You know, it's funny how differently the private and public sectors think. Almost as if they were different species.
I recall my own government engineer days. We were under pressure to "produce", but that was toys for the DOD, and there was no pressure (risk?) that they wouldn't be "taken up by the market" at all. We used to look over at our private sector counterparts, and think they had less pressure, and wow, looka them salaries and bennies they get.
Well, I made the move. The pressure on private sector might not be as obvious from the outside, and yes, the money for *winners* is pretty good, but...through absolutely no fault of your own - the consequences for failure are really there for you personally even if you're working for a TBTF (I never did). You can produce perfectly good stuff - even the best - but as has been pointed out here, if the demand isn't there, or the other guy has better marketing, your better mousetrap doesn't fly.
Going out on your own, starting and running a show, as I did - it's just more of that.
Herding squirrels for a living, marketing, "the buck stops here" except it doesn't - it goes to everyone else involved first - it's pretty demanding.
Now, those who think of themselves as all our bosses and managers - government, think we've got it so fat, and that they are so good at what they do, that when everyone else is actually tightening to the point of pain, all they gotta do is skim a little more off the top - after all, all the productivity that came from our hard work and risk taking is "their show" - don't they provide the "atmosphere" and the "playing field" for us ingrates?
They really don't understand the true situation, and how much of the fall is completely their fault - like children, anything good is to their credit, anything bad must somehow be someone else's fault. What a mistake we've made not putting what amounts to term limits on bureaucrats! We'd all be tons better off if they knew how it really is out here on the ground, no guaranteed bennies, no easy retirement, no guarantee of no pink slip tomorrow, ever, and perhaps come to realize that quite a lot of what's wrong is actually due to government malfeasance and drag on the real world that is productive (or at least makes the attempt).
While they champion "small business", which really is what makes most things go, they must mostly be thinking of a mom and pop retail shop. They have been utterly bought by big business, and are more familiar with it as it's more like what they do - take by force or monopoly power, and try to "extract" as much as possible off everyone else. Look at the IP laws that effectively prevent innovation by small outfits such as mine was - and even force software to be closed, as there's no way to write a few lines of code without violating some guy's IP these days, so you have to keep even obvious stuff a secret. Yeah, that's good for innovation and producing disruptive technology.
They don't seem to get it - in a world where people can relocate, the fish swim away from predators to where the food is more abundant anyway. To the extent they do get that - they are trying to put up nets to prevent it, not realizing that this dooms them.
It's as true in government that if there's no penalty for failure, there is no real success either as it is for private enterprise. But at least in some cases we have bankruptcy and reorganization in private land. When a government actually goes bankrupt, as some are declaring (and most are preventing via force) - it's not the same thing at all - their CEO doesn't get fired in disgrace, they don't have to sell all their assets, they don't have to come up with a real re-org plan...and they have power, at least for awhile, to simply demand more money from those who are now broke, due at least in large part to their own incompetence in regulation.
Time to quote a little Asimov, in the form of a Salvor Hardin aphorism:
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
Extra points if you realize that this one has multiple meanings - read the story, what it seems to mean on the surface isn't what he meant at all.