Private industry is not always the superior solution.

[I'm Supposn]

Private industry is not always the superior solution:

There are people that believe “government’s the problem rather than solution. I heard Milton Friedman state that half of what our federal government’s spending is wasted. A great proportion of all other than federal spending, (including commercial and personal spending) is also “wasted”.

We, as individuals generally believe that governments’ spending for what we approve of, to the extent that’s spent in manners that we approve of, is justifiable; all other governments’ spending is less than justifiable. That’s politics. There are extremely few items of governments expense that are not controversial. Governments’ lines of expenses are criticized or subject to objections by some aggregate individuals or groups. Political disagreement occurs more so in democracies but also occurs within nations of only one political party or of extremely few leaders.

Outsourcing some specific government functions would be contrary to the public’s interest. There are some government functions that can be outsourced, but government rather than private industry provides them in a superior manner. Many other nations provide their population Wi-Fi, medical insurance, railroads and other public transportation at lesser expense and in a manner superior to that of the United States. It’s nonsense to contend that private industry does or will perform every function in a manner superior to government.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[Aberration]

 

[TheEconomist]

It’s nonsense to contend that private industry does or will perform every function in a manner superior to government.

Assuming that governments will do a bad job is a reasonable default position you can hold unto until evidence to the contrary is brought forward. It doesn't mean that such evidence never exists, merely that this is the exception rather than the norm.

The reason is rather simple, really. The people who make decisions in governments typically do not reap most of the benefit or suffer most of the adverse consequences of the choices they make. In many cases, they actually face deeply perverse incentives where they would stand to benefit from doing a bad job. For example, suppose that I get to control the flow of trucking activity across a given area. Clearly, the social optimum here is not really ambiguous: we wouldn't want truck driving empty or nearly empty too often. However, it's clearly not to my advantage. What I need is broad support and I can get it by treating the rights I control as patronage to buy said support. You know that this is exactly what is going on in the United States, right? Thousands of gallons of diesel fuel are wasted every year because not everyone has the legal authorization to pick up and deliver stuff on their way back. (I cannot recall, but I think this is an issue when you're involved in transportation across state lines.) The costs and benefits facing politicians and bureaucrats aren't always the same as those facing the public and entrepreneurs. In fact, they're often different. But if it was not enough, it is also typically true that the cost of acquiring information is far greater for a government far removed from the area where policies are to be implemented. Parents, teachers and school administrators are far better informed than bureaucrats and politicians about the problems faced by kids studying in a given shcool and it is precisely that knowledge which needs to be used to make appropriate choices.

Many people will correctly point out that markets can fail. From a theoretical perspective, asymmetric information, externalities, increasing returns to scale over the relevant range of production, etc. all can make markets deviate from what would be considered socially optimal. In such environments, it is possible to imagine an idealized social planner implementing an allocation that is Pareto-improving upon the market solution. In the real world, the issue is that human beings working in governments aren't idealized, omniscient and benevolent social planners... It's not because you can imagine a better plan that it is feasible. It becomes an issue of which type of screwing up will be less worse than the other. I wouldn't bet my money on the government.


Someone might have a perfectly sane reason why they think governments should provide some services, but I don't see why someone would want a government to supply the service as opposed to merely paying for it.

 

[MrPeanut]

Private industry is not always the superior solution:

There are people that believe “government’s the problem rather than solution. I heard Milton Friedman state that half of what our federal government’s spending is wasted. A great proportion of all other than federal spending, (including commercial and personal spending) is also “wasted”.

We, as individuals generally believe that governments’ spending for what we approve of, to the extent that’s spent in manners that we approve of, is justifiable; all other governments’ spending is less than justifiable. That’s politics. There are extremely few items of governments expense that are not controversial. Governments’ lines of expenses are criticized or subject to objections by some aggregate individuals or groups. Political disagreement occurs more so in democracies but also occurs within nations of only one political party or of extremely few leaders.

Outsourcing some specific government functions would be contrary to the public’s interest. There are some government functions that can be outsourced, but government rather than private industry provides them in a superior manner. Many other nations provide their population Wi-Fi, medical insurance, railroads and other public transportation at lesser expense and in a manner superior to that of the United States. It’s nonsense to contend that private industry does or will perform every function in a manner superior to government.

