
creddit
This is an idea often trotted out in these discussions but then you should ask
how regions of the country such as California which for decades now have had
essentially none of that assault in meaningful amounts and yet still is a
largely dysfunctional entity. Or look at San Francisco.

~~~
mwfunk
If being the 5th largest economy in the world and contributing more tax
dollars to the Federal government than it receives is largely dysfunctional,
that sounds pretty awesome. California has tons of problems but I can't think
of many less dysfunctional states.

For example, Texas has the second largest economy amongst the states, and
would be the world's 10th largest economy, but IMO it's more dysfunctional
than California because it's on the dole for $50bil annually from the rest of
the country. They subsidize their low taxes by sponging off the other states,
including California and New York. Also, Ted Cruz.

~~~
creddit
“If being the largest economy in the world and extracting from its tax base
the largest governmental budget in the world is dysfunctional, that sounds
pretty awesome.” If this is the logic that defines a functional government,
then the Federal government seems to be a massive success as well. I’m not
sure why this would be the metric for a functional government, however.

Government dysfunction in SF/CA can be seen in the following:

\- California’s attempts at public infrastructure:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-
bu...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-bullet-train-
project-faces-15356051.php)

\- Housing affordability

\- SF Central Subway [https://sf.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/advocates-
flummoxed-an...](https://sf.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/advocates-flummoxed-
and-fuming-over-latest-central-subway-delays/)

\- Homelessness

\- Bay Bridge [https://sf.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/advocates-flummoxed-
an...](https://sf.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/advocates-flummoxed-and-fuming-
over-latest-central-subway-delays/)

\- State budget issues (see pension liabilities)

and many, many more things that go beyond this.

~~~
chillacy
Those don't sound unique to CA, every big city has similar problems.

~~~
creddit
Very many of them, yes. This is broadly my point :)

------
duxup
Isn't the term "big tech" just successful companies?

So we ignore all the failures to get to that point and then declare them
better?

Isn't this like asking why the Super Bowl champs are always good at football?

~~~
throwawaygh
And it’s not even big tech. It’s like 4 companies with great pr and monopoly-
like market power, being judged mostly on the basis of Naive public perception
and brand awareness.

Oracle and SAP and Infosys are big tech companies by any reasonable definition
of big. You’ll be hard pressed to find technologists who would decscribe those
companies as competent. And there are some amazing teams within those orgs
that do stuff which is genuinely more impressive than hacking out protobufs
from 1030am to 415pm with an hour long lunch, which is just to say that even
within tech there’s a lot of PR/brand sentiment shaping opinions of people who
should know better.

Uber is big tech, but still loses money hand over fist.

And even if we limit ourselves to the few companies with the most competent PR
— the faangs — are they really so competent? Or are they just extracting value
from near-monopoly market power?

~~~
duxup
>Or are they just extracting value from near-monopoly market power/

Yeah I do wonder, if you somehow could, could those companies as they stand
now just up and "do it again", could they?

Granted that's a complex question, but I suspect the answer isn't
automatically yes... and likely very much a hard no.

~~~
throwawaygh
Facebook has already bought its replacements a few times over, right?

------
avalys
The US government has no incentive to succeed in the way that you or I
understand it: i.e. by producing something of value, operating an organization
efficiently, or achieving a useful result. I mean, the government as a whole
might in some abstract sense, but the individuals that comprise the government
certainly do not, and the individuals are the underlying reality here, not
words in the Constitution or whatever.

“Success” in the government is defined solely by justifying your continued
budget to a bunch of other people who are largely as unaccountable for results
as you are. “Great success” is achieving an expansion of your budget. And the
best way to achieve an expansion of your budget is to figure out how to blame
your past failures on having too small a budget.

As a mentor of mine once said: “The private sector is about cost minimization.
The government is about cost justification.”

So the consequence is that “failure” in the government doesn’t really mean you
failed to achieve your result. It means you failed to properly document and
justify your costs. If you have all the proper documentation and followed all
the proper procedures and yet you still failed to achieve a result, that’s
okay! It’s obviously not your fault, and since you’re so good at following
procedures the government will happily entrust you with more money to fail
with next year.

Actually judging whether you’re any good at producing results is way too
complicated and subjective for any government funding office to evaluate. And
subject to liability and discrimination concerns as well. But it’s easy and
unambiguous to verify whether you followed the proper procedures!

------
AndrewKemendo
I think this weekend is as good as any for people to take time and read the US
Founding documents, because it seems like a lot of the philosophy the US was
founded seems to be unclear to a lot of people. This article and a lot of
comments seem to misunderstand the role and purpose of the US form of Federal
Republic government. Its worth reading the lot chronologically IMO.

Declaration of Independence (1776): [https://www.archives.gov/founding-
docs/declaration-transcrip...](https://www.archives.gov/founding-
docs/declaration-transcript)

Articles of Confederation (1781):
[https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp)

US Constitution (1787):[https://www.archives.gov/founding-
docs/constitution](https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution)

Federalist Papers (1787 - 1788): [https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-
papers/full-text](https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text)

US Constitutional Amendments 1-12 (Bill of Rights) (1789):
[https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-
transc...](https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript)

