Running Government as a Business

Seth Masket does a good job distinguishing between government and business, and highlights that business isn't naturally efficient (h/t The Dish):

There's nothing wrong with the idea that governments should be run more efficiently or with better customer service, and if that's what people mean, they should say that. But to say that governments should be run like businesses is to reveal ignorance about what either governments or businesses -- or both -- are. Businesses exist to turn a profit. They provide goods and services to others only insofar as it is profitable to do so, and they will set prices in a way that ends up prohibiting a significant sector of the population from obtaining those goods and services. And that, of course, is fine, because they're businesses. Governments, conversely, provide public goods and services -- things that we have determined are people's right to possess. This is inherently an unprofitable enterprise. Apple would not last long if it had to provide every American with an iPad.

I'm also always surprised to hear people tout the efficiency of the private sector. There's a great deal of inefficiency in the private sector, of course. How many CEOs end up hiring dim, unqualified brothers-in-law or grandkids who are taking time off college? And that's just not considered a big deal as long as it doesn't noticeably hurt the bottom line. If a member of Congress does that, it becomes a major scandal.

There is a lot of room to expound on this.  All large organizations of human endeavor are inherently inefficient in some ways, but there are major differences between government and business.  There clearly isn't a profitable way to provide any welfare.  People point out that the WPA was paying people to do very little work in some instances back during the Depression, but businesses weren't hiring these people to do any work for any pay.  Nobody can point to Enron or Lehman Brothers or much of the financial sector as paragons of efficiency, unless the efficiency would be parting people from hard-earned money.  The self-congratulatory tone of people in the private sector is a little much, coming off of a collapse in our economy driven by said private business.