So, Governments and encroachment
 

As a disclaimer before I start:

If you either think liberals good, conservatives bad, or conservatives good, liberals bad - this post isn't for you and will probably piss you off.

With that said....

Recently, this forum and a lefty forum* I visit have been making me think.

At what point do we want private business to take over something?

If you look at the US's past history, it would be dishonest to say that the government should never get involved and should turn everything over to the private sector. One good example is our highway systems. If it wasn't for the government's involvement with them, I am completely confident in saying that they would not exist. Further, I am completely confident in saying if the government gave them over to private business now, they would be falling apart in a short period of time except for certain critical areas. Finally, if it wasn't for the government's involvement in highways, I am confident in saying they would not have existed - and the US would not be anywhere near where it is today.

I am confident in saying this is one example of which the government should be taking over, and the private sector shouldn't be involved in. However, I also agree that the government shouldn't be as big or as far-reaching as it is.

Here is one example as to what I am talking about there. I know someone who tried farming grain for a year. He lost a lot of money on it - not because his costs were higher than the selling, but because there were so many fees related to government mandates. Additionally, from what he told me, the FTC** stole him blind. The only way he could have made money was to jump in the subsidies bandwagon - and if he did that, he would have been able to make a lot of money for having a crop that was vastly inferior to what he grew.

I am equally confident that the government shouldn't be involved in this area - the moment anything has to be subsidized to make a profit, there's a serious problem.

Where is the line drawn? Or, more specifically, where do you think the line should be drawn?

*: Don't worry gays, they swear I'm a hardcore republican and the antichrist there. :giggle:

**: Why the SHIT is the FTC involved in if local producers can sell their [insert product] to local buyers anyways?!?

I've had a similiar conversation with a colleague who is pretty libertarian. I find myself in a similar position as blaen: I believe in smaller government but I think it's incorrect to oversimplify as "all government spending is bad." I think much of the public infrastructure is a viable example.

I find it hard to imagine how you would have interstates or even city roads owned, maintained and operated strictly by the private sector unless they were all converted to toll roads.

Other than simply asserting that it is obviously so, what's the argument for the necessity of government controlling the construction and maintenance of roads?

The Privatization of Roads and Highways, by Walter Block

Is it fair that the fed holds highway project money hostage to the states that dont fall in line?

Is it fair that the money specifically raised by motorists for motorists doesn't always go back into the roads?

I'd argue that if VDOT was replaced by a private company, the roads would be much better off -- doesnt mean the state still doesn't finance and run the show, but a real company would take the reigns and get shit done, for less.

geoff is mirroring exactly what my third paragraph is saying.

You will not see any type of efficiency until tax revenue is treated responsibly, rather than the current implementation or "spending money is success". The lack of a bottom line for government is the problem.

Is this why we budget, in medicaid, 700 million a year for powered wheelchairs at $3000 a pop when the inspector general found that, in 52 percent of the cases, the Medicare claims were "insufficiently documented to determine whether the power wheelchairs were medically necessary" and that in many cases a cheaper alternative would be better, but medicare doesn't full subsides them like they do with the powered wheelchair, so of course people take the wheelchair and often sell them on craigslist?


Behold my run on sentence!

...and next year both parties can come back and say "look, we used up all of the $700,000,000.00, we need more!!!" If any of that $700m was pulled over or migrated to another account type, that won't be discussed.

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb...760268331.html

Get free medicaid wheelchair, sell on craigslist.

truth.

I would be interested to read that book, although the blurb already makes me skeptical ("it cures everything and doesn't have any drawbacks!"). I really need to keep up with my speed reading practice if I am ever going to get through my reading list...

My premise is as I stated: "I find it hard to imagine how you would have interstates or even city roads owned, maintained and operated strictly by the private sector unless they were all converted to toll roads."

That is, I don't see a purely private sector business model that does not involve a fee-to-use program (i.e. toll roads).

The simple version of the answer is:

The free market will work when there is competition where consumers/customer can vote with their wallets. This is true for mufflers, crops, and health care*. It is difficult to imagine this to be true with infrastructure such as highways (in a Minarchist system, outside of an Anarchocapitalist/Agorist system a la Walter Block above)

*health care is NOT a free market due to heavy corporatism / gov't intervention (e.g. they favored HMOs, so *you* are not the hospital's customer, the HMO is).
The AMA is a guild/cartel that erects barriers to entry of new docs, keeping their prices up. In contrast it is a much freer market for petsurance and pet health care.

