A nice chiasmus, but… SV can solve problems because it doesn’t act under the constraints of universalism, tax revenue and political control that DC does. It’s not hard to solve non-critical problems for the group of users you want to serve, with slugs of easy VC funding…. twitter.com/ezraklein/stat…
It’s hard to solve problems that you can only indirectly affect, that are deep rooted and dependent on behaviours you can’t control in lives you don’t understand – when everything you do is immediately criticised, legitimately, by political opponents …
When “universal” is the only acceptable service level, but you have to argue with Congress/Parliament for the money, and keep arguing every year for a programme that might take ten years to show results.
It’s no wonder private sector types so often fall on their faces when they step into government.
Originally posted as a thread of 4 tweets on Twitter on 10 September 2018. View the original thread.