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Originally Posted by Tietäjä
Not necessarily. This is more a vague "usually consequences differ", than a rule. The easy example would go along the lines of, if government is inefficient, it costs excess money to the tax payers. If a company is inefficient, it costs excess money to it's stockholders.
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The difference though is that stockholders are such mainly by choice (with some possibility of a profit to offset the risk they're taking) whereas taxpayers are not. As a stockholder, if I think GM is unsound or I don't like how it's being run, then I can sell my stock. As a taxpayer, if I don't like how the government is running GM, well, I still have to pay for it anyway.
And if, by some unholy miracle, GM is ever profitable again, I won't be getting any dividend checks.
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Alternatively, is a company is inefficient, the government must bail it out
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No, it need not. Many companies aren't bailed out.
In capitalism, bankruptcy is not a bug, it's a feature. Poorly run companies
should go out of business. Subsidizing incompetence does little to reduce or eliminate it; if anything, it only serves to increase it.
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In the case of bail outs, the funds are brought from the tax payers, and it's essentially the same for a citizen whether he pays his taxes to fund public sector failures or private sector failures.
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But private sector failures aren't necessarily bailed out. It's only the same if you accept the premise of crony capitalism, where some companies are not allowed to fail.
I don't accept that premise.