Interesting lens! Though I’m not sure if this is fair—the largest things that are done tend to get done through governments, whether those things are good or bad. If you blame catastrophes like Mao’s famine or Hitler’s genocide on governments, you should also credit things like slavery abolition and vaccination and general decline of violence in civilized society to governments too.
I do mostly[1] credit such things to governments, but the argument is about whether companies or governments are more liable to take on very large tail risks. Not about whether governments are generally good or bad. It may be that governments just like starting larger projects than corporations. But in that case, I think the claim that a greater percentage of those end in catastrophe than similarly large projects started by corporations still looks good.
I definitely don’t credit slavery abolition to governments, at least in America, since that industry was largely made possible in the first place by governments subsidizing the cost of chasing down runaway slaves. I’d guess general decline of violence is more attributable to generally increasing affluence, which has a range of factors associated with it, than government intervention so directly. But I’m largely ignorant on that particular subject. The “mostly” here means “I acknowledge governments do some good things”.
I do mostly[1] credit such things to governments, but the argument is about whether companies or governments are more liable to take on very large tail risks. Not about whether governments are generally good or bad. It may be that governments just like starting larger projects than corporations. But in that case, I think the claim that a greater percentage of those end in catastrophe than similarly large projects started by corporations still looks good.
I definitely don’t credit slavery abolition to governments, at least in America, since that industry was largely made possible in the first place by governments subsidizing the cost of chasing down runaway slaves. I’d guess general decline of violence is more attributable to generally increasing affluence, which has a range of factors associated with it, than government intervention so directly. But I’m largely ignorant on that particular subject. The “mostly” here means “I acknowledge governments do some good things”.
Whoa! Source?
I don’t know the exact article that convinced me, but I bet this summary of the history of economic thought on the subject is a good place to start, which I have skimmed, and seems to cover the main points with citations.