Respectfully, Supposn

I agree, and I think that the illusion of the superiority of private industry that we have lived under for several decades is fading pretty quickly right now. Private industry can be exceptionally efficient at producing profit, but if the goal is to provide a universal service it's probably best left to the government.

 

[I'm Supposn]

… Someone might have a perfectly sane reason why they think governments should provide some services, but I don't see why someone would want a government to supply the service as opposed to merely paying for it.

TheEconomist, computers enable enterprises to identify undesirable customers. Department stores can notify individual undesirable customers of their excessive rate of returns and exchanges will not be tolerated, and henceforth their rights to those services will be explicitly limited. Enterprises can (with legal cause), refuse to serve any individual.

Private enterprises are dependent upon serving customers at a profit. Private enterprises profit to the extent that their revenues exceed their expenses. Most commercial enterprises provide differing qualities of goods and services at differing prices.

Unlike private enterprises, Many, (if not most) services provided by the government of a democratic republic, must be provided without regard for individuals’ contributions to the government’s tax revenues. There are many government functions that a democratic republic government should never “contract out”. Government protective services, (e.g. military, law enforcement, our judicial system) should not be privatized.

Privatization of prisons has often caused corruption of government’s judicial and law enforcement systems. The net effects of such privatization are too often contrary to the public’s interests.

Government often outsources specific tasks when it’s feasible to draft contracts which exactly specify the attributes and times of goods to be delivered or the services to be performed. Such public bid contracts with complete accountability are good for both government and businesses.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[I'm Supposn]

Assuming that governments will do a bad job is a reasonable default position you can hold unto until evidence to the contrary is brought forward. It doesn't mean that such evidence never exists, merely that this is the exception rather than the norm. …

… For example, suppose that I get to control the flow of trucking activity across a given area. Clearly, the social optimum here is not really ambiguous: we wouldn't want truck driving empty or nearly empty too often. However, it's clearly not to my advantage. What I need is broad support and I can get it by treating the rights I control as patronage to buy said support. You know that this is exactly what is going on in the United States, right? ...

TheEconomist, I served in private industry, the military, and as a civil servant. Based upon my lifetime of experience, I’ve long ago concluded that your assumption is incorrect.

I never advocated privatizing the trucking industry, but it would be terrible if all roads and streets were owned by individual private enterprises.

Our nation’s railway tracks and signals are in very poor conditions. They and our public transportation systems are inferior to those of many other nations. Possibly if the track beds, tracks, signals and traffic were all government controlled, our railroads would run much safer, faster and more efficiently? Government’s aircraft control does a good job.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[TheEconomist]

TheEconomist, computers enable enterprises to identify undesirable customers. Department stores can notify individual undesirable customers of their excessive rate of returns and exchanges will not be tolerated, and henceforth their rights to those services will be explicitly limited. Enterprises can (with legal cause), refuse to serve any individual.

Unless the department stores in question here are walking back on engagements they took, I don't see anything wrong with any of this. You do not have a right to the goods or services produced by other people, no more than the manager of the store has a right to your business. Of course, that means some managers can treat some customers in a way with which you disagree. It also means that they cannot do whatever they want. Customers they do not serve is money left on the table, money that a competitor can put their hands on.

Most commercial enterprises provide differing qualities of goods and services at differing prices.

Which is exactly what you'd want.

Unlike private enterprises, many, (if not most) services provided by the government of a democratic republic, must be provided without regard for individuals’ contributions to the government’s tax revenues.

Humans beings are well known to be so reasonable when the costs of their demands is systematically borne out by someone else...

Based upon my lifetime of experience, I’ve long ago concluded that your assumption is incorrect.

That's not very convincing. The sheer incompetence and complete lack of common sense of bureaucratic structures is so well known it is a widespread cultural motif. You'll never see a joke about how efficient is the DMV, or how pleasant it was to request a simple permit even in a small town. What you will hear about are complaints about services being slow, impersonal, unhelpful and sometimes even rude, about departments building up deficits, about expenditures being too large, etc. and, with regards to regulations, still more complaints about it being a maddening maze so idiotic it would seem it was designed to confuse on purpose.

