One agitprop I always bring up is that “capitalism is built on informed consent” to make people realize that the system is broken, because even the most ardent supporter of the system realizes that there’s very little informed and VERY little consent in what the system has become.
Exactly. The libertarian talking point that the market and private entities self-regulate because consumers “vote with their wallets” is nonsense. If people are misinformed or not informed at all, then people don’t have any choice at all in what is supposedly a free market! As I mentioned in another comment, we know many companies do not disclose what they put into their food products, and this is in spite of regulations also still existing! The Tesco supermarket chain in UK turned out their beef meat has horse meat and none were the wiser until it’s too late!
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
Australia is a live example of the fact that they’re not. The state and federal governments have privatised a crap load of services and all they do is continue to hike our bills while providing less and less service. Electricity, water supply, employment services and more are now an absolute joke here.
And they don’t update the infrastructure, UK is also an excellent example of this and they are getting to the point that the government will have to step in to help them sort things out. All this so that a bunch of rich people are richer.
Exactly what’s about to happen to employment services in Australia too. They spend more money chasing a hand full of people who don’t want to work than just continuing to pay them the pittance they exist on and have people apply to be the CEO of huge corporations who dropped out of high school in order to make their quotas. Government just announced an inquiry with the aim to reinstate control over it.
This reminds me of something I’d heard about public transport operated by local governments, not sure how true it is but the theory makes sense. But basically the local public transport company ran by the local government, spends more on the infrastructure and enforcement of people paying fares than they get back in the fares themselves and that operating the services free of charge would actually reduce the cost of running the service.
Which when you start to think about how you need officers to spot check people on public transport, roll out the machines for tickets/smart cards, server infrastructure to run the machines, technicians to service the machines, IT staff to run servers etc etc it does somewhat make sense
Yes, if not for when the Labor (sic) party got into power that one time, we’d all still be stuck on ADSL2 at best, and dialup at worst, depending on how close you live to a major-ish city. The NBN was a government infrastructure initiative. One which got gutted and watered down as soon as the Liberals got back in.
Oh, and I’ve heard industry insiders claim that the mixed technology stack employed in the “new NBN” – FTTP for some places that already got it, FTTN for everywhere else in the city, fixed wireless or satellite for rural areas – is more expensive on an ongoing basis due to complications than just rolling out more fibre would have been in the long run.
The USSR was amazing to live under, especially when you compare it to what it has become after the fact. People forget that Tsarist Russia was a cosmological shithole where your only joy was taking to the vodka. It’s easy to compare a fledgling nation that not even a decade ago was living in absolute squalor with one that just came off the heels of a massive genocide where they took everything for themselves and say one is better than the other, but if you put the two on even footing it’s not even a question which one you’d rather live under.
In fact, you’re going to see that as America starts to fall behind after their colossal head start that even you yourself are going to wish things were done differently, because as fun as eating your own shit is because you can’t get food (yes, this actually happened) that’s no way to live.
The USSR may have been amazing depending on what things you value in life. As far as I understand, the only thing that was in abundance is stability, which is not the only thing needed for an amazing life, as far as I am concerned.
Also, the image of USSR in pop culture seems to have improved a lot and is now much better than the real thing had ever been, but that’s just marketing bullshit
When you actually look at what it was not through the lens of cold war propaganda it does seem like a pretty nice place. Not to say the place was perfect but for what it was they did a really good job with what they had.
EDIT: and Russia just voted to classify homosexuality as “extremism” a perfect example of just how much going capitalist has fucked them up.
Yes the actual work that is getting done by the company or government is important too. Private companies generally do better at efficiency of getting work done (products or services being produced) than government. This is because government agencies are burdened with an unimaginable amount of levels of bureaucracy which kills the shit out of any efficiency. The government is the ultimate bureaucracy.
Anyone who has worked for both the government and private sector can tell you all about this. When I worked for the government it was the most boring job ever and there was so little actual work getting done that I would sit around reading a book on the job, waiting for something to do. At every non-govt job I’ve had that would not fly because the employer would see the dollars vanishing for my paid-to-do-nothing hours and put me to work doing something productive.
In this case it’s the definition of efficiency. Efficiency = (resources used up) compared to (resources taken in). How else would you even calculate it?
I’ve worked for the government both as an employee and a contractor. I’ve also worked for small and large companies. The government was by far better at accomplishing the actual objective / product. The worst government entity I worked for though was a city government. Those are terrible.
The government needs to take over things which are not viable for the private sector, but important for society to work.
Lets say privatisation of public transport: In countries where it is completely private, only major cities have reasonable connections. Because those are the most profitable ones. But if you want people to actually use public transport, you need to have a fine and widely spread net of connections. For that to happen either the state completely owns the public transport, or takes off financial pressure and only partially owns it.
