Does government do ANYTHING well?

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  • Опубликовано: 15 апр 2024
  • Peter Suderman and Katherine Mangu-Ward try to find something, anything that the government does efficiently. There aren't many easy answers.
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Комментарии • 108

  • @-KillaWatt-
    @-KillaWatt- Месяц назад +34

    Sure it does. War, taxation and bureaucratic stagnation.

    • @mustang607
      @mustang607 Месяц назад

      Don't forget about inflation and promotes increased corruption, until BOOM, that society recedes.

    • @TOMinPDX
      @TOMinPDX Месяц назад +1

      You forget surveillance.

  • @fishingwithspiv3081
    @fishingwithspiv3081 Месяц назад +19

    “Operation warp speed gave us a good Covid Vaccine…”
    How does your mic pick you up when your head is that deep in the sand?

    • @arofhoof
      @arofhoof Месяц назад

      >How does your mic pick you up when your head is that deep in the sand?
      Yes? operation warp speed was a mess with human right abuse, lies and not enough time for trials.... wtf mental

    • @dannysullivan3951
      @dannysullivan3951 25 дней назад

      same as it does when you're down in the bunker

  • @matthewrix1047
    @matthewrix1047 Месяц назад +10

    I loudly laughed out loud when it listed social security

    • @admthrawnuru
      @admthrawnuru Месяц назад

      Dude, if you ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, you'd be a little proud too. I mean, it's still evil, but it's good to be number one.

  • @agresnif9751
    @agresnif9751 Месяц назад +9

    Expands it own power and footprint

  • @zachmaster426
    @zachmaster426 Месяц назад +18

    Operation Warp Speed? Really? Sometimes I forget how blue-pilled Suderman still is

  • @rdf256
    @rdf256 Месяц назад +5

    Wasn't a big chunk of Operation Warp Speed about overcoming the government's own bureaucratic obstacles (along with potentially necessary safety mechanisms)?

  • @lefthand4943
    @lefthand4943 Месяц назад +16

    Stealing cheating and lying

  • @dennisstewart1313
    @dennisstewart1313 Месяц назад +15

    PRINT MONEY!

    • @mcmehlen
      @mcmehlen Месяц назад +2

      Beat me to it lol

  • @mheermance
    @mheermance Месяц назад +7

    Pour money into the giant money hole.

  • @dawlben2247
    @dawlben2247 Месяц назад +6

    The Bureaucracy expands to support the ever expanding Bureaucracy.

  • @thomasclark631
    @thomasclark631 Месяц назад +4

    I’m reminded of the placebo organization. Its only responsibility is to administer itself.

  • @thomasclark631
    @thomasclark631 Месяц назад +3

    The one thing the federal government could do well but hasn’t is to dismantle itself.

  • @cessna421cpilot3
    @cessna421cpilot3 Месяц назад +5

    Doesn’t seem fair to give the government credit for “doing things well” if essentially what they did was ignore, or shortcut their own regulations and limitations.

    • @davidlewis6728
      @davidlewis6728 Месяц назад +1

      they are good at preventing the market from competing against them in the areas they supposedly do good, useful things well. if they didn't, then they couldn't point to anything good or useful that they were doing well.

  • @fearthehoneybadger
    @fearthehoneybadger Месяц назад +11

    Steal freedom.

  • @HiwasseeRiver
    @HiwasseeRiver Месяц назад +13

    1) US elections are on par with running a professional wrestling spectacle.2) Warp speed & AIDs relief - no, just no. I was working to make phrama chemicals in the 90's - it was wealth transfer to corporations, Warp thing - same garbage. 3) Free speech, does Julian Assange count? and where is his due process? 4) Govt funded weather science? You do know that in the background there are private weather services that support free market activities like commodity trading. If you picked something that could be measured against other countries you'd find that incarceration and an unbelievable levels of lethal violence are the really strong capabilities of our govt.

  • @frankbieser
    @frankbieser Месяц назад +4

    Besides war (if you're not factoring in cost efficiency), I'd say the NTSB does a really good job. That said, I think properly motivated insurance companies (not the highly regulated and captured companies we have today) would do as good a job if not better.

    • @bwake
      @bwake Месяц назад +1

      Two words: Underwriters Laboratories.
      That said, UL certification is rather expensive and time consuming.

