Could one of the MBBs run a country?
The situation is the following: an entire central/federal government gets replaced by McKinseyers, Bainers or BostonianConsulterGroupers.
I’d want to know what you guys think. Imo they would outperform many (if not all) actual governments.
Bump
It would quickly become like Venezuela
This is literally how every former command economy/regime started. A group of people thought they knew better than everyone else and were privy to some special level of knowledge - then proceeded in failing to account for every detail that is normally facilitated by free market mechanisms or otherwise self-correcting behavior.
Interestingly enough, you can hardly exclude the US from this list based on the way in which it was founded. It’s taken a while as the system was constructed better than most, but the cracks in our system are beginning to show themselves.
There were always cracks in the system, considering it claimed "all men are created equal" and then promptly counted black people as 3/5ths of a person. We fought a Civil War less than a century after the country was founded.
I agree with you in the result when their competences are increased to a point of dictatorship/planned economy. But my point is without exceeding the current competences: would they shift to communism/dictatorship or would they shift to free markets/libertarianism? I think if they are half the smart they like to show, they would hand over power back to the people towards libertarianism. Basically they would outperform every country just by laissez-faire.
The good news is there would be fewer wars started because the government would be too busy iterating on decks.
Pls fix
Most of the government is pretty much zero value add anyway so I think it would look pretty much the same. On a more serious note, what value do you actually think these people would bring to a government? Super communication skills? Pretty presentations? Putting a group of people in charge of a society that have been playing without skin in the game their whole career seems like a recipe for disaster.
I think you meant to say negative value.
Mitt Romney was the Bain CEO and attempted to run a country.
Mitt, Pete, Tom Cotton, the Prime Ministers of Greece and Israel, and a whole lot more that I’m missing
New PM of Belgium is a BCGer too
Plenty of MBB alumni in politics. I think the point of the post though is if all government personnel were replaced by the entirety of a consulting firm.
If MBBers are good at something, it would be reducing cost. That way, you can maximize your profits, which would be budget surplus in the case of governments.
The US government has been running around a perpetual loss for decades except during the Clinton Admin. So MBBers could easily find ways to optimize the hell out of government efficiency.
For instance, like I've been saying all along, the US Federal government needs some serious restructuring done ASAP. There are dozens of agencies in every single area from law enforcement to public health and energy that seemingly do the exact same thing and always fight over their turf. All these agencies could easily be combined into few (some M&A action).
Would save us so much tax revenue that we can actually decrease tax rates without worrying about national debt.
Govt incentive is to spend money, though. But private consulting is the opposite.
imagine getting this as your 'public sector' case in an interview
I think there’s a question here about advice vs. execution.
I think MBB people would probably do a solid job of finding efficient solutions to problems, but implementing them by getting buy-in from stakeholders, operating a large-scale effort and all of the associated administrative tasks that would coincide with implementing a big policy? Not sure they have the skill set or experience.
But bankers on the other hand...
it would become an EXcel and PPT sweatshop, with decks as the only export, and Seamless orders as the only import
WTF an MBB running the country? It's a fuickin country not a company and I'm the biggest fuckin capitalist in the world and i'm willin to say that
they would have to consult these nuts
As an an MBB alumnus,
In the middle east we do :)
If you want to see how it works, hope over for a project or transfer ;)
they already do lol
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