Is the government a Not-for-Profit
The government is supposed to function as a not-for-profit but instead it ends up in the service of for-profit
In Business, one figures out how to solve a problem in such a way that people would be willing to pay money, and then they do that over and over again so that they can keep on generating revenue and hopefully increasing amounts of it.
In a not-for-profit, you do the same thing: you solve a problem, but often, once you’re done solving a problem, you move on to a higher-order problem. You do not go to 17 places solving the same problem over and over.
You would rarely find a not-for-profit that has helped farmers overcome diseases of livestock to turn into a veterinary school. They would probably focus next on increasing the efficiency of livestock or developing local livestock value chains.
The government’s job, much like a not-for-profit, is to solve a problem and move on to higher-order issues.
You would not expect an airport to rebuild its runway every other year or for the runway to come apart every time it rains.
An Airbus A320 is one of the standard planes used in most fleets, weighs about 77,000 kgs and lands at 200 Kmph. The runway could come apart, but it does not.
But when government meets capitalism, you get potholes. You get roads that need repairing every season. 10,000 cars weighing 770 Kgs driving around at 20 Kmph can annihilate a road in the very same city where a runway can handle 600 landings a day.
A runway is a glorified road. Sure, its construction is much different from that of a standard road (if at all anything of that sort exists). A typical runway needs to be paved all over again every 10 - 20 years.
The Bangalore International Airport opened in May 2008. Its runway was re-paved in June 2020. 12 years, 365 days, 500 flights landing each day. 2,190,000 landing. It was opportunistically repaved during the lockdown. Under normal operations, it may have been further delayed.
The same city cannot produce one road that can withstand one monsoon!
A government is a not-for-profit entity, but are the people responsible for running it, not-for-profit?