Who actually wants a PRIVATE govt - that will just lead to less freedom surely?

Rightists seem to have the delusional idea that big = less free, well Munter says that is wrong.

Because, you see, public ownership leads to greater accountability.

Private means the corporation/company/owner can do pretty much as he pleases.

So, why the continuous confusion over big meaning repressive?

Check out the Robber Barons of the 1880's - they could just close down whole towns, bridges etc.. if they felt like it - and that = oppression.

So, who agrees here, that public govt = freedom, whilst private govt = repression?

 

In almost all cases private business colludes with government to get special priviledges like direct subsidies, limited liability, the monetary system, all sorts of international protectionism, patents and IP, barriers to market entry, cartelization of their industry, etc.

The monied interests you describe - Rockefeller, Morgan, etc - they operated under the wing of government, not in spite of it. Patents built their empires, who do you think praised when the government massively subsidized the railways? The industry. Who do you think praised when the US Fuel Administration and War Services committee took over production and allocation of fuel under the proto-Fascist Wilson? The industry. Who praised when the government took the big banks under their wing, into a protected cartel, socializing any losses they incur due to their risky use of customer's funds under the fractional reserve system? The industry.

In short, I think you have this completely backwards. I do not believe the government should not exist, let alone be privately owned.

 

While I am not sure anyone has actually proposed a system of private national governance, I think this is a topic which should be thought-provoking, and at the very least, motivate people to analyse what it is they are either recommending, or arguing against.

The closest thing I can think of to a system of private national governance would be an absolute Monarchy, and I frankly doubt that even the most committed neo-conservative would be in favour of that.

In theory, the cheapest way of running a country is to sub-contract all governmental functions to corporate sub-contractors. This is easily attainable, and if the entity which is known as 'government' actually performs no tasks other than the allocation of contracts, it can cost very little to run - this presents an enormous temptation to any administration. Voila - a beautifully balanced budget every year!

There is no practical reason why Justice, Defence, Fire, Water, Communication, Welfare, Road, Rail, Sea and Air Transport, and the associated infrastructure cannot be provided and operated by the private corporate sector. But that proposal begins to get a bit shaky when we observe that many of those functions in fact, unavoidably comprise a sort of natural monopoly. Whilst you can have competing road, rail, and air transport systems, and competing communications systems, there are insurmountable obstacles to have similar competition within justice, social welfare, and defence systems.

We then need to examine the economics, and more importantly - the motivation, of many corporations providing competing services in relation to those functions. Other than competitive advantage, what incentive has a corporate entity, whose raison d'etre is the return on investment to its shareholders, to keep the costs within reason for the consumer? Hidden cartels are not difficult to arrange (particularly with little governmental oversight,) and while the cost to government will be non existent, the costs to the citizenry will be that commercial standard - what the market will bear.

But unfortunately, people in general are wedded (if not welded) to their political ideology, and the ardent conservatives will clam that private enterprise will always be a selfless force for good, and the fringe-level socialists will constantly maintain that central government controlling every aspect of society is the answer to a maiden's prayer.

I should be interested to observe what, if any, response this OP elicits.

 

Just know that private businesses stay private so that they can treat their employees and customers how they choose which always translates to MUCH better. When companies go public they always lose what made the company great. It seemed like you're implying private companies can abuse people easier which the exact opposite.

 

Certain things like national defense are simply to large and complex to have run by a private entity although you can have parts of it run in such a way and in fact we do with private companies building our jets and ships and tanks etc.

More idiotic droning from the left about stuff they don't know anything about. Privatization has in fact been done and has been extremely successful in Sandy Springs. One can only hope that it spreads and the lazy, incompetent and greedy government workers that most cities have to endure will be a thing of the past.

http://isil.org/the-town-that-privatized-everything/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/b...-peoples-business-private.html?pagewanted=all


The secret is that when they award a contract to the winner they award a couple of "back up" contracts to the runners up so that if the winning company doesn't perform the job and money is immediately given to the next company in line. This forces them to keep their costs reasonable and their service up to par. The mistake that many cities seem to make in regards to privatizing portions is that they just give out one contract to one company and for to long of a time. Sandy Springs only gives out one year contracts.

 

history and economics proves you wrong, brutally. Not only does public ownership not lead to greater accountability, it's also leads to the complete breakdown of the economic system, leaving everyone except well-connected elites in poverty, and wasting resources.

private ownership is superior in term of both economic efficiency and accountability. With private owernship, the owner can be sued for illegal misconduct and has to keep customers satisfied in order to keep being in business. A publicly owned corporation does not face that same direct pressure for good results from the customers, and is part of the establishment and thus likely to get into corruption. With private ownership, a private owner can make good decisions for his company of which he has more knowledge than anyone else and he will bear the consequences of those actions. A free market providces a price system which leads to an efficient allocation of resources. The same is not true in planned eocnomies in which the directors are not personally responsible in the same way, and the price system doesn't work and thus can't give them indications of where resources ought to go.

 

Government is a necessary evil compelled of us by that that human beings are only omnicorrutible. Power corrupts, and government is about the exercise of power ergo governments as they age will always become more and more corrupt and they will always seek to obtain ever more power which will make them even more corrupt. It is the nature of the beast. It doesn't matter a whit whether it is private or public the same dictum applies. Mao at lest understood this and from his understanding of the problem came the Great Cultural Revolution in which millions including much of his inner circle perished. And yet all that death and destruction accomplished nothing.

 

From some of the posts following mine, I think I might need to stipulate that when I speak of corporate entities, I am making no distinction between private companies (as designated by corporate law,) and publicly listed companies.