Exactly this mechanism enables (partially) state owned organizations to run suboptimal. As explained in the example, this is a desired effect. But it also enables memes like the lazy state employee - which are at least partially true.
I live where the govt gives absurdly large subsidies to bus companies (~500 million dollars per year) and the service as a whole still sucks balls. During peak hours, it’s not uncommon for a bus to not stop because you literally wouldn’t manage to get in.
One thing to keep in mind is that there are many companies that are little more than state parasites, companies that wouldn’t survive against real competition, yet all the blame or any misgivings ends up on the “evil big gubmint” just because.
E scooter services are a nice example. They are not covered under state-run public transport. You see those in major cities. There, where they are not required as much due to more dense public transport systems. But there, where they would be really useful, in more rural areas, due to a much less dense public transport system, they are lacking. And why is that? Because profits.
If private companies were more efficient than the public sector then you’d want to privatize the armed forces. The fact that no serious person argues for this tells you all you need to know.
Hi, Academi (formerly Blackwater) rep here, would you like to further privatize your war endeavors?
The argument against private armies has less to do with efficiency and more to do with dealing with coups from wannabe tyrants. If even “loyal to the state” armies can have internal schisms and take over the government, what can someone expect from an army whose sole reason to exist is “money”?
Yeah there are very good reasons why it’s a stupid idea. It’s equally stupid to privatize areas of strategic economic importance, such as energy, transport, core infrastructure etc. Which happens all the time. Arguably the army is the most important service for a state. If the private sector was innately more efficient you’d have thought the neolibs would be queueing up to flog it off.
Certain things, yes. Certain other things, not at all.
As much as I hate Elon Musk the company he owns that does space stuff pretty rapidly got a whole lot of new rockets up and got them to land instead of crashing into the sea. The newest govt produced rocket, the SLS, was years late and billions of dollars over budget, and they expend the rockets.
spaceX did some cool stuff. That being said, fuck Elon Musk, he had nothing to do with any of its success.
Whenever people tout Space X as an exemplar of private efficiency my eyebrow twitches.
They wouldn’t exist if not for the billions spent through public funding of R&D at NASA.
Space X also can take risks governments can’t. Imagine if NASA blew up rockets as often as Space X? The Republicans would gut their funding even more then they already have.
taking risks is exactly why they’re more efficient. i wish the public sector could take as many risks without it turning into political circus, but that would never happen.
I mean, I'm not arguing for private companies, but our government is quite spectacularly inefficient at anything except generating prime ministers! Mind you, they may be trying to be worse than the private sector so they cna claim the private sector is more efficient than the government, I guess...
They're doing their best to deal with that small issue, in between ruining everything else. The other side are also crap but are objectively better at everything except number of prime ministers and amount of harm done to the country
That’s literally uncomparable. Government does things that ignore profit. That’s what government is for. The provide services at a loss. The only “profit” might be things like societal improvement, education, security, and such.
That’s literally uncomparable. Government does things that ignore profit. That’s what government is for. The provide services at a loss. The only “profit” might be things like societal improvement, education, security, and such.
People pay taxes that fund the government. If the money is wasted then services suffer. So it’s not profit or loss but they must deliver value. Value is harder to quantify than profit but governments have to figure a way out of doing it and provide incentives to staff to deliver it.
In Germany we are in the process of privatizing hospitals. This will surely go over great in case of you know another pandemic. You can bet your butt that a private company will cut staff numbers, they will reduce the number of hospital beds and they will do the least amount of work they can get away with.
I can’t easily go to a competitor, now can I? We only have that one hospital in the city.
My last trip to the DMV was surprisingly smooth. They finally implemented appointments, and, unlikely private doctors, they didn't make me wait in the lobby for 30minutes to 1 hour and then in the examination room for another 15-30 minutes.
They are better at maximizing profits at the expense of the employees, benefits, wages, local taxes and infrastructure. They work for the shareholders. They shovel money to the top few percent of the company. That’s what we call “efficiency”.
The government does not profit. They government pays standard government wages along with union wages and benefits. They maintain infrastructure. They are only as efficient as contracts allow.
Corporations do not have the same goals as government. One seeks to extract maximum profits for the few at the expense of the many, the other seeks to return to the many as much as is feasible in societal good - schools, roads, power, water, etc. at no profit.
It’s hard to believe that anyone with the mental capacity to lift a spoon to their mouth would vote for the right (who are solely responsible for mass privatisation in Australia anyway, im assuming it’s the same elsewhere).
Corporations do not have the same goals as government. One seeks to extract maximum profits for the few at the expense of the many, the other seeks to return to the many as much as is feasible in societal good - schools, roads, power, water, etc. at no profit.
Boy does this ring true. I worked for years for a giant multinational publisher and one of their biggest sources of income was taking government money for educational stuff for schools and turning that money into absolutely no useful products while making sure no opportunity to hire another middle manager was overlooked.
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