    • @frankbieser
      @frankbieser Месяц назад

      @@bwakeUL is a good thing. However, UL is not a government agency. It's a non-profit private entity that was created back in 1894 by William Henry Merrill and funded by insurance underwriters. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)

  • @TonerLow
    @TonerLow Месяц назад +2

    I'm proud of my country's milestones in space travel, but even then, it can't dream of competing with private enterprise right now.

    • @bellowingsilence
      @bellowingsilence Месяц назад

      Nope. It has absolutely no reason to compete or innovate in that area now that the Cold War is in the rearview mirror, and the military implications of any of that have proven impractical anytime soon. The government’s view of space is mostly about satellites, because that’s what relevant to their missions of defense (and/of) order, power and control. Unless the government starts seriously thinking there’s a real chance China is flying off to colonize the Moon or Mars anytime soon, it has no reason to care about space exploration right now. At most, it’ll pump some money into the private sector for research and development of things that could be useful down the line, but there is zero urgency. Such is a huge flaw of government. At least business is motivated by profit. The state is only motivated by the perpetuation of itself.

  • @mustang607
    @mustang607 Месяц назад +2

    I heard government got the buses running on time in Italy sometime ago.

    • @willosee
      @willosee Месяц назад

      No one he trains. Mussolini.

  • @jaronensley
    @jaronensley Месяц назад +1

    Yes. It does 3 things well. 1) It grows in size and power , 2) Kills people and breaks shit, and 3) It has a CONSTANT unending campaign to convince people of it's necessity.

  • @roberttfoley
    @roberttfoley Месяц назад +2

    I am very anti-statist, but in descending order: NTSB, some agencies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Coast Guard.
    If there’s any room for a state, these folks do their jobs well.

    • @willosee
      @willosee Месяц назад

      That’s interesting regarding Indian Affairs. In Australia our Aboriginal Affairs is a disaster.

  • @papajoots
    @papajoots Месяц назад

    The National Weather Service is easily the most successful department in the government. I’ve forecasted weather all over the world and the US is lightyears past everyone else. The information is free and transparent and feeds thousands of private industries.

  • @albionicamerican8806
    @albionicamerican8806 Месяц назад +1

    Many governments run sovereign funds competently, despite the arbitrary libertarian claim that only "individuals" can own wealth. Texas has a reputation as a libertarian, anti-government sort of place, for example; but the state government set up two sovereign wealth funds in the 19th Century to fund public education in that state, originally deriving income from selling grazing rights on public lands. Those funds hold assets worth billions of dollars now, so the Texas government must be doing something right.

  • @bwake
    @bwake Месяц назад

    Government is good at solving straightforward, clearly defined problems that _can_ be solved by throwing money at them. Operation Warp Speed was one example.
    Unfortunately, government tries to solve every problem by throwing money at it.

  • @pivitfin
    @pivitfin Месяц назад +1

    The U.S.A. Is the most successful government of all time. I am sad that there aren’t more thoughtful answers to this question.

    • @TOMinPDX
      @TOMinPDX Месяц назад +3

      You haven't offered any. If it's so successful you should have a very long list.

  • @DadHominem
    @DadHominem Месяц назад +2

    Spend money!

  • @ExPwner
    @ExPwner Месяц назад

    Only things no one would willingly pay them to do. Everything else they do inferior to private enterprise. Private enterprise should be the provider of all goods and services.

  • @buckiemohawk3643
    @buckiemohawk3643 Месяц назад

    it does nothing well. It waste money and pours it into a deep well where it disappears

  • @ericsfishingadventures4433
    @ericsfishingadventures4433 Месяц назад +7

    Title: NO

    • @lefthand4943
      @lefthand4943 Месяц назад +3

      Stealing cheating and lying

    • @captain_context9991
      @captain_context9991 Месяц назад +1

      --In other countries, yes... All the time.

    • @identifiesas65.wheresmyche95
      @identifiesas65.wheresmyche95 Месяц назад

      Unfair. Printing money, finding hidden permissive language in the constitution, growing its power, lowering living standards, handing out special favors to supporters, starting new wars, attracting terrorism, gatekeeping professions. Thats just some of the things government is good at.

