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.
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
Private companies are why Flint still has lead water pipes, and why Texas doesn’t have a working power grid, and why you and I are facing a 30%-50% increase in our cost of living.
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.
I think a big issue is that the government takes a decades long view. This is great because they can plan how to effectively manage our water and other large scale projects with longevity in mind.
Meanwhile, our corporate CEOs take a quarter of a year view. They’d burn the company to the ground as long as it happens after they are stepping down and makes them look good beforehand.
Ah I wasn’t clear. I don’t mean government as in Democrats or Republicans. I mean government associations like US Army Corps of Engineers or the US Postal Service.
Maybe we should start a US Army Climate Battalion or something to sound cool and get funding 🤔.
Iirc the military (American, of course) is actually prepping for climate change. They might be evil but they do have to acknowledge the reality around them if they want to keep bombing innocent civilians or whatever it is they are up to these days.
You are wishing for the Argentine’s recuperation and well being and not for their further downfall and demise that could cost even more lives than the previous government took, right?
Famously, the blue guys in Australia, defund our public infrastructure, go ‘oh no, broken now, have to sell, only private peeps can run this / it will run better / for everyone’s best interests’ (simultaneously pats themselves on the back for bringing money in, even though that thing they broke, brought money in, until they broke it) also, spoiler, they sell the things to thier mates.
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.
One point here: the government doesn’t pay out a large chunk of it’s earnings to people who did nothing to ensure that the product or service was delivered.
They got paid a large percentage of revenue because they’re shareholders.
Tell me again why taking a big pile of money from customers, who are very likely not wealthy (at least for the majority), and giving it to wealthy people, is “more efficient” than the government doing the same job and just, not doing that?
If you cut out the profit, the “business” runs more lean, no matter which way you arrange the numbers. I would argue that a more lean business model is simply more efficient. The dollars going in simply result in more output per dollar. IMO, that’s efficient.
Except they didn’t. Whomever purchased the stock initially did, and often that amount is a shadow of what the stock is currently traded at.
It’s also a figure that’s been repaid over and over again as dividends have been paid.
With government organizations, the public, aka debt devices, aka the public wallet, pays for the initial investment. Once that investment is made it pays for itself over and over in goods and services over the lifetime of the investment.
Shareholders are basically the landlords of wall street. They contribute nothing and feel like they deserve everything.
Except they didn’t. Whomever [sic] purchased the stock initially did, and often that amount is a shadow of what the stock is currently traded at.
This ignores two other very important roles that subsequent shareholders play:
Give initial investors the opportunity re-deploy their capital elsewhere when they choose to do so.
Signal the value of the company’s equity, in real time, on the open market. When the stock is trading above IPO price (as your rebuttal implies), this enables the company to raise more capital by borrowing against its equity and/or selling shares of its own stock.
In light of these critical roles, it’s vastly unfair to say that shareholders contribute nothing to the delivery of goods and services—quite the opposite.
For the kids reading at home, this is what an ad hominem attack looks like—a logical fallacy in which one attacks their opponent personally instead of addressing the merits of their argument.
While I agree with you completely, the argument for a counter-point would be that exactly because the private company should create as much profit for the owners as possible - it has to be as lean / efficient as possible.
That is not true for “the goverment” as profit is not an encentive to rationalize the work process.
What I find interesting are goverment agencies that operate on both levels. A great example is Ordenance Survey in UK. While they provide a public service, they also sell some of their products commercially to cover some operating costs (hiking maps etc.).
because the private company should create as much profit for the owners as possible - it has to be as lean / efficient as possible.
Yeah but no. It would be if the owner/shareholders weren’t skimming of the top. The process may be lean but the pricing is designed to maximize and take as much as the market will bear. Which undoes the benefit the efficiency could bring to a public service.
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?
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