It’s a common cliche among government-bashers that the folks running the private sector are infinitely more wise than those in the public sector, and that we’d all be better off if government was run “like a business.”
Aside from the fact that government and business are not really in the same business, and therefore can not necessarily run under the same principles, a look at the recent business environment leads one to wonder how anybody can still seriously advance this argument.
I was therefore somewhat surprised to read this story about government using the HP/Compaq merger as a model for the homeland security reorganization. If this is true, I certainly hope they’re using the HP/Compaq fiasco as an example of what not to do. (Is that running government like a business, or ruining government like a business?