The ethos and imperatives are essentially the same in both instances. The maximisation of return on investment is not always in the public interest.

 

When is it not? Ithink most people who say this simply don't understand how you actually go about that sort of thing as opposed to how they think it is done.

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Government by it vary existence suppresses freedom and always more over time.

 

I fully disagree. If you want an example of how lower regulation (ie smaller government) and freer markets work to everyone's advantage, look at the computer industry. Competition is fierce, cronyism is almost non-existent, regulation is low, profit margins are razor-thin, consumer prices are dirt cheap and value is incredibly high, and yet these companies pay employees higher than average wages and are incredibly profitable.

 

The claim is not that private corporations seek to do good, but that they do good as a side-effect of achieving their primary goal of furthering their own self-interest. That is, provided they operate within a system in which they do good for themselves by doing good to others. It isn't in fact about privatising as much as possible, but about designing systems in which people help themselves by helping others. All this from teh assumption that people are in general self-interested and not likely to make huge sacrifices for the general good. A rather pessimistic view.

 

But one largely born out by history.

 

Until public pensions are abolished, I am all for as much private contracting as possible.

 

I vote for public goods and public services being more conducive to Individual Liberty than that which must be purchased in our open markets, regardless of income.

 

I am a little surprised at your response. Quite apart from the questionable courtesy of implying that I am totally ignorant of the subject I am attempting to examine - I can think of many instances wherein the maximisation of individual profit might not be in the interests of the general public.

It is fairly basic arithmetic that if the cost of supplying or performing a good or service is X, and the profit margin is Y, the resultant cost is increased if Y is increased. If the goods or services are essentials (thereby encouraging the probability of a monopoly,) and the costs to the consumer are increased to the point where it is unaffordable without sacrificing some other essentials - society suffers. Both at the economic level and at the social level - a man whose children have to go hungry, can be a dangerous man.

 

If they increase prices to the point where it is unaffordable then they won't make money and they'll go out of business. Or else they'll be forced to re-evaluate their position and lower their prices.

Or if they don't a competitor can come in and take their business because they're not doing what they should be doing for the consumer.

 

The fact of the matter is that you do not maximize earnings by maximizing profit per item. You maximize earnings by selling as much of a given item as you can. That is why competition is the most important part of the free market.

 

You should tell this to Brazil since public ownership is doing so well with preserving the rainforests.

Source

 

Pretty much everything that is wrong with government could be fixed by simply replacing the current tax systems with a land value tax. The economic value of everything government does can be precisely measured by how it affects land values. If more police are needed in a community, hiring more police will increase land values, and if too many police are hired, land values will start to decline. Same goes for school teachers. If building a roadway and extending utilities on the south side of town will raise the value of nearby land by more than the costs, then that is an efficient use of funds. In order for government to operate efficiently, the governments revenue system needs to be tied directly to land values, because land values are the direct measure of the good that government does. When you tax income and trade to fund government activities, you have a complete disconnect between the good that government does (which is precisely measured in land values, i.e., rent) and the revenue it will receive.

 

A lack of democracy is what enabled Rockefeller and co., hence greater public representation ought to alleviate this problem - as we actually see nowadays, just that I propose to take it several steps further.

 

Clearly, that cannot be the case, if we look back to the 'Robber Baron' semi-Libertarian era, I mean these guys just did the hell as they pleased in order to compete with each other

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Of course they can - private company can set the wages and work conditions any way they fancy - and this will nearly always lead to more exploitation at the lower levels (check out Pinkerton murders of Homestead Steel works for example)

 

I agree with you. Special interests fight for the favor of government - monied interests clash with the people to provide the political class with power in the form of reelection. In the 1880s the third party system of the US put two very ideological parties against each other - political affiliation was high and the people were the dominant special interest group within society. Mass advertising had not yet taken off, so the influence of these monied interests was basically restricted to what they could do to inspire more voters to switch sides - the construction of infrastructure, creation of jobs, etc. Just providing politicians with millions and millions of dollars was not as useful as it currently is.

Moving forward, following the election of 1896 and the Progressive era through FDR, the parties became very aligned, and so mass advertising dollars became the dominant force in most elections. Simultaneously, the country became more inclusive (women's suffrage), but less representative. The Federal government gained a lot more power over internal state policy, and it itself changed to become less representative and more collectivized (direct election of senators, strong increase in executive over legislative power, etc).

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The compromise to be made, it seems to me, should involve significantly increased sovereignty of local communities, under a system of direct democracy. Small towns and shires should control most political power for their respective areas, and the citizens of those areas should directly vote on internal policy. Communities of ~200-50000 people would control their own fate, and could easily move around to competing jurisdictions, who would have a strong interest in providing people with policy they desire to attract population and investment.

Unfortunately, those who are against monied interests often support ever-growing collectivization of government away from the individual, toward large national, regional, or international governance.

Do you find this agreeable?

 

I'll have a read of that article, but greedy, lazy? sounds a bit partisan to me

 

Customers perhaps - but how about the workers, you know, those guys that actually do the work - where do they fit in to your grand scheme of things?

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Sounds like you believe in some kind of anarcho-libertarian idea - so, how the heck will that lead to greater freedom, just look at the robber baron period for example

 

You will have to forgive me but I live in the Milwaukee area and all you have to do is google it to see how awful it has been run. Especially when you compare it to the surrounding cities and counties. Its a shame that Sandy Springs is located in the Southeast because I would love to move their someday but I will just have to stick with Seattle. There is a direct correlation between the amount of power that local government workers and unions have compared to bankruptcies. It is statistically provable with a high level of degree of confidence that municipalities with high levels of government authority have much higher debt ratios and bankruptcies.