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United States43203 Posts
On February 25 2025 09:56 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:30 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:02 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 00:00 KwarK wrote:
People who decry the public sector for inefficiency and wish it were more like the private sector have never actually worked in the private sector and it shows. Shareholders are much less worried about how their money gets frivolously wasted than taxpayers are. Waste in the private sector is a joke. So many private jet flights that could have been emails and each time the C suite flew in for a fucking afternoon we’d prepare them all gift bags and local treats to make them like us more in the hope we’d keep our jobs despite the mounting losses. The shareholders needed the C suite to fuck off and the plant to stop spending money on indulging the C suite but the plant management wanted to keep their jobs and strategic investment of company money in office politics was deemed worthwhile.
I was the weirdo for saying that I’ll wait to get my office redecorated until after we make some money. More experienced coworkers recognized that an impressively refurbished office is a status symbol that makes your peers think you’re more important than you are which is especially important when the business is losing money. That's plain wrong. Shareholders absolutely care about performance. Everything you consider a waste are part of budgeting. I am baffled you would even think shareholders don't care. When was the last time any Europe gov had a headcount cut as big of a % as meta did just last year. 5% in like a quarter When was the last time you directly voted your shares? You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one.
It'll happen naturally without any scrutiny by shareholders at all? That's wonderful. Has it happened yet? If not, do you have a date on which the wasteful private companies will be gone by? I wonder how we will mark this momentous occasion.
Buddy, you're in a cult. This is cult level thinking.
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Northern Ireland25995 Posts
On February 25 2025 09:56 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:30 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:02 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 00:00 KwarK wrote:
People who decry the public sector for inefficiency and wish it were more like the private sector have never actually worked in the private sector and it shows. Shareholders are much less worried about how their money gets frivolously wasted than taxpayers are. Waste in the private sector is a joke. So many private jet flights that could have been emails and each time the C suite flew in for a fucking afternoon we’d prepare them all gift bags and local treats to make them like us more in the hope we’d keep our jobs despite the mounting losses. The shareholders needed the C suite to fuck off and the plant to stop spending money on indulging the C suite but the plant management wanted to keep their jobs and strategic investment of company money in office politics was deemed worthwhile.
I was the weirdo for saying that I’ll wait to get my office redecorated until after we make some money. More experienced coworkers recognized that an impressively refurbished office is a status symbol that makes your peers think you’re more important than you are which is especially important when the business is losing money. That's plain wrong. Shareholders absolutely care about performance. Everything you consider a waste are part of budgeting. I am baffled you would even think shareholders don't care. When was the last time any Europe gov had a headcount cut as big of a % as meta did just last year. 5% in like a quarter When was the last time you directly voted your shares? You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one.
No they won’t necessarily. Economies of scale, pseudo-monopolies exist.
Why does what Kwark considers waste informed by his personal experience not matter and what you do, does?
Rather than address counter-points you’re just repeating maxims. The real world is considerably more nuanced than markets = efficient, or on the flip side markets = bad
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On February 25 2025 10:00 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 09:56 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:30 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:02 ETisME wrote:
[quote]
That's plain wrong.
Shareholders absolutely care about performance.
Everything you consider a waste are part of budgeting.
I am baffled you would even think shareholders don't care.
When was the last time any Europe gov had a headcount cut as big of a % as meta did just last year. 5% in like a quarter When was the last time you directly voted your shares? You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one. It'll happen naturally without any scrutiny by shareholders at all? That's wonderful. Has it happened yet? If not, do you have a date on which the wasteful private companies will be gone by? I wonder how we will mark this momentous occasion. Buddy, you're in a cult. This is cult level thinking.
You serious? Look at the stock market, huge staff cuts, companies closing down with another replacing it.
I can't even believe there's someone arguing public sector is less
You don't need it be a genius to see it happening.
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On February 25 2025 10:09 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 09:56 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:30 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:02 ETisME wrote:
[quote]
That's plain wrong.
Shareholders absolutely care about performance.
Everything you consider a waste are part of budgeting.
I am baffled you would even think shareholders don't care.
When was the last time any Europe gov had a headcount cut as big of a % as meta did just last year. 5% in like a quarter When was the last time you directly voted your shares? You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one. No they won’t necessarily. Economies of scale, pseudo-monopolies exist. Why does what Kwark considers waste informed by his personal experience not matter and what you do, does? Rather than address counter-points you’re just repeating maxims. The real world is considerably more nuanced than markets = efficient, or on the flip side markets = bad
His own personal experience don't matter because that's management to decide what is waste and we see stock market/financial report reflects.
