[curtainsforus]

Building capital and controlling things is good for individuals or families, but less so for large, uncoordinated organisations, especially governments. If I, an individual, own a shop, I'm incentivized to make it profitable- in this small town case, I'm incentivized to stock things people want to buy, to reduce waste, and so on. (Or to bail out and sell the premises if the economic conditions don't make sense anymore). Making the shop better makes me richer.

If I'm a wage-paid employee in a large shop (or any organization), then I'm looking to a) not get fired b) get a raise c) get a promotion. The bigger and more bureaucratic the organization, the more personnel decisions tend to become disconnected from ground truths and the more it becomes possible to rise through politics, whether or not the shop gets better. The people at the top, e.g. the owners of Walmart, want their shops to be more efficient, but if line worker #529 doesn't think he'll be paid more for making his local shop 5% more efficient, then he won't- and if there are more reliable ways up, he'll take those.

When a government owns/runs the shop, even the people at the top don't care about it making money- it's not their money to lose! The shop is probably useful as a political tool/division point, though. Imagine left-right debates about whether the government store should stock condoms, or meat, or whatever.