  • @WeekzGod
    @WeekzGod Месяц назад

    This is where reason looses me a bit. If you look outside the US there are plenty of national governments who are quite competent. The Nordics, Estonia, Japan, The Gulf Monarchies, and so on.
    Even at local levels, there are many county level governments which fund excellent schools, libraries, community centers, etc.
    I think the binary of gov vs no gov makes no sense. It's not about small gov but capable and effective gov. Gov should be the size it needs to be to carry out the tasks the people have asked it to.
    The issue isn't size of gov, its the people we vote in to manage it. Apparently we're quite bad at choosing them.

  • @willosee
    @willosee Месяц назад

    As an obsessive anarchic capitalist it pains me to write this. While the relevant departments would be much better in private hands there is something I have noted since my daughter moved to Denver. Australia is better at lots of statis stuff versus the US.
    The Australian Bureau of Statistics does a nice job. They get rated well in Economist magazine surveys. US is down the pack, and, about a dozen orgs do the data so it is all over the place.
    If you are an entry level earner lodging a tax return online is pretty simple. Also if you think you don’t have a liability you don’t have to lodge a return.
    We have universal health care which costs a lot but everyone has cover. While I think it should be massively cheaper at least the poor get great coverage and it is really easy to lodge claims online.
    Registration of cars, licenses, etc. All online and easy to access.
    My point is that government has managed to make interaction with elements of it easier. Listening to the Roundtable and my daughter US bureaucracy seems far more resilient to reform and innovation. Maybe if your population gets over a certain level it gets too hard?

    • @davidlewis6728
      @davidlewis6728 Месяц назад

      pretty sure the us government spends more on welfare than it does on the military. the ancap welfare option is fraternal societies.

  • @willosee
    @willosee Месяц назад

    Also forgot our Australian Bureau of Meteorology does a nice job and their simple application is really good.
    Lastly Editor K you might run an election system that transfers power but your organisations are terrible. We have one body that runs it for all levels of government and controls the electoral boundaries to ensure we don’t have gerrymandering (I think it works ok as you never hear about it).

  • @mcmehlen
    @mcmehlen Месяц назад +1

    Printing $

  • @doomersnek3878
    @doomersnek3878 Месяц назад +2

    What all ya said would be the government being good at can be replaced by the private sector. That being with the exception of voting. Which is why I want to comment on that one for the scope of this comment. Simply put, we wouldn't have a two party system if the government had an effective a voting system.
    Additionally, since this video title and how you used the word "government" in such a broad manner. You can look at plenty of other countries around the world and how corruptive their voting system even is.

    • @davidlewis6728
      @davidlewis6728 Месяц назад

      the market does voting better. price signals are the gold standard of voting systems. the market could do bureaucracy better, too, if it weren't such a waste of effort to even try.

    • @doomersnek3878
      @doomersnek3878 Месяц назад

      @@davidlewis6728 I wasn't meaning voting by "vote with your dollar" type thing. That is just economics, as opposed to innerworkings of a business and government. The governing process basically means you're doing decision making, whether that be a government doing it or a business. The business is more incentivized to improve their governing systems, which may include voting from time to time. But a government based on democracy, then just designing it where two parties exist is horrid. At least we must make it where you need 50% of the electoral college and well, having the electoral college to balance the issues with ruling by majority vote. It'd be better to have a ranked voting system, but that kinda just makes the process of getting to such high levels of authoritarianism slower than it is now. After all, people can be "convinced" through propaganda to vote for "safety" through government than to get safety through political and economic freedoms.
      I'd agree the market would be better. But equally the government is screwing that up because of how they incentivize large corpos to exist and squash the smaller business from competing with said large corpos.

    • @davidlewis6728
      @davidlewis6728 Месяц назад

      @@doomersnek3878 i agree on most of this, but you will never have a more perfect form of "governance as decided by the people" as you'll naturally get with the price system. doesn't matter how many variables you account for, doesn't matter how elegant, or cost-effective the election process is, doesn't even matter how incorruptible the ones that set up, or vote in the elections are. voting will either become a currency or remain inferior to one. voting is just a long road to serfdom.

  • @andrewcain6518
    @andrewcain6518 Месяц назад

    Print money.

  • @aliadeeb6859
    @aliadeeb6859 Месяц назад

    Post office because they are funded by user fees, not taxes

    • @bellowingsilence
      @bellowingsilence Месяц назад +1

      While I find some people’s idea that the post office MUST be 100% for profit or at least 100% self funded to be misguided, the reality is that it’s highly effective because it tries its damndest to fund itself as much as possible. More government functions should work that way when possible.