Not some random bloke making his own opinion on how others do things.
Let alone someone who actually work in a large company would know, they all categorise cost for a reason, it's all to break down cost and categories them properly.
Not "flying private jet" is bad.
Or you all live in a fantastic society where public sector is performing better than private sector. Very special place indeed
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United States43203 Posts
On February 25 2025 10:21 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 10:00 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:56 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:30 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
When was the last time you directly voted your shares? You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one. It'll happen naturally without any scrutiny by shareholders at all? That's wonderful. Has it happened yet? If not, do you have a date on which the wasteful private companies will be gone by? I wonder how we will mark this momentous occasion. Buddy, you're in a cult. This is cult level thinking. You serious? Look at the stock market, huge staff cuts, companies closing down with another replacing it. I can't even believe there's someone arguing public sector is less You don't need it be a genius to see it happening.
So you don’t have a date for the waste to be gone by, but you have faith that it will naturally all disappear. But it hasn’t happened yet because of the layoffs. But it will.
Also consider the implications of your arguments. The huge layoffs are trimming waste, right? And so the private companies generated huge amounts of waste. That’s how it existed to be trimmed. Presumably there will be layoffs again in the future. Therefore presumably they will continue to generate waste.
Meanwhile public organizations typically don’t have huge layoffs which, per your argument, means they’ve already achieved your post waste scenario. How wonderful.
This is the problem with you cultists. Once you declare these things are true as a matter of faith anyone can argue anything.
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On February 25 2025 10:26 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 10:21 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 10:00 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:56 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote:
[quote]
You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one. It'll happen naturally without any scrutiny by shareholders at all? That's wonderful. Has it happened yet? If not, do you have a date on which the wasteful private companies will be gone by? I wonder how we will mark this momentous occasion. Buddy, you're in a cult. This is cult level thinking. You serious? Look at the stock market, huge staff cuts, companies closing down with another replacing it. I can't even believe there's someone arguing public sector is less You don't need it be a genius to see it happening. So you don’t have a date for the waste to be gone by, but you have faith that it will naturally all disappear. But it hasn’t happened yet because of the layoffs. But it will. Also consider the implications of your arguments. The huge layoffs are trimming waste, right? And so the private companies generated huge amounts of waste. That’s how it existed to be trimmed. Presumably there will be layoffs again in the future. Therefore presumably they will continue to generate waste. Meanwhile public organizations typically don’t have huge layoffs which, per your argument, means they’ve already achieved your post waste scenario. How wonderful. This is the problem with you cultists. Once you declare these things are true as a matter of faith anyone can argue anything.
it's called over investment and resource management.
Welcome to the market.
You think private sector is bad?
That's cute.
0 competition, no large head cut, with even less transparency, is somehow better.
Good thing majority of people are the cult then. I am surised this is even a debate.
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United States43203 Posts
On February 25 2025 10:32 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 10:26 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 10:21 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 10:00 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:56 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit.
Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste.
But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one. It'll happen naturally without any scrutiny by shareholders at all? That's wonderful. Has it happened yet? If not, do you have a date on which the wasteful private companies will be gone by? I wonder how we will mark this momentous occasion. Buddy, you're in a cult. This is cult level thinking. You serious? Look at the stock market, huge staff cuts, companies closing down with another replacing it. I can't even believe there's someone arguing public sector is less You don't need it be a genius to see it happening. So you don’t have a date for the waste to be gone by, but you have faith that it will naturally all disappear. But it hasn’t happened yet because of the layoffs. But it will. Also consider the implications of your arguments. The huge layoffs are trimming waste, right? And so the private companies generated huge amounts of waste. That’s how it existed to be trimmed. Presumably there will be layoffs again in the future. Therefore presumably they will continue to generate waste. Meanwhile public organizations typically don’t have huge layoffs which, per your argument, means they’ve already achieved your post waste scenario. How wonderful. This is the problem with you cultists. Once you declare these things are true as a matter of faith anyone can argue anything. it's called over investment and resource management. Welcome to the market. You think private sector is bad? That's cute. 0 competition, no large head cut, with even less transparency, is somehow better. Good thing majority of people are the cult then. I am surised this is even a debate.
It’s not a debate. It’s you asserting that shareholders hold management in private enterprises to a higher level of scrutiny than taxpayers hold public spending at and me laughing at you because that’s obviously not even slightly true.
