zlacker

>>giveme+(OP)
In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening.

On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is investing BUY INTEL SHARES" media event. These things should follow a strict set of rules and processes so investors and companies know what to expect. These kind of deals should be boring, not a media event.

>>jjcm+Ef
What bothers me is the double standard.

When the public asks for fully publicly-owned railways, universal healthcare, or any basic social safety assurances—“socialism”.

When a megacorporation struggles, immediately to the rescue.

>>sergio+Ej
One big difference is management control. People feel that government administered services tend to have poor management and citizen services more often than not. One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee. Or the passport issuance, or applying for permits. Or unemployment benefits, the list goes on and on.

Imagine if the DMV and passport services had even the possibility of competition like a private company has. You bet all of a sudden the service would get much faster and better and with fewer mistakes and red tape with the same or fewer number of employees. Or someone would set up a competitor and imagine how many people would even pay extra just to not waste several hours of their time.

It's tax payer money so there is a lot more waste than even at big private companies. For example, the costs to just administer and operate the social security administration(not including any money paid out to recipients) is $15 billion dollars with a big B. There is no incentive for anyone to save the tax payer any money and there would be a huge pushback from govt contractors, unions and employeees. See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

Any large IT project in the government in almost any country and at any goverment costs huge amounts while not returning much value if any. Look at the state and costs of local metro stations and trains in almost any city.

>>ivewon+sn
In my entire life, I spent much less time in DMV offices than on the line calling AT&T's customer support.

USPS has also been great overall.

>>cybera+6w
I switched away from AT&T. You even keep your number. Switching govt services not an option unless you take more extreme measures.

> USPS has also been great overall

USPS is an independent agency which is funded by its own fees charged to users, not taxpayer money. It's not like the other agencies.

From Wiki:

> The USPS is often mistaken for a state-owned enterprise or government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business

It's also far from a monopoly unlike most other govt agencies and has competition in the form of UPS, Fedex, DHL, Amazon etc.

So it's not surprising that it runs better, if it loses user fees, it directly affects the bottomline and thus would have to downsize, no blank check from the taxpayer like other agencies have.