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Nationalized industries have no good record of quality or efficiency.

See Chernobyl.




The comment section for the Washington Post article <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/24/starlin...> reporting on today's news is overflowing with anger/despair/grief/denial from anti-Musk, anti-SpaceX people. One example:

>For those who "More Engineers and Less MBAs", that's a dog whistle - Just so you know, Boeing is the most diversified aerospace and aircraft manufacturer in the U.S. Typically, Engineers are more arrogant and misogynistic, while MBAs tend to be more progressive, though they can also be more driven by profit. Want an example? SpaceX is a so called "Engineers driven" company.

>At this point, Starliner is actually safe enough (less 1/270 of failure chance) to bring those 2 astronauts back home. The only reason why NASA is not using Starliner, is because there is an election 3 months away. NASA administrator (a politician) made the final decision, so it's not up to MBA or Engineer, it's up to a politician.

>Vote Blue, Nationalize SpaceX and Pass it to Boeing to Run, everybody wins except Musk.


> "Engineers are more arrogant and misogynistic, while MBAs tend to be more progressive"

Utter bilge. I bet the author knows nothing about engineers or running a business.


Private industries have no good record of quality or efficiency.

See Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Fukushima, Enron, Theranos, etc.

With the cheap talking points out of the way, one could examine this question carefully and objectively now.


I recommend reading a blow-by-blow account of the causes of the Chernobyl disaster, and compare the long list of failures and coverups with that of the other disasters you mentioned.


Any large disaster will be caused by a long list of failures. Chernobyl was a particularly colossal screw-up (mostly a concatenation of unlucky coincidences, one specific instance of ignorance due to political meddling, and severe human errors eg by Dyatlov).

But it is preposterous to draw conclusions about state vs private enterprises from this N=1 example. There have been many successful government-run megaprojects (Panama Canal, Dutch North Sea dams, China's high-speed-rail). There have been many unsuccessful private ones.

Adjudicating this question would require careful enumeration and analysis across many instances, not just throwing out one example.

McKinsey, for example, states that megaprojects can fail "when big projects cross state or national borders and involve a mix of private and government spending."

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insight...


I have friends who grew up in the Soviet Union. None of them have ever mentioned a longing for Soviet quality.


The Bolshoi does excellent opera and ballet.

Private US health care is way more expensive than basically anywhere else in the world, while delivering worse outcomes than most places.

Want to trade anecdotes all day? We can do that. Or you can address the question at hand seriously, as I suggested before.


Read about Bhopal tragedy, it is pretty much same.


I suggest you walk outside and experience the real world, not whatever articles you're reading.




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