The usual cycle for business in a free market is it appears young and fresh, lacking any parasites. It grows rapidly, displacing existing mature businesses. Then, it accumulates bureaucracy and parasites, becoming less and less efficient, strangled by bloat and inability to adapt, and slides into bankruptcy, replaced by the next generation of new businesses. The remains of the business are then reallocated to the next generation of businesses.
(This is quite unlike the common view that businesses inevitably grow to take over the world.)
I.e. business is much like a living organism.
Problems set in when the government bails out failing businesses.
Even worse are government "businesses". They are not allowed to fail, and the inefficiencies, parasites, corruption, grow and grow. When can you remember a government agency being abolished? Eventually, the government will collapse.
Not just government agencies. Everybody wants their finger in the pie to justify their job. And every politician wants to do things their voters like.
I'm thinking of a reasonably recent article I saw that was talking about helping people navigate the 30+ assistance programs they might be eligible for. There's your problem right there--there should not be 30+ programs doing approximately the same thing! That's an awful lot of duplication of effort.
Or look at what happens with business licenses. Two things I see:
1) They want their $ from entities that shouldn't really be "businesses" in the first place. Around here an awful lot of licensed professionals have to have a "business" license--never mind that the nature of their work means they're inside some other entity that actually is reasonable to license. And that means a sales tax registration which has an annual minimum that such people almost certainly will never reach. (Sales tax includes use tax--but it's their office that actually engages in such transactions.)
2) Businesses that perform their work on-site have to have business licenses for every license area of the metropolitan area they work in. Hey, guys, get together and define the superset of the rules of your area and allow someone to get a license that covers the whole area based on that superset.
The Republicans are "right" in that we have far too many regulations. But they are very wrong in wanting to take an axe to them--most of the rules are individually sensible (and when they produce nonsense it's often situations where it's not worthwhile to special case), there is a horrible problem of duplication of effort and fingers in the pie. It's not chopping that's needed, it's organization.
> Even worse are government "businesses". They are not allowed to fail, and the inefficiencies, parasites, corruption, grow and grow. When can you remember a government agency being abolished?
In Commonwealth countries and the UK itself there are plenty of businesses called “crown corporations” which are owned by the government. Change in attitudes towards more liberalism led governments to deregulation and selling off bits and pieces or the entire corporation. Here are some Canadian examples:
America is a relatively young country and has very peculiar philosophies sometimes not found in the rest of the world. Be very careful extrapolating an American perspective abroad or as capturing some elemental truth of the universe.
(This is quite unlike the common view that businesses inevitably grow to take over the world.)
I.e. business is much like a living organism.
Problems set in when the government bails out failing businesses.
Even worse are government "businesses". They are not allowed to fail, and the inefficiencies, parasites, corruption, grow and grow. When can you remember a government agency being abolished? Eventually, the government will collapse.