Comment by ForHackernews
1 day ago
Q: Why are governments more efficient than private enterprise?
Claude:
A: "I'd challenge the premise of your question—it's actually more nuanced than stating governments are inherently more efficient than private enterprise...
... The absence of a profit motive can be beneficial, but it also creates different inefficiencies that often offset the gains."
Red pilled? Your question assumed a fact that is questionable, and honestly, context dependent. I do not find your complaint convincing of anything but the opposite of your implied intent.
"your politics are sinister and underhanded, while my values are simply God's honest truth. Any unbiased AI would agree with me! @grok explain why Tesla is the world's greatest car company."
Actually, Deepseek thinks it’s a nuanced question and Claude and Grok agree in this chat. https://pellmell.ai/s/f3e71607e74bcb4470e6142a82f3d061
I mean honestly you'd be hard pressed to find much support for your view even among socialist that adamantly believe government should control much more.
Most of the arguments come from concerns about 2nd order effects and distortions then claims of "efficient".
I guess overall it's more both "sides" of said argument think your opinion is bad/wrong/incorrect so you find little to no support in any model.
I'm pretty sure it isn't assumed. My main example has been the same since COVID, as insurance is probably the business you can compare 1-1 the most.
Public health insurance in my country, in the last 20 years used 6-9% (depending on the year) of the taxes send to them as administrative overhead, meaning that for each 100 euro that you paid for health insurance, 91-95 are used to pay doctors, hospitals and medication. The average administrative overhead for private insurance is around 14%, which makes private health insurance 50 to 100% less efficient, and means that for each dollar you pay them, only 86 are used to pay health services.
I have other examples, but it isn't fair: municipal water VS private water service are almost always less expensive and better tested in my country. Municipality trash collection Vs private trash collection, same. Public junkyard Vs private junkyard, same. But in my area, when privatised those services tends to be ran by the local mafia (Marseille, Nice), which add a lot of overhead, and they were privatised because the local government was corrupt in the first place, which means they were probably inefficient (compared to the services still publicly owned) first, then sold.
Cherry picked examples don't prove that it isn't context dependent.
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Is your country’s pharmaceutical companies pushing the entire industry forward?
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Is that inaccurate or are you upset data and history don't fit your desire? Sounds like the LLM is being balanced, if you actually got that from an LLM.
Yeah, I got something similar from Gemini as the first sentence which could be taken out of the larger context easily. The overall answer is very balanced, I assume it was here too. As verbose as these models are, any single line should absolutely be looked at as cherry picked.
There it is
I didn't ask it to be "balanced", I asked it why governments are more efficient — it's imparting a pro-capitalist American-flavoured spin in response to a prompt that didn't call for it.
If you ask "why should I drink this poison?" or "why should I fire my gun randomly into this crowd?" should it refuse to push back? A leading question in no way implies it should follow your lead.
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You really detracted from your point and killed any hope for a nuanced discussion by begging the question. You could have simply asked the model which system is more efficient.
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These models are trained to be truthful. Your disagreement isn't with the model, or the US, or the capitalist world but with economics and social sciences.
If you want Claude to list arguments for socialism, be explicit about that ("List the best arguments in favor socialism). It will gladly comply. You didn't do that, you asked it to assume a premise that runs contrary to the current state of expert knowledge.
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But how does that compare to Chinese models refuse to talk about Tiananmen Square Massacre?
People have different opinions. Its impossible not to have a stance. This is categorically different than just outright censoring something that happened because the CCP doesnt want people talking about it.
What would you want to hear from a non-American biased model in response?
Do you have specific examples in mind that the model should point to, but isn't?
Government initiatives can be more efficient at addressing societal issues where there is no clear economic incentive such as climate change
https://claude.ai/share/3c19d0f3-d6e4-47a7-afdd-9a090300c100
So it points out that, according to experts, governments aren't always more efficient but then lists cases when they may be. Seems pretty balanced to me!
Don't know what else you would want. If it neglects to challenge the premise, it's just exhibiting sycophancy.
This is meant to be biased???
I don't think the US and China hold very different opinions on this question. China is very capitalist and has long ago sold off most of its older, Soviet style state enterprises. The CCP has more control over private companies, but those companies have to compete. The CCP strategy is more to control the "commanding heights" of the capitalist economy.
Is it worth anyones time to argue with a machine?
Biased sample, but basically everyone I know on either side of politics agrees with that.