~~~
bhupy
A great list. I'd also add Common Sense by Thomas Paine, which was a huge
influence in the zeitgeist of the time.

------
jdauriemma
I object to the notion that Facebook users are Mark Zuckerberg's
"constituents." They have no representation in corporate governance, no
ownership of the data Facebook appropriates from them, and no rights on the
platform aside from the paltry few that are guaranteed (and rarely enforced)
by whatever governments they live under. Users of Facebook (and most other
large corporate networks) are vassals or subjects, not constituents.

~~~
travisoneill1
They have the right to not do business with Facebook. This is massively more
power than a citizen has over it's government. If I had the right to not pay
my taxes if I was unsatisfied with government services (not actually saying
this is reasonable) then the government would be a lot more responsive to my
needs.

~~~
jdauriemma
There are few analogies that are unassailably perfect, but I stand by mine.
Ideally, if I leave the USA and renounce my citizenship, I am no longer
subject to its jurisdiction. Likewise, when I left Facebook, I should no
longer have been subject to its jurisdiction. But you and I both know that
neither of these statements are true. The USA has a vast surveillance network
that spans the globe. Its government has a disproportionate impact on the
internal politics of other nation-states. Likewise, Facebook's dominance over
social networking and the internet itself means that it influences everyone,
not just its own users.

Facebook is run as a dictatorship from the board room down to the users. Sure,
we can leave - and people have been leaving nation-state dictatorships since
antiquity. But, like a powerful nation-state, just because you can stop being
a Facebook user doesn't mean you escape Facebook's reach, and just because I
_can_ (and did) leave Facebook doesn't mean that Facebook will somehow be
responsive to the needs of its users.

~~~
bhupy
> just because I _can_ (and did) leave Facebook doesn't mean that Facebook
> will somehow be responsive to the needs of its users.

I think this statement assumes that the majority of end users are similar to
you. Perhaps you're (unfortunately) in the minority.

~~~
jdauriemma
That’s not material to whether Facebook has a lord/vassal relationship with
the users. Benevolent monarchs and/or docile subjects do not change the facts
about an organization‘s structure.

~~~
bhupy
My point is that it _is_ material to whether Facebook has a lord/vassal
relationship with the users.

If the majority of users was like you, Facebook's behavior would have to
change. The unfortunate reality is that the majority of users is NOT like you.

Ask yourself: if Facebook, acting in its capacity as a supposed "monarch",
began charging $50 for its product, do you think users would silently just
accept that and pay up? They are vassals after all, right?

~~~
jdauriemma
I think history has shown that monarchies are hardly aloof of their people for
long. There are certainly limits to how far the king can go, but that doesn’t
change the fact that he is a king.

~~~
bhupy
But this isn't unique to monarchies, this can be true of even the most
democratic societies. With enough apathy among the people, the leaders can get
away with anything. The fundamental problem appears to be that the users
(constituents) either don't share the same values as you do, or they do and
are simply apathetic.

That Facebook appears to be impervious to its users can just as easily be
explained by general apathy of your average user, rather than a lord/vassal
relationship.