For a free market to work there also needs to be near-zero gov't-installed barriers to entry. Example of barriers to entry: Banking (you are required by gov't to be part of the Federal Reserve system and have huge amounts of capital), illicit drugs (they're illegal by fiat), health care (hospitals have lobbied for regulations that block entry of small clinics - compare this to the numerous pet clinics), pharmaceuticals (the FDA makes testing very very expensive).

In contrast many capital intensive businesses with little gov't intervention have healthy competition and thus operate in a relatively free market. So high startup cost isn't necessarily a barrier to entry. For example, setting up a semiconductor fab, and a nationwide cellular network.

A big fucking LOL at what you are "completely confident" about.

I'll clarify later after work when I'm not limited to posting on my phone.

Some counter arguments:

Correct, but there could be user subscriptions and use arrangements between companies, just like cell roaming agreements.

Besides, why should those that use the roads lightly, subsidize those that use them heavily? Here's an anlogy, why should those that choose to buy pay-per-use cell plans, pay the same as those that use gigabytes of data monthly data? Or worse, why should some of those light users pay more, just because they earn more, than heavy users who earn less?

We already have a "fee to use" for roads and it's called federal income tax and state sales tax.

Waiting on Vash before I weigh in with my 2cents, this thread has gotten interesting!

I think the slogan of most of the right wing candidates should be

“Government is the problem, Vote for me and I will prove it.”

Liberal democracy as we have is supposed to curb the corruption by highly financed special interest. It is failing pretty badly I think because of the way we finance both our election process and the news media making most all candidates corrupt. Add to that the right wingers on the supreme court seem to be adamant about the death of our country due their view of the concepts of corporate personhood.

Then there are the ones that truly want to eliminate the government to nothing. Government can’t do wrong if they aren’t allowed to do anything people might want them too. Which I don’t buy into this cool aid ether for some of the reasons mentioned in the first post. Many things the government has taken over or invested in have made this country or it has significantly advanced science and technology we now take for granted and that private industry makes allot of money from where the free market would have never committed the investment.

My view, find the bad regulations and fix or get rid of them. Don’t get rid of good government. But realize mistakes will be made along the way often times with good intentions.

Bob

Honestly, I think this thread will quickly devolve in to a case of non-feasible hypotheticals (a la Robinson Crusoe islands with no banking system and people saving because coconut trees deficit spend :D).

Scrappy's latest post got me posting. Vash, waiting on you buddy!

Well, there are countries very close to what I infer some people who have posted in this thread want. But they are third world countries. One thing that I've always not understood with the mindset I perceive with several posters is if they want it, and it already exists in a country, why not move there? Because it's a third world country? Okay...So, they are advocating for the US to become a third world country again? The US, during it's ascent to a first world country, shed some of the precepts several people here advocate in favor of the social good.

Can you honestly tell me that you truly believe that private companies would have made the interstate system as it is today? Very well then.

The internet. It was created directly due to government funding. I don't think anyone here would try to underestimate the importance. I bet the private sector would have created one, right?

And they have. It's called the "SMS" system. It's expensive, bulky, and doesn't do well. While I do not believe government funding and spending is the Be All and End All, I also do not believe that no government spending is the answer.

The medical industry is an interesting place. I agree with many of your points (Especially small clinics, a lot of nations use these extensively to good effect!), but wonder "What do we do with no or minimal regulation of it?"

As an example, even with the heavy regulations it has, there are numerous issues within the medical system. Data leaks, patients dying due to physician fuckups, surgeons performing the wrong surgery are just a few examples off the top of my head. When you add in (potentially) no testing of drugs and the further implications, that scares me.

I'm sorry, but the nationwide cellular network is laughable Jason. I don't mean this insultingly - but our cellular network is a joke compared to countries that operate based on government control of the network backbone, letting the phone companies lease it. I'll be dedicating an entire post to this at a later date, our crappy broadband network and cellular network are two major points I have in advocating for government spending.

