Should government operate as a business?

Answer 1

No. In fact, most political scientists state that a government and a business are fundamentally polar opposites in terms of purpose and operation.

In theory, both a business and a government have the same purpose: benefit of their constituents: stockholders/owners in the case of the business, and citizenry in the case of a government.

However, there are two very important differences between the two.

Benefit in the case of business is almost universally defined to be profit. Anything which provides profit is good, anything which results in loss is bad.

Benefit for a government is much fuzzier - it can be defined in terms of "quality of life", protection, increased opportunity, and many other concepts. For a government, there is no single metric to define how "well" it is doing. Attempting to fit a profit motive on a government is a disaster, as the Cost/Benefit analysis is radically different.

The other major difference is in relationship to the law.

Businesses operate within the existing scope of the law, and while they may lobby (attempt to influence) changes in the law, in the final hour, a business exists within a fixed scope. As such, most businesses are a strong proponent of predictability - that is, the status quo.

Governments on the other hand define the law, and, as such, have considerably more flexibility. They can alter the scope of the law as their constituents demand, and have the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. As such, most governments can be thought of as progressive (in terms of allowing or encouraging change, not in the exact nature of the change). Similarly, encouraging a government to forgo legal change in favor of predictability is something that will quickly lead to a failure.

If the original question is thought of as "should methods which work for businesses be used by government", then the answer is the big "it depends". Certainly, successful management and operations methodologies which have proved to work in the business world should be carefully scrutinized by governments for possibly application. However, the primary criteria for adopting those methods is whether they help the government fulfill its goals, not the goals of the business world.