~~~
jdauriemma
No, this is about the facts of the organizational structure, not about shared
values or passive consent. Users are not Facebook's constituents, they are its
subjects. They have two choices: submit to Facebook's board of directors, or
leave. The authority of the board room over the users is nominally absolute.
There's no representative body that is accountable to the users, there's no
ownership or stake in their own data or in the assets of Facebook itself.

~~~
bhupy
What you're not understanding is that the authority over the users is NOT
absolute, because "or leave" is the mechanism by which users can influence the
strategic direction of a company. That's the accountability. That's why we
call this "voting with your wallet". To the extent that Facebook is the way
that it is, it's because it's meeting the needs of a lot of users on the
planet.

There's obviously no "ownership stake", because that doesn't make any sense: I
don't have ownership stake in my toothpaste provider. But I can stop using
their product if their product sucks.

~~~
jdauriemma
People could leave King Louis XIV’s France. That didn’t make the Bourbon
dynasty any less of an absolutist entity.

And yes, it’s impractical to think of users as having an inherent ownership
stake in contemporary society, but it’s one mechanism by which users could
gain true agency in social networks. Another would be a representative body
elected by users that has the power to appoint board members. It’s these sorts
of formal, institutional structures that distinguish autocracy from democracy.

~~~
bhupy
> People could leave King Louis XIV’s France

Refusing to use a single product is not nearly the same as leaving a country.
Drawing a similarity between the two is like comparing apples to nation
states.

The reason private markets generally work pretty well at delivering goods &
services is because people have variety, and exercising choice is generally
feasible. Anti-trust law is generally rooted in rectifying situations where
this ceases to be true.

> Another would be a representative body elected by users that has the power
> to appoint board members.

What you're describing here is a government agency — and if your argument is
that a government agency can run a software product better than a private
corporation...it's a bold claim, even if it's a coherent argument.

~~~
jdauriemma
I never said it was “the same” to the individual, it’s just a similar
governance model. The domain of a kingdom and the domain of a corporate social
network are distinct, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore that they’re both
autocratic in their respective domains.

------
lostdog
Facebook keeps making its core product worse, probably because of short
termism in their corporate goals. Pretty funny to see the article hold them up
as an example of good governance.

------
michaelt
When it comes to state IT projects, I've got a theory that part of the reason
government seems cumbersome is often the state _has to_ serve everyone.

Someone's doesn't speak English? Doesn't have a computer? Doesn't have a
phone? Doesn't have an e-mail address? Doesn't have a credit card? Doesn't
have a bank account? Doesn't have an address? Is completely deaf? If that
means they can't use amazon.com so be it.

But if it means they can't register to vote, or can't get a driving license?
That's a different matter.

So state projects IT have to support things like mailing Spanish-language
braille-printed letters, when Amazon can just send an e-mail.

------
AlexandrB
It's a grave error to confuse effectiveness with desirability. Hence the irony
of the phrase: "At least he made the trains run on time."

Big tech's competence is only an asset as long as their financial interests
are aligned with free, democratic society. As the epicenter economic activity
increasingly shifts to China, this will eventually stop being true. What then?

------
caseysoftware
Companies can segment their market and offer different products to different
people based for different prices based on all kinds of aspects. They can even
reject customers and block them from doing business at all.

Governments are supposed to serve 100% of their citizens. They can't pick and
choose. In some contexts, they can't even prioritize.

That alone radically changes how they have to approach everything.

------
awinter-py
memetic immune system and hormesis are cool metaphors to use for institutions,
but probably just metaphors -- not sure how to use these as specific
prescriptions for change

'lack of a driving purpose' rings false -- amazon was a book company, that
doesn't connect to buying whole foods or owning all of e-commerce. companies
and governments both adapt and take on new projects when they're working.

US government leadership dulled hanlon's razor this spring by achieving high
marks in both malice and incompetence

create cultural change by replacing stale process and leaders constantly

------
euler_angles
There's no one simple reason, but a big contributor is compensation.
Government pay for high skill professions like computer programmer,
mechanical, electrical, and aerospace engineers, etc is far below what good
people in those fields can make working in private industry. Often people in
those fields work on government contracts, where the US Govt will pay 3x or
more than their already high total compensation for the privilege of their
time.

I should know, I'm one of those professionals. I started out working for the
government, then eventually became a contractor (doing the exact same job in
the exact same building that I had done for the government! for 30% more
money!)

It was hard to not take that offer of the additional money, especially when
the government would go out of its way to infantilize its employees.

------
koheripbal
There's no question that a private corporation can be more reactive and well
run than a government.