Report this as medicaid fraud. That's one thing I do not understand about a lot of posters here. You can report welfare fraud, or medicare/medicaid fraud. You can get them investigated and prosecuted. If you are convinced so many people do it, why don't you? For that matter, how do you know that wheelchair was acquired via medicaid?

So, there's a flaw in the medicare system? You've got no arguments from me or anyone else that medicare has many flaws.

Agreed, Hustly.

I agree with both these points, actually.

This isn't always true, Brainy. If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that a private company always gets shit done faster, better, and for less, right? See below response for all.

http://cdn.publicinterestnetwork.org...ts-Updated.pdf would dispute both your and Brainy's premise on multiple levels.

This uses hard data, rigorous scientific principles, and isn't merely an opinion piece like Block's work.

lulz at that PDF. Some of the section headings:


The Public Will Not Receive Full Value

Private Companies Often Engage in Risky Financial Schemes

The Public Will Not Receive Full Value

Inadequate Oversight Exists to Ensure the Public Interest is Protected



Good thing these problems don't exist with public spending.



EDIT: Oh, so you've read Walter Block's book?

I've read a great deal of his book, yes, actually. The thing is I view Block's book as mostly an opinion piece - I place a great deal more weight on anything that has real world examples backing it. You want an example, here you go

Laugh at the study all you want, Mg, but it does not detract from what it says even if you don't agree with what it says.

However, and while I do not disagree those things exist in public spending, the argument of "Okay, so let's not make these EVEN WORSE!" holds appeal to me.

And here's another example that just hit me. I hear a lot of people saying we should privatize the post office. You know what? The Netherlands and several other countries did that.

I don't know of one Dutch that doesn't long for the days of their old post office back. Granted, there may be differences with others, but all that I have talked to about it universally hate the privatized new system (The delivery schedule is so much worse, they cut back on so many post offices so I can't get to one anymore, it's so much more expensive to send packages, etc.) compared to the old public system.

AND it requires constant cash infusions from the government just to stay solvent!

Oh wait -- it doesn't?

I don't know if the Dutch system required that originally, sorry. I do know it had significant differences from our system.

What I do know is the privatized corporation is constantly in trouble with violating the terms they signed with the Dutch government over trying to constantly reduce deliverys/service areas/et al in violation of their contract w/the government - even though they are making a hefty profit as is.

This is the binary thinking I often reference. If someone says "private sector spending can have significant corruption, waste and inefficiencies," it is not the same as saying "public sector spending is always (or even mostly) free of significant corruption, waste and inefficiencies."

That actually seems to be "the free market" saying that the old system probably wasn't cost effective at its former size and that most users probably aren't willing to pay the price necessary to operate at higher levels of service.

Sounds terrible. Can you imagine the mess we'd have if we allowed private companies to handle important stuff like air and ground shipping directly with consumers?

The actual numbers would disagree. See: Corporation making a hefty profit, and still trying to raise prices and cut service to increase profits even further - and most notably, against the contract they signed w/the government.

Actually, air and ground shipping are great points in the US. We have competition in those areas.

My argument against privatization involves monopoly or oligopoly situations.

No, I'm not really arguing that either could be free of those things -- but it's only through government authority that corruption, waste, and inefficiency are rewarded rather than punished.

im loling at oversight.

You also see these in excess in monopoly or oligopoly situations Mg.

If you can figure out a way to have privatization of roads with significant competition, I'm all ears.

...which arise when government policies favor certain groups to the detriment of others.

Untrue. There are numerous monopolies and oligopolies that have arisen independent of the government. Microsoft is a great example of this, complete with abusive behavior, corruption, et al that you are complaining about in the 90s.

By the way, I don't have to "figure out" how to have competition in the market. The market produces it -- if profits are available, individuals and companies will compete.

When the TV was invented, who could have "figured out" the various ways that content producers compete with each other for advertising money and subscription fees?

:bowrofl::bowrofl::bowrofl::bowrofl::bowrofl:

Microsoft was a monopoly?

Okay. So, let's look at public roads then.

What is your proposal to make them a place where competition can exist, and competing companies can all strive to bring a better product to a consumer?

This is where I don't "grok" what you are trying to say. It's one of the major disconnects I see with Block.