Then you asserted that there’s some sort of report into waste and I explained to you that there isn’t.
Then you asserted that profitability is a proxy for waste despite it obviously not being. There are countless wasteful companies that generate high margins and efficient ones that do not.
Then you asserted that it didn’t matter that none of what you’d previously said was even close to correct because it’s an inevitable natural process that doesn’t need any evidence, the waste will inevitably all be gone because you believe it will.
I pointed it out that that was as true yesterday as it is today and therefore if we accept your premise then all waste must already be gone. Or if it’s not gone then your premise is unfalsifiable unless you’re about to provide and commit to a date. Failing that your assertion that it’s a natural inevitable process that you need not provide any evidence for is a bit a joke.
Then you pivoted to layoffs as an example of waste reduction. Setting aside for a minute the question of whether hiring someone, training them, paying them, then paying them severance to stop working is somehow waste reduction, it still doesn’t help you at all. Your assertion relies on private enterprise not creating waste. Your evidence is that private enterprise engages in huge waste reduction (which you didn’t prove but whatever). Necessarily your own argument is that private enterprise engages in huge waste creation in order to reduce it. They hired all these people.
I’m just having fun with you at this point because you’re not meaningfully able to engage with the subject or your own arguments about it.
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United States43203 Posts
What you should be arguing is that businesses have mechanisms within them such as incentive structures that measure and reward individuals for performance. That they hold themselves accountable, not that shareholders hold them accountable. The problem for you there is that those are highly limited in effectiveness, it’s hard to measure a good general manager in a tough market vs a bad one in a less competitive region. I’ve seen this first hand. The other problem you’re going to face is that those same mechanisms also exist in the public sector. Management is still held accountable to metrics, good managers are still promoted, bad ones still fired. Not always, but that’s not true of the private sector either.
But in any case, taxpayers have a higher degree of scrutiny than shareholders.
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If it's legitimate waste, the public sector has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.
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United States24736 Posts
I don't want to actually link to twitter and give Musk more views, but this evening he doubled down on his threat to federal employees, saying if they don't reply to round 2 of "what did you accomplish last week" they will be terminated. I think he's getting desperate.
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On February 25 2025 11:40 micronesia wrote:
I don't want to actually link to twitter and give Musk more views, but this evening he doubled down on his threat to federal employees, saying if they don't reply to round 2 of "what did you accomplish last week" they will be terminated. I think he's getting desperate.
Did Musk say anything about exemptions for federal employees who have already been told to ignore his mandate (like FBI workers)?
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On February 25 2025 11:40 micronesia wrote:
I don't want to actually link to twitter and give Musk more views, but this evening he doubled down on his threat to federal employees, saying if they don't reply to round 2 of "what did you accomplish last week" they will be terminated. I think he's getting desperate.
He's already hitting his ceiling in his thirst for power. Musk went too fast like an idiot. So many of Trump's new agency heads are telling their workers to ignore Musk's email, and even one Military general I heard today said Musk has no authority to order anything. His only saving grace is that he offered Trump probably unlimited funds to primary any Congressmember who doesnt toe the line. But I imagine that can be adjusted into blackmail now if Trump wants.
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I didnt think I've ever had to argue that businesse are more efficient than governments since I didnt think a single human thinks otherwise but here we are:
The security of businsses is the market itself, (shareholders are a part of it) but if a company is inefficient it's profiability goes down while more efficient companies raise, that is the "accountability", there is no such mechanism in the public sector, if the DMV is inefficient you can't go and get your driver's license with a competitor because the government holds pure monopolies... in fact worse than monpolies because there isnt an incentive for profit so the DMV doesn't give a flying fuck about how many licenses per employee they produce.
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On February 25 2025 11:53 Husyelt wrote:
So many of Trump's new agency heads are telling their workers to ignore Musk's email
With so many you mean the FBI and intelligence agencies? lol yeah the email said not to share any classified info, those agencies will have their own audit that requires a more secure handling of information.
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United States24736 Posts
On February 25 2025 12:03 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 11:53 Husyelt wrote:
So many of Trump's new agency heads are telling their workers to ignore Musk's email With so many you mean the FBI and intelligence agencies? lol yeah the email said not to share any classified info, those agencies will have their own audit that requires a more secure handling of information.
There were more.
Also DPB: As usual, it's all clear as mud.
