Throwing money around at the end of the year is a product of a dumb budgeting process, not a govt. vs. private issue. I've worked at businesses where some units were funded the using the same process who did the same thing - coming in under budget, and squandering cash on things to avoid losing funding the next year.
Private organizations have this wonderful ability to fail if someone else can do the same job better and cheaper. This does not prevent subsets of a private organization form being wasteful, but if the organization as a whole is significantly more wasteful than their competition, they will lose.
TARP? GM? AIG? It seems like private organizations under a certain size threshold have the ability to fail if someone else can do the same job better and cheaper. Beyond a certain size, they are indistinguishable from government.
You have a valid point (although your examples not failing was the results of public action, not the private market). I think there is a trade off between economies of scale and "too big to fail". There is some size that is still too small to hide colossal mistakes, but big enough to streamline its processes.
Yes, private orgs. can fail if someone can convince them to move to another party for their goods/services. Ideally - it happens occasionally, though not often.
Democratic societies can choose to elect better suited leaders for their governance to do the job better, and vote to improve their models of governance to be more effective and provide better services/efficiency. Ideally - it happens occasionally, though not often.
Voting with dollars works about as well as voting with ballots, though. People are driven by the exact same irrational drives and misinformation whether they're behaving as consumers or voters.
