QotD: Private stupidities versus public ones

Personally, I'm on the record as believing that companies quite often do stupid things. The difference between companies and the government is that thanks to market discipline, companies that do stupid things eventually have to stop, because they run out of money. Government programs that don't work, on the other hand, have a seemingly indefinite shelf life. The US government seems to be doing almost every stupid thing it has ever done, and to be planning to continue doing those stupid things forever. In the past sixty years we've had three serious attempts that I can think of that even partially grappled with the problem of programs that weren't working: the Carter/Reagan deregulations; the Reagan tax simplification; and the Clinton welfare reform. Of those, the first is intact, the second has been gutted, and the third is slowly eroding. This is not a promising track record for people arguing that the government should do more stuff.

Megan McArdle, "Success is in the eye of the beholder", Asymmetrical Information, 2007-09-12