Talk:Government failure

Mere dictionary definitions don't belong
This page doesn't seem to provide any reason for being here, except as a dictionary definition. I don't think dictionary definitions belong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.105.13.148 (talk) 19:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

"Subsidies - government subsidies provided to particular businesses or industries. "
This example lacks the reasons why government subsidies have averse effects. Joepnl (talk) 01:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Some reasons why subsidies have a negative impact on economy are provided by Murray N. Rothbard in his "Power and Market". I guess that it can be used a source for examples and explanation.--VictorAnyakin (talk) 14:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

"Any real world examples?"
There are lots of very interesting types of possible government failures, so why are there no real-world examples? Is it too difficult to find expert consensus of an example, or even some likely candidates? I noticed some of the linked pages have examples (such as pork barrel) -- is it preferred to leave all real-world examples there, instead of on this page? Directedchaos (talk) 10:42, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merger between Government waste and Government failure
This article [i.e., Government waste] covers an important topic, but its content is very similar to government failure, and it has several problems, as already discussed on this [i.e., Talk:Government waste] talk page. Andrew327 15:36, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose, with caveat – per comments I've made on other talk pages, the overall topic should be in Government spending. As is, both of these titles have WP:POVTITLE problems. Still, government failure is similar in topic to Failed state, although not on the extreme end of the scale, so merging to Government failure is not a good idea. (Where is there a dividing line?) But how about this? Cut and paste the material and combine the two articles into Government waste. And then do a WP:BLAR. I think opposition to that COA will be minimal. Then the issue of merging Government waste with Government spending can be addressed. – S. Rich (talk) 16:13, 11 March 2013 (UTC)16:16, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you're misunderstanding the concept of government failure. It's foundational theory of political science/public administration and it basically states that there are some things that the government doesn't do well.  It complements the theory of market failure, which states that there are things that the private sector doesn't do well.  It has nothing to do with failed states and the concept is entirely NPOV.  I wouldn't be opposed to moving this article to its own section in government spending, but it might be WP:Undue.  Andrew327 16:26, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Not addressing your comments at the moment, I propose we change the location of the discussion page for this merger. Per WP:MERGE usually the destination page is the location for discussion. Andrewman, if you'll do the change, then wonderful. If not, I'll do a change a bit later today by doing a cut & paste of these comments. – S. Rich (talk) 21:53, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Note – I have cut & pasted the above comments from the original posting on the Government waste talk page. This was done after redirecting the discussion target on the Merger banners. Also I have refactored Andrew's comments by adding information in [brackets] to clarify what article he was referring to in his comments. – S. Rich (talk) 03:24, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Vigorously Oppose - "Government failure" has a narrow technical meaning in economic literature. It is not a subset of government spending. For example, logrolling, regulatory capture, and regulatory ordering may involve no spending whatsoever, and voters' rational ignorance is conceptually separate from spending but directly related to government failure. "Government failure" is something which can be defined in a NPOV manner using economic efficiency analysis; I am not sure that the same can be said for "government waste". The economic concept of "government failure" has almost nothing in common with "failed state". Government failure is a set of systemic issues that will arise in a fully functioning state due to the logic of the Principal–agent problem and other such issues. Ehusman (talk) 14:44, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Removal of sections
I've removed some unsourced, POV/OR sections/material. This was done incrementally so that editors interested in restoring them can do so incrementally as well, fulfilling the WP:BURDEN of providing WP:RS for the material, sans OR and POV. – S. Rich (talk) 03:41, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
 * While you can remove unsourced sections, it seems to me that a much better mechanism would be to add maintenance tags to those sections to challenge people to add cited sources. Ehusman (talk) 14:58, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The whole article is prone to abuse. Under WP:CRITERIA (which requires Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, Consistency) we have an article that fails because it simply invites POV-prone laundry lists of lousy government action or inaction. Really, some WP:TNT should be applied. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 16:39, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Probably so. It seems like there ought to be a clear statement in the lede that this is a technical phrase that does not simply mean, "whatever pisses me off", but has a analog to Market failure. Also, most if not all of the things that would be listed as types of government failure would probably have standalone articles: Logrolling, Rational ignorance, and Pork barrel, for example. Keeping it down to a simple narrative that references off to existing pages might be an easy way to keep it clean. It is unfortunate that some of those pages suck, but that is not a reason not to note a type of failure. The old layout was based on conceptual grouping, i.e. problems shared by the principals and agents successively, or by all four (voter, legislator, administrator, street-level bureaucrat). Ehusman (talk) 22:46, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Ehusman, your renewal of the discussion may stimulate Andrewman to come in and opine. Dormant for 8 months, I wonder if my proposal, above, to get this merged into Government spending can be accepted and accomplished. (For now, though, it's holiday time. So I think the topic may go dormant for another 8 months.) – S. Rich (talk) 03:48, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Original research?
The article currently has an original research maintenance tag. The content looks well sourced to me, which sections are OR? Andrew327 02:59, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The Overview section is lacking sources for most statements. The rest of the article appears to be sourced, although I haven't checked that the text reflects the refs. --Ca2james (talk) 03:15, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I removed the tag. If there are any objections, can you please clarify which bits seem like original research in a comment here, then put the tag back? skeptical scientist (talk) 04:36, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

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The only salvation
The only salvation I can envision for this page is to rename it Government failure (public economics).

Coase was engaging in some serious internal mischief when he gave it this name in the first place (the joke is that it mirrors market failure in preferred effects, but not at all in less preferred effects).

This was all good fun while it remained in professional captivity. It's presence here is anything but professional captivity.

The present page title is guaranteed to befuddle the naive reader (in a biased way) before the reader has any chance to gain his or her bearings. Hats off to Coase's clever linguistic hack. Let's all have a good laugh, and then do the right thing. &mdash; MaxEnt 19:34, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Failure of NPOV?
Article seems to subscribe to the deeply flawed idea of market populism. Failure must be defined by purpose - the purpose of government is to serve the needs of its people. Starvation is the easiest example.

Most failure arises not from too much control, but the absence of control. Instead of government controlling business (i.e., the movement of capital in and out of the country), business controls the government, leading to the death of democracy and widespread economic devastation. See: the third world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.132.67 (talk) 20:02, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

How is EU's fishery policy a failure?
It has many of the best preserved seas, UK doesn't do better at safeguarding fish, did anyone write that as to mean EU should give on fishery policy? What a dreadful POV-push... 2A01:E34:EC12:36C0:8C23:A871:EBD8:650F (talk) 02:42, 3 February 2023 (UTC)