...but the reason we have government is for _accountability_.

I can't vote for a new national search engine, or a new smartphone maker, so
when we all have complaints about their abuse of power, we are SoL.

~~~
baggy_trough
From my point of view, government is far less accountable than a typical
private corporation. Voting is occasional and highly manipulatable. The same
people shuffle around different posts. It can compel revenue through pointing
guns at people and locking them up in cages.

It's not like a business that has to meet payroll to survive by attracting
customers. That's accountability.

~~~
bhupy
In addition to this, voting means that you're participating in the same polity
as people that might have completely different interests from you. Sometimes
the majority is wrong (as has often been the case in history). In a democracy,
there is no recourse for the minority. With the private sector, the minority
in theory has the option to break away.

Don't get me wrong, democracy is great, but it is a means to an end, not an
end in itself.

------
rubyn00bie
Full stop, it's not. There are also zero citations to numerous numbers used in
the essay... It might not be totally shit, but it sure smells like it.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Except that the US Government is answerable to the people. "Big Tech" isn't
answerable to anyone.

------
encoderer
Just a guess: Better management has a lot to do with it, and not just at the
executive level, but the 3+ layers of middle management below.

------
sharemywin
Comparing governments to companies is like comparing sports teams to referees.
Referees have scored zero points since the inception of the game. They must
suck!!!

------
epa
I wouldnt go that far. How often do you hear product managers talk about
'scope creep', 'minimum viable product', 'launch first and fix bugs later'.
The government's job is literally bug fixing and maintaining legacy code base.
Big tech are not good a this, you can't rewrite social institutions via
roadmap.

------
Animats
".. for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General
Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big.
It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the Nation is
quite considerable." \- Charles Wilson, CEO of GM, testifying before Congress
in 1953.

------
polskibus
Isn't it money? The gov paying prob 1/4 what Google pays for the same set of
skills?

~~~
atlgator
The same set of skills? Let's just say the Government gets what they pay for.

------
robomartin
Private enterprise is the result of relentless evolution by natural selection.
Government is not. The fact that one is able to run circles around the other
should not be a surprise.

~~~
AlexandrB
This is pretty laughable in the context of modern startups, where a small
group of VCs choose the winners in advance and no one else really has a chance
to compete until many years later when the "winners" run out of VC money. But
even disregarding this recent development it's not like government is immune
to the influences of a shifting society - otherwise we'd all still be living
in monarchies.

~~~
robomartin
As a general commentary on your style, characterizing something someone says
as "laughable" does not promote dialogue. We have enough ugliness out there,
let's make an attempt to be civilized.

That said, the world of business if far too complex for a single rule or
statement to fully encompass every aspect of it. What I can say, with absolute
certainty, is that the world you are referring to, the world of VC's, and the
companies they represent, are but a rounding error in the business
megalopolis.

Yes, sure, they have created a few massive high flying companies of great
influence. And yet, if you take stock of the entirety of businesses, from the
corner grocery store, through construction contractors, garbage processors,
laboratories, hospitals, architects, engineering firms, transportation,
manufacturing, medicine, chemical plants, shipping, publishing, household
products, consumer electronics and, yes, web and software development, you
will find it dwarfs the VC sphere. And yes, that ecosystem very much responds
to natural selection. Brutally so.

Government, by comparison, evolves at a glacial pace.

------
chadash
Big Tech just happened to be at the right place at the right time right now.
There’s no competence that got them there other than the fact that the entire
country is in quarantine and than happens to work out well for companies that
can sell to people at home.

Clorox is also doing very well right, but the author doesn’t use that as an
example because it’s too clear and obvious that luck is at play there.

Big tech did not foresee this, it just happens to help their businesses, in
part because it skews the playing field their way.

------
intrepidhero
Is this even a sensible question? They have pretty different goals and
purposes.

------
atlgator
I thought it was the System Design interview, no? lol

------
Sindrome
profits

------
ECA_stax
> Is More Competent Than the US Government

Not setting the bar high, are we?

------
baggy_trough
It's clear why this should be the case. Government is a low accountability
sector (voting is an exceedingly feeble control mechanism compared to market
feedback) so it will accumulate bureaucratic dead wood over time. The same
thing happens in big companies but the market provides an eventual mechanism
to replace them.