I find it extremely unrealistic to have, say, 3 highways right next to each other that can compete with each other. But, and I am certain you have driven at least as much as I have on our roads, in many cases there is only one or two viable routes to a place that isn't seriously contrived. How do you propose to address this?

Cliffs: My argument against privatization is against monopolistic and oligopolistic behavior

I'd go so far as to argue it still is, but the bullshit they pulled in the '90s isn't so blatant anymore.

Just got home from work. Going to keep this short because I'm dying to take a hot shower. Today was fucking blistering cold where I was working and I smashed my pinky finger in the rebar cutter. Thankfully no more than a bruised fingernail, but the cold made it throb like a bitch all day. lol

Without reading too much of whats been posted since the original post I read, this is what I'm disagreeing with.

You honestly believe that "government built" roads would be any better than private sector built roads? I mean really. What makes you think that a bunch suits in hardhats that know next to NOTHING about construction, handing over a check to some union workers that milk that job for every penny (and it was overpaid to begin with!) will produce a "better" job? Or better yet, what makes you think a private sector business couldn't do just as good of a job?

Government jobs ALWAYS overpay. Always. Sometimes the labor being billed wasn't even produced either! Its such a bullshit system that's in place and I hope to one day be a part of changing it actually.

I've worked hand and hand next to many different union trades and all of them have been 100% lacking in every department. All the private (most are family owned) sector contractors have such a different work moral and quality they bring to the table. Jobs are done faster because they aren't being over billed! There's pride with private sector businesses. The list goes on and on.

I await your response.

Didn’t realize they did that. Maybe that explains why when I ordered something from Holland in 2008 it took 4 days to arrive at my door and the tracking worked the whole time. Ordered the same thing this year and it took 4 weeks and disappeared from tracking in the transfer to USP. I thought it was lost but they wouldn’t allow me to file anything saying I didn’t get my package for 30 days.

Bob

I agree with you completely, Vash. Seriously, you have no arguments from me about your post - I worked in construction for a summer myself. My experiences completely mirror yours.

What I don't understand is what it has to do with my base argument ("The highways would have not been built without federal funding"), and as a result, the benefit to the US as you said you are only arguing with the OP in this post.

That sounds a lot like what the Dutch I've talked to say about it.

P.S. Going back to the Netherlands and Germany in February. I'll be able to get more feedback on it then and see if it's improved or not in their perception.

What do you actually know about Dutchland? Have you lived here?

I visit very regularly, actually. Eindhoven and Rosmalen are my regular haunts there, specifically. Looking into potential Dutch citizenship in the future. That answer your question?

^^^^^

This is what I was responding to.

Direct government jobs pay employees directly. Contracted out government jobs pay some asshat who thinks he is more important than he really is so he can make a healthy profit, concentrate where the wealth goes to enable lobbying buying political favors while he underpays and undercompensates the people working for him that he is collecting profit from their productivity.

The bush years of contracting out the job of war for example made war cost many times more than if direct enlisted men did the work but it sure made a lot of bush campaign contributors very wealthy on the tax payer dime.

Bob

See, this is what I don't understand. I don't disagree with your post, and don't understand what is contradictory in my post vs. yours.

My argument is that without the federal government behind them, they wouldn't exist in this post. Vis a vis, there is no argument about quality or being "better", rather, that there would have been little private-sector investment behind them without federal funds.

You invoke a very common myth:
"If gov't didn't do it, it wouldn't get done"
in this case
"If gov't quit regulating drugs, there would be no regulation"

There are numerous private certification and regulatory agencies. They perform a service and compete in a marketplace. They compete for customers. They guard their reputations. If their reputations among consumers were lost, they'd have no business. Some examples of such agencies are ISO, TUV, VDE, UL, and EN. Some stuff they certify are electrical appliances, wheels, and scuba equipment. All are potentially lethal. Most importantly, they *compete*. They strive for accurate, quick test procedures at reasonable cost, and open-ness. Their test methodologies and results are kept public. If any one of them turn corrupt, they will lose customers long term.

Picture this. No FDA. Several of above type of agencies do drug testing services the pharmaceutical cos pay for. When you go to a doc and he chooses a drug for you, he looks thru the list and looks at which agencies tested what drugs, and what their test results are. Doc and you make an informed choice based on said agency test results. Pharmacists can do the same thing with you.

