The following is my answer to a Quora
question: “What
usually happens if you run a country like a business?”
When a country is run like a business, the
closest you get is Singapore. Singapore
is sometimes referred to as Singapore Inc. In Singapore, most parts of the government,
its constituent organs of state, are cost centres with their own key
performance indicators. This means that
budgets are taken seriously and there is a lot of emphasis on accountability. This cuts down waste.
The people who attend to these organs of
state are customers, and other parts of the same organisation are internal
customers. This means there is a service
standard that is implemented, which includes them being unfailingly polite. If you are in Singapore, and had the police
call you to go down to the station to make a statement, you get called “Sir”,
or “Madam”, and they call you within three working days to follow up – even if
you are a person of interest.
Citizens are treated as stakeholders, and
policy is always geared towards the long-term, so there has to be immediate
profitability as well as growth down the road. This may be good or bad, depending on your
perspective. In essence, there is an
emphasis on the collective, and the needs of the majority always outweigh the
needs of the few.
On the other hand, there is a lot of
bureaucracy and paperwork. This is the
other side of a country run like a corporation. Everyone is accountable to someone and
something. This means that in certain
areas, such as entrepreneurship, there is this inherent discouragement for
risk, unless it is calculated and quantified. This means that Singapore is unlikely to ever
have an Apple from a start-up because that involves individualistic thinking
that is anathema to the system.
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