This is quite fascinating. There are only 9 countries with more revenue than Walmart! If you think of a President/Prime Minister as equivalent to CEO running the entity, this would mean that politicians are downright most inefficient executives that there are and our various politic systems as well extreme resource hogs. Consider the fact on average each individual unquestionably commits a significant portion of their incomes to their political system and still they can't match an efficient business.
It could be seen as a little disingenuous to label politicians as 'inefficient executives' from this comparison - For many reasons, e.g.
- Nations have more complex systems, due to more entities - e.g. 1 million - 1 billion citizens).
- rev / profit is a goal for both states and organisations, but in vastly different ways. The state also arguably has many more goals and responsibilities
- Organisations have fewer voices demanding a say. Most states are being pulled in many different directions (military coups, lobbyists and industries, espionage, protests, votes, multiple parties, party in-fighting is more emotional & passionate, etc.)
- You can't 'fire' citizens as readily as employees
This comparison is also interesting when thinking from a 'power' angle (definitely runs into similar 'apples to oranges' comparison issues though).
This is fairly obvious. In order for a government to have a large income, there must be large corporations. The larger the government income, the larger the corporations. Not all countries will be large, therefore the largest government (in terms of revenue) will have many, many companies larger than smaller governments.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 22.0 ms ] threadThis is quite fascinating. There are only 9 countries with more revenue than Walmart! If you think of a President/Prime Minister as equivalent to CEO running the entity, this would mean that politicians are downright most inefficient executives that there are and our various politic systems as well extreme resource hogs. Consider the fact on average each individual unquestionably commits a significant portion of their incomes to their political system and still they can't match an efficient business.
- Nations have more complex systems, due to more entities - e.g. 1 million - 1 billion citizens).
- rev / profit is a goal for both states and organisations, but in vastly different ways. The state also arguably has many more goals and responsibilities
- Organisations have fewer voices demanding a say. Most states are being pulled in many different directions (military coups, lobbyists and industries, espionage, protests, votes, multiple parties, party in-fighting is more emotional & passionate, etc.)
- You can't 'fire' citizens as readily as employees
This comparison is also interesting when thinking from a 'power' angle (definitely runs into similar 'apples to oranges' comparison issues though).
I suppose it's an interesting headline to read.