What you get is greatly reduced corruption, quicker testing, and reduced testing costs, which translate to lower drug prices, and reduced time to market.

No BS like what happened to me - my favorite 40-cent migraine med (Midrin) got killed by the FDA because they suddenly said "all drugs approved before 1960 have to undergo efficacy testing". So now I have to use a $30 drug in its place.

Inversely, look what happened with the self-regulatory systems in the financial markets.

You'll have to pardon me for saying so, but I find it extremely hard to believe that the financial markets self-regulatory systems worked.

The difference? The financial markets were a lot larger. I say this for a reason: The ISO is starting to show visible wear at the seams over the past few years, including having some severely questionable votes and procedures related to things such as the ISO/IEC 29500 specification. I would posit that the larger a regulatory agency gets (Governmental, private, it does not matter) and the more power it wields, the more corruption and waste are inherently derived from it.

The problem with your counter-argument is private self-regulation works perfectly fine on a small scale (Scuba is a very small market), but we end up with the same problems once you reach extremely large regulatory agencies. You claim that you have "power over the regulatory body", but my experiences with the ISO are the exact opposite. If anything, we have far less power and control over the private regulatory body than the public regulatory agencies - even if you are a longtime member of it!

(Edit) Something just dawned on me, I should probably explain my experience here. ALSO, WARNING, OMGWTFLIBERALHITLERRANT

My first experience with politics was OMGWELFAREFRAUD! I wrote my congresscritter, and she sent me back a letter explaining how to report someone for fraud. I proceeded to report several people, and although I'm not claiming -my- report got them caught, they were convicted of it. To the person who mentioned a similar experience, I tip my hat to you. This was in 2002 or so. Since then, I've been involved with politics either directly or indirectly at both state and federal levels. This past week alone I've contacted my congresscritters on 3 seperate issues. And you know what? Instead of posting on an internet forum that X, Y, or Z is so terrible, awful, and the end of the world, I hope that I managed to incite change*. I've even been part of an effort to contact Congress/DOJ/FCC/etc. to nix the AT&T merger - and you know what? It worked. A lot of stuff I've been involved in has worked - but it requires people to be active, and have conversational intercourse with their congresscritter.

Believe it or not, you can effect change on both a state and federal level. State is not very difficult, and although you can get involved in fighting entrenched powers and what is best for them vs. what is best for the citizen, you can still win without a lot of difficulty if you just get enough constituents involved. Federal, however, is -very- hard, and requires a lot of people. You also have to have enough constituents be loud enough about it to overcome your federal congresscritter's love of corporation money. But do you know why?

Money Equals Votes**. In essence, a corporation holds the power to "fire" a congresscritter by denying them campaign funding. But what is even worse to a congresscritter is angry constituents - with a sufficient amount of them, very few will hold out for their corporate buddy. Granted, there's a few that still resist, but nonetheless...

Everything that worked with our political system, even as corrupted and fucked up as it was, was turned on it's ear with the ISO. I cannot begin to describe how bad the experiences were in trying to oppose the ISO/IEC 29500 specification. In one country's case, it received nearly unanimous votes against the specification from the voting members - and it still got approved via parliamentary measures. Not even in our political system do we see THAT level of clusterfuckery. And yet, the organization you hold up to be so great was incredibly insulated against any kind of change to address what went on. People were unable to even vote out the people behind the bullshit!

*: And thus, my motive behind posting is explained. I'm more interested in getting people to realize that the political absolutes and binary thinking they are taught aren't a good thing then advocating a specific ideology.
**: IMO, if I ever advocate a specific political ideology on a forum, it would be to advocate for true campaign finance reform. The ability to hire and fire people of their choosing puts far too much power in the hands of a few small special interests and corporations.

There is little free market left in the financial industry. They feed off off of the cartel known as the Federal Reserve (the most powerful regulatory agency on earth, designed by 7 Banksters in 1910). They effectively borrow money at very low rates and then leverage them at high ratios and make tons of money. And then when the inherent risk bites them in the ass, the Federal Reserve bails them out. In a free market, there would be no gov't-granted monopoly on the currency. There would be no gov't protected central bank cartel. And failed institutions wouldn't get bailed out. It is this threat of failure that would prevent them from taking highly leveraged risks.

