The government does not have the peverse incentive of putting private profit above all other concerns.

consensus1 a day ago | parent | next [-]

The perverse incentive of the politician / general / bureaucrat to favor their personal interest over the public interest is identical to the perverse incentive of the CEO to favor his personal interest over the same.

I would argue the government case is actually much worse because at least the CEO has the feedback mechanism of revenue because the company <> customer relationship is entirely voluntary on both sides. The public vote is supposed to restrain the government in the same way, but in practice it seems to be much less effective in restraining politicians than the customer is at restraining companies.

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johndevor a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The government is just corrupt politicians and lobbyists. You're fighting to give them more money and power.

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jkestner a day ago | parent | next [-]

The government is more directly accountable to me. The only way I have to influence what insurance companies do is through the government.

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johndevor a day ago | parent [-]

You can switch insurance companies, no?

	▲	kentm 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In many cases, no.
	▲	bcrosby95 a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I can if I want to switch jobs too. Probably not a good idea given the current economic conditions. I'd be all for forcing a decoupling of these things, but I don't see that anywhere on the table, and it would probably run afoul of politics anyways.
	▲	preg_match 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No, you can’t.

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bean469 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Sounds like a Ron Swanson quote