    • @TOMinPDX
      @TOMinPDX Месяц назад

      It wouldn't exist without junk mail.

    • @freesk8
      @freesk8 Месяц назад +2

      The post office is heavily subsidized. One such subsidy is the retirement program for postal workers. Totally funded by taxpayers and not from postage revenue.

  • @vociferon-heraldofthewinte7763
    @vociferon-heraldofthewinte7763 Месяц назад

    They steal.

  • @crankshaft383
    @crankshaft383 27 дней назад

    Whatever happened to going postal? Only 1 mailman MK Ultra'd? (Successful Government Program) Whatever happened to serial killers? Zero mass/school shootings when son of Sam and Dahmer were roaming about.. 😐

  • @Redtecho
    @Redtecho Месяц назад

    Lol what kinda question us this?

  • @TheMichaelMove
    @TheMichaelMove Месяц назад

    Certainly not. Not even the things only it can do in a free society.

  • @skidmoda
    @skidmoda Месяц назад

    Uhm...I got nothing. Oh..make politicians rich. So, did Nick get rid of his TDS yet?

  • @captain_context9991
    @captain_context9991 Месяц назад +3

    In other countries, government runs things and balances things. Thats kinda what governments are supposed to do.

    • @mustang607
      @mustang607 Месяц назад +2

      That's what businesses do, if they want to prosper, or even survive.

    • @willosee
      @willosee Месяц назад

      Yes but they all suck. Some suck less than others.

    • @davidlewis6728
      @davidlewis6728 Месяц назад

      in other countries, those things are broken.

    • @acctsys
      @acctsys Месяц назад

      That's what adults are supposed to do with their own lives.

    • @captain_context9991
      @captain_context9991 Месяц назад

      @@acctsys
      So not governments then... Governments are not supposed to do any of those things on behalf of their population?

  • @larryeaton4263
    @larryeaton4263 Месяц назад +1

    I'm a fan of the post office. Yes, they are having problems right now. But historically they have done a great job. And, it's actually a constitutionally authorized function. If you compare the size and responsibility of this job, they are outstanding. Send a letter across the country in a couple days, door to door, even in the boonies and it costs something less than a dollar. Even if it costs twice that because of government subsidizing losses, its still cheap. Private competitors of course, do a little better, but at an order of magnitude more expensive at least.

    • @bellowingsilence
      @bellowingsilence Месяц назад

      I’m totally willing to accept that the post office ends up costing us some money in the modern age. Historically speaking, it didn’t always break even either. The reality is that a lot of things in government would operate a lot better if they at least *tried* to function like a business when that was feasible.

  • @BigBoyJay_69
    @BigBoyJay_69 Месяц назад +1

    The ADA, libraries, and public bathrooms are by far the best things the USA does well compared to other countries.

    • @bellowingsilence
      @bellowingsilence Месяц назад +2

      You’re getting into a lot of stuff that most libertarian minded people really take for granted lol

    • @anonymous666951
      @anonymous666951 Месяц назад +1

      American public bathrooms? Maybe if the comparison is against Second and Third World countries.

  • @doughaug
    @doughaug Месяц назад

    Folks I respect have no respect for NOAA

  • @NunYa953
    @NunYa953 Месяц назад

    Reason lost all credibility when they called Jared Polis a libertarian.

  • @stripecolors2868
    @stripecolors2868 Месяц назад

    LIE! AND MORE LIES!

  • @lonetown
    @lonetown Месяц назад +2

    Electons are a mess. What is she smoking?

    • @willosee
      @willosee Месяц назад

      Yes I had that reaction. In Australia we always roll our eyes when you have elections.

  • @markmindy4640
    @markmindy4640 Месяц назад

    Provide the services the citizens requested.

  • @TheCRDMiller
    @TheCRDMiller Месяц назад +2

    I feel like this lady is lieing

  • @soyboy2238
    @soyboy2238 Месяц назад +3

    Operation Warp Speed? Geeeez. I've heard enough. I will hit unsubscribe now.

  • @dannywhite132
    @dannywhite132 Месяц назад

    How did this channel go from whimsy political stories and humour, to pseudointelectual political commentary?

  • @0598980568
    @0598980568 Месяц назад +4

    I’ve seen then make$30,000,000,000 disappear.