In my earlier example, I was NOT talking about "self regulation" (which does not exist). I was talking about competing regulatory agencies. Competing market interests produce regulation.. Get it out of your head that regulation can only be accomplished by gov't.

Exactly. And you think gov't with its inherent monopoly is better?

Customers have the power! If ISO continues its downslide, competition will eat their lunch! When you are talking about problems of big reg agencies might be, is suggests that the market will reward smaller specialist regulatory agencies. For example, some agency might specialize in retail banking, another might specialize in cancer medication, etc. etc. Some industries need economies of scale, and benefit from it, such as Lucky supermarkets. Some don't benefit, such as watch repair. Some may have very large and very small companies, such as food (McDonald's, family owned restaurants).

....You just gave synonyms for self-regulating markets while attempting to claim it wasn't that, in addition, to the best of my knowledge I did not mention anything about the government as the self-regulation I was referring to was insurance companies independent of the government. Granted, after the bail out I cannot guarantee how independent of the government they were, but prior to it they were supposed to be completely independent. And it didn't work.

As for the rest, I'm going to try to explain this one more time, we'll see if it works. What you are advocating, at least if I understand it correctly, already exists.

As I've said before, these are third world countries. You can move to one right now that has exactly what you are advocating. Why are they stuck where they are? Why aren't they coming screaming onto the scene as every business abandons the US and other first world countries for better opportunities/less taxes/etc. etc.?

This is the problem I have with the "no government" argument of binary thinking. Countries like this exist - but no one wants to move to them, and no companies take root there* even though they exist. Companies don't even have to be regulated at all in them, taxed at all or they can establish competing regulatory agencies if it is of competitive benefit. There is a huge difference between limited government, federal government, and no government systems - with only the final one purely having no or self-regulation. And yes, I've heard the Ryan-and-authoritarian-corparatist-think-tank-blather on how their version of government is "limited" government - it's not. If anything, it should scare the shit out of people that it can be taken as seriously as, say...Obama's stimulus. Both are equally crazy, and should have been laughed out of government instead of where we are today.

I don't think you can sanely argue that no government is the answer. As an example, I find the idea of a private sector ran judicial system insane and laughable - and I certainly hope you do as well.

Granted, perhaps you don't. But if you don't think the idea of a privately ran judicial system is insanity, please. Explain in detail why you think this. However, if you sincerely believe a private judicial system is better, I have one sincere question for you to answer yourself before you respond: Is it because you truly believe a private judicial system is best, or is it because you want to doggedly hold on to a political system and set of beliefs?

*: I'll grant you, manufacturing does take root, but I have yet to see a company move significantly to say...Vietnam or Somalia.

they also used to have zero budget for lobbying before being accused. Then magically they increased it to over 2 million per year (no idea what its at now)...and now they "arent" a monopoly.

:idea: :2cents:


but lol at saying they are a monopoly. govt is the only true monopoly.



edit: aw im so late to the game.

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http://biggovernment.com/files/2010/...oy-2010-s2.jpg

http://biggovernment.com/files/2010/...-Education.jpg

Do public schools benefit the kids or the teachers?

I long for the Bush era of contracting over what we have now. I agree with you for the most part, but I do not blame the contractor because federal contracting enables it. The federal contracting system is flawed because it assumes that procurement procedure will foster reasonable pricing. Unfortunately, it does not. It creates a microcosm where the grantee management of contracts and funds provide a gap where costs can be inflated to the maximum allowable for each award. This maximum allowable is also deemed the upper limit for "reasonableness", so the contracting officer cannot disallow it.

If the federal contracting officer had the ability to come down and slap the hand of the offender, this would go away. However, the government's MO is to award the funds, then at the end of the contract, after the A133 audit, see if there is enough fraud to warrant an investigation. I can't tell you what that minim dollar figure is, but it's above $400,000.00. Basically, what I'm saying is that if you steal/scam/cheat less than $400,000 of tax funds, you won't be prosecuted or even investigated.

In the Bush era, a few choice contractors scored cash, but in my experience the work was completed. Under this administration the focus is providing funds to a select group of people