My government is mostly privatized. We even hired a consulting firm to figure out how the government could lower consulting fees. The consultants found that if we consult less, we will have lower consulting fees. We paid over half a million for that single report:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-government-kpmg-consulting/
I remember in college we took a course on economic efficiency and the short takeaway is “the free market is extremely efficient, but only when the competing parties start with equal resources. the more inequal the starting position, the less efficient the market becomes.” and to my mind that suggests that we should enforce some sort of “rubber-banding” effect so that a company needs to keep competing or else it will “drift” back to the mean over time. Something like aggressive taxes on the uber-rich and comprehensive welfare for the poor, y’know? Capitalism but with safety guards would be pretty cool.
Something like aggressive taxes on the uber-rich and comprehensive welfare for the poor, y’know?
This is why aggressive estate taxes are so incredibly critical. People shouldn’t be professional descendants. And of course welfare provides both ladder and safety net. The fools who are trying to abolish one or both are working against social mobility.
Because they think social mobility is wrong and bad for society
There is a reason why the European/Scandinavian economic model works so well.
Give it 10 or 20 years and we’ll basically be the US, but with really high taxes
You gived 10 years 7 times in a row
Yeah, mixed economy undeniably works!
I think just don’t allow other companies to buy others. Mergers should be illegal.
Afraid to say this but that college course was capitalist propaganda. When you look at the actual facts it points to capitalism being trash in every metric except cancer-like growth for the sake of cancer-like growth, which of course it’s good at because that’s what it was designed for.
Anyone who worked in both private and public would know both are not more efficient than the other.
Public services are chronically underfunded because of corruption. Private companies perform rabbit in a hat trick by making you guess what undisclosed ingredients they put in your food if they’re not regulated, just so to save cost and make money for themselves!
If these last few years have taught us anything.
They are putting undisclosed ingredients into the food even if they are regulated.
Slim Jim - now flavored with microplastics and preserved with forever chemicals
Slim Jim’s were the original forever chemicals. You ever seen one go bad?
They’re efficient at maximizing profits for shareholders, usually at the dire expense of literally everyone else.
Making money for shareholders
Possibly, but they have different incentives.
Private companies literally paid billions of dollar to dismantle a (more or less) effective government just so that they could say this (and its still wrong).
In my (Australian) public service career I have watched a team of 100 public servants deliver and keep updated a data capture and processing system
A large American service company now does that job with four times the people. It took years to get them to add keyboard shortcuts to their product - the original was entirely mouse driven; and their product didn’t meet contrast rules for months
can you call a government that allows itself to be turned into a caricature of itself efficient?
Ya know what was a foundational part of the American dream? Pensions. Ya know which employers still offer them? Counties, states and the federal government.
Private companies exist solely to make the people at the top very rich based on the stolen value of employee labor while dumping catastrophic losses in the public sphere. That’s capitalism in a nutshell.
You’d have to be unbelievably gullible, naive, traumatized AND brainwashed to be a diehard for a system like that. But, somehow they’ve managed it. A deluded nation of Amway top performers just one move away from making their own imaginary millions. All simping for the system.
Yesterday an American accidentally admitted that they tip their landlord. It was at that point I said to myself “man you fuckers deserve to suffer under whatever republican you end up voting for next election because we all know that’s what you dumb ass motherfuckers are going to do”
I’m a big proponent of letting people suffer for their bullshit, but please let the rest of us out
Telecommunications Act. 1996. The Great Brainwashing where the Party began telling you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears.
The best part? …if you endorse force and shick therespy to fix this fucking shit even the “leftists” will call you a violent fascist. Everyone got brainwashed.
But surely you must admit that they do extract more wealth from the working classes for people who just move money around. Let’s see your profit-less crown corporation do that. Checkmate /s
Depends on the situation I’d say.
More efficient at what though?
Offshoring profit
Getting money into the pockets of the responsible ones
Of course it’s feddit de. We need instance blocking but for comments.
Ok what is the problem with my comment?
Neither is obviously more efficient than the other overall, it depends on the structure and the incentives. People worry about private prisons for example. If you make it so the government sends people to prisons and you pay the prison a fixed rate per prisoner, of course you’re gonna get skimping on services by the prisons. If you instead give the prisoner a voucher for a prison and make them pick where they go and prisons get money per voucher they get from prisoners, you’re gonna get competition on quality so you’ll get high quality prisons. Opposite outcomes with just a change to incentives.
My biggest worry about private prisons is that it incentives making more things illegal, longer sentences, disregard for recidivism rates, etc. There have already been cases of judges taking kickbacks from private detention facilities to hand out longer sentences. I guess this is a case of private companies corrupting government though. Government contracting stuff out to private companies is probably the worst of both worlds.
You don’t need private prisons for that. 90% of prisons are government run, and police unions have been lobbying for decades to keep shit illegal.
That is a completely legitimate concern. It’s important to note that even if prisons are publicly run, there’s still a bunch of private actors in the prison system in the form of the people who work in it. Prison worker unions and police unions lobby for more laws already to protect their jobs. Private prisons might make that aspect worse, but it’s not like it’s perfect now.
I think the issue is large organizations are inefficient and inflexible, be they government or corporates.
You want small lean groups with a lot of autonomy.
It’s not just that. You want businesses to be able to fail if they are being run poorly. That’s something that’s a lot harder with government agencies, state owned enterprises, and large companies.
- government agencies: People rely on them by design. You can’t simply shut down the health care or welfare system because it’s being run poorly or corruptly.
- state owned enterprises: There is pressure from the ruling class to keep even inefficiently run or corrupt SOE going because they provide jobs and patronage.
- large companies: They become systemically important. The loss of a single large business can cascade through the economy. See: Lehman Brothers or the big auto companies during the 2008 crash.
Our corporate structures and limited liability not only make these massive orgs possible, but incentivize some truly insane megacorps.
Yep, the US government used to break up monopolies and it greatly benefitted the boomers.
Corruption is the issue when governments are involved with capital. Social inequality is the issue when private owners control the capital.
My view is that having an army and control over the capital is too many eggs in the same basket.
So… Without a government, there just wouldn’t be armies? Rich and powerful private citizens wouldn’t form their own armed forces?
Why wouldn’t there be warlords? I’m not sure how this comment follows. Without a government, you get both eggs in one basket, which the original commenter agrees is bad.
East India company would like to speak to him
Having worked on both sides. Private industry has the ability to quickly maneuver and change tact.
Imo
It depends on the industry. Huge publicly traded organizations are basically as bad as government
I’ve peaked inside large private companies. They’re no better than public companies. Turns out, being large means you can’t move very fast.
Eh, you can quickly create a new division/bureau/area and hire for the new roll and when it doesn’t work out you can fire easily. That ain’t possible within government where everything is governed by statue or rule