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On February 25 2025 12:09 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 12:03 baal wrote:On February 25 2025 11:53 Husyelt wrote:
So many of Trump's new agency heads are telling their workers to ignore Musk's email With so many you mean the FBI and intelligence agencies? lol yeah the email said not to share any classified info, those agencies will have their own audit that requires a more secure handling of information. There were more. Also DPB: As usual, it's all clear as mud.
wich other Trump's agency heads have instructed their workers to ignore the email besides Kash and Tulsi?
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United States43203 Posts
On February 25 2025 11:58 baal wrote:
I didnt think I've ever had to argue that businesse are more efficient than governments since I didnt think a single human thinks otherwise but here we are:
The security of businsses is the market itself, (shareholders are a part of it) but if a company is inefficient it's profiability goes down while more efficient companies raise, that is the "accountability", there is no such mechanism in the public sector, if the DMV is inefficient you can't go and get your driver's license with a competitor because the government holds pure monopolies... in fact worse than monpolies because there isnt an incentive for profit so the DMV doesn't give a flying fuck about how many licenses per employee they produce.
The argument was over whether inefficiency exists in private enterprise and whether the shareholders are equipped to address misuse of their resources. The DMV is inefficient, but so is every business I’ve ever worked for.
My last company was getting a product supplied by a competitor at below cost, both their cost and the competitor’s cost (we knew this to be true because it was literally below material cost). Someone had the bright idea that we shouldn’t be supporting a competitor by forcing them to take losses on a bad contract supplying us product we then resold for high margin. They pushed us to in-house that business and so we invested millions in tooling to do that. We then lost millions more taking over the part of the business that we knew for a fact was unprofitable for our competitor. The resold product margin was enough that the entire supply chain could, in theory be described as profitable, which is what they then insisted. But far less profitable than before. Before the competitor would lose $5/unit supplying the precursor and the plant would then make $20/processing it for a total profit to us of $20. We spent $5/unit investment in stealing the -$5/unit precursor business, lost $10/unit on precursor, made $20/unit processing, and fudged the numbers until nobody could tell what made what but the whole thing clearly made $10/unit which was defined as good.
My specialty is manufacturing cost accounting and I can assure you that in private enterprise nobody has any fucking clue where the profits come from, how much it costs to make anything, and why they succeed or fail. None. They can’t even understand the data.
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On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 07:30 KwarK wrote:On February 25 2025 07:02 ETisME wrote:On February 25 2025 00:00 KwarK wrote:
People who decry the public sector for inefficiency and wish it were more like the private sector have never actually worked in the private sector and it shows. Shareholders are much less worried about how their money gets frivolously wasted than taxpayers are. Waste in the private sector is a joke. So many private jet flights that could have been emails and each time the C suite flew in for a fucking afternoon we’d prepare them all gift bags and local treats to make them like us more in the hope we’d keep our jobs despite the mounting losses. The shareholders needed the C suite to fuck off and the plant to stop spending money on indulging the C suite but the plant management wanted to keep their jobs and strategic investment of company money in office politics was deemed worthwhile.
I was the weirdo for saying that I’ll wait to get my office redecorated until after we make some money. More experienced coworkers recognized that an impressively refurbished office is a status symbol that makes your peers think you’re more important than you are which is especially important when the business is losing money. That's plain wrong. Shareholders absolutely care about performance. Everything you consider a waste are part of budgeting. I am baffled you would even think shareholders don't care. When was the last time any Europe gov had a headcount cut as big of a % as meta did just last year. 5% in like a quarter When was the last time you directly voted your shares? You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate.
So I suggest you look up SASKtel but there are other examples if you want them. They are a government monopoly on cell phones for a province. Every one from Saskatchewan never gives up their plan when they move because it is way way better than the all the private offerings in the other provinces.
I also did some independent audits of waste contracts too see if public or private was cheaper for the consumer, to my surprise it was the public. And guess what, you are correct that both head count and salaries for the lowest workers were higher.
But what I was surprised to learn, but makes total sense looking back is that companies are designed to maximize profits. This is really deadly when things have inelastic demand (you're getting your trash taken, sadly now cell phones are a need, and so on). They continually jack prices.
In many situations other competitors show up and prices drop, but there are some industries where there are massive barriers to entry. Whether that is start up costs, regulation, so on. In these, with big monopolies on needed products private companies just rake us over the coals.
And on top of that if they did end up costing the same you as a local of anywhere would rather the government system. Because instead of big profit leaving your city/state/country it stays local. And the front line workers getting paid more tend to pay a higher tax rate themselves. They also spend their money (and locally) helping drive your economy.
Not all things being government run is bad, especially with a macro long term view.
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EPT
