[mkohlmyr]

I'm actually not convinced on the surface of it that economies of scale apply to government. It seems to me like the larger the population, the more layers of government required to effectively deploy capital.

If you assumed a similar per capita tax rate, but more government is required to deploy the taxes in a larger nation, the larger nation would presumably end up with less money deployed per capita.

Of course I am neither a social scientist, economist or political scientist.

[joshspankit]

The simpler the program, the less layers you need. If the todo list for a homeless person is:

- Assign open apartment

- Digitally fill out form B12

- Deposit money

Then there is very little work required.

Where social programs have the highest overhead is where they do things like “Assess whether it’s ‘required’ based on binders 3 through 7” and “Continually check in with all other governmental arms to validate that they are meeting criteria”.