You won't hear that kind of thing happening at a car dealership, a real estate business, a restaurant, a private school, etc. Why? The incentives to make services cheaper exists for businesses, but not for bureaucrats; the incentives to respond rapidly to changes in the demands of clients exist for businesses, but not for bureaucrats; the incentives to provide rapid and clear service exist for businesses, but not for bureaucrats. In all those environments, failing to respond adequately to what clients want is money left on the table. All you need is a credible threat of being able to move your business elsewhere and, suddenly, oh miracle, things run smoothly. The incentives of bureaucrats is to bolster support for themselves and to render themselves useful when they leave office. Making it a maze is how you keep the public out of what would strike them as obvious nonsense. It also confers to yourself highly valuable insider knowledge that you can then sell to the highest bidder when you move into the private sphere.


The problem always boils down to who's making the decisions, what information do they have and what are their incentives. In the case of governments, more often than not, laws are crafted by barely accountable politicians who do not understand exactly what they are doing. I say barely accountable because, in some districts, the outcome of elections is known in advance. Then, in practice, the details of implementation are decided by unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucrats. They do not have the right information to make sound choices and their incentives clearly aren't to provide the highest quality of service at the lowest cost because neither of these things have any impact on their personal lives or their careers. Why would you expect anything like that to work well?

 

[CaughtInThe]

the correct mixture of government and the private sector is critical.


without either things go third world.

 

[TheEconomist]

Our nation’s railway tracks and signals are in very poor conditions. They and our public transportation systems are inferior to those of many other nations. Possibly if the track beds, tracks, signals and traffic were all government controlled, our railroads would run much safer, faster and more efficiently? Government’s aircraft control does a good job.

Transportation happens to be heavily regulated. If a better service is sufficiently valued to outweight the costs of providing it, absent a persky third party who gets in the way, why the hell would no one provide it? Businesses do not gain from poor maintenance, unless there is an imbecile who gets in between them and their customers...

There are empty, abandonned buildings in New York. Do you know why? Rent control and housing regulations. There comes a point when these things imply that the market value of your building is negative. You can't possibly sell it and you're not always allowed to tear it down. In a highly crowded city with housing shortages and some problems with homelessness, space is being wasted and buildings are allowed to be left undermaintained until they have to be closed down for sanitary or saftey reasons. The idea behind markets is that prices convey the relevant information for making decisions. If you mess with the prices, don't come crying about markets not working. You're the one preventing prices to operate as they should to encourage people to aportion things in a reasonable manner.

Besides, you have prime examples of what things would look like if the government was more involved in America. California and New York have had more or less Democrat supermajorities for the better part of the last 30 years or so at all levels of government. Their response to virtually every problem imaginable is always to put in place a new program, a new regulation or some other means by which politicians and bureaucrats get to make choices on your behalf. They aren't exactly examplars of success, quite the contrary. In fact, even by their own standards, they fail: those are the two places in the country where the degree of inequality is the highest and the degree of social mobility the lowest.

 

[TheEconomist]

The correct mixture of government and the private sector is critical. Without either things go third world.

We do not have an example of a thriving economy that doesn't admit some role for government intervention in the form of regulations, subsidy programs and welfare programs. Markets aren't perfect and you might justifiably hold that other things beside efficiency matter.

On the other hand, in most circumstances, they appear to be doing a better job. None of that should be controversial, especially not from the vintage point in which we find ourselves, being able to look back at the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century. "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen" characterizes the relevant political space, with near anarchy on the one side and socialism on the other.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

One of the market myths is the sanctity and inviolability of private property. In fact, only profit is sacred in it, and any property can be taken away by both the state and major players. And of course the rule: "There is no crime that das Capital will not commit for the sake of 300% profit"(c) still works.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

 

[I'm Supposn]

Originally Posted by I'm Supposn:
TheEconomist, computers enable enterprises to identify undesirable customers. Department stores can notify individual undesirable customers of their excessive rate of returns and exchanges will not be tolerated, and henceforth their rights to those services will be explicitly limited. Enterprises can (with legal cause), refuse to serve any individual.

Unless the department stores in question here are walking back on engagements they took, I don't see anything wrong with any of this. You do not have a right to the goods or services produced by other people, no more than the manager of the store has a right to your business. Of course, that means some managers can treat some customers in a way with which you disagree. It also means that they cannot do whatever they want. Customers they do not serve is money left on the table, money that a competitor can put their hands on.

Originally Posted by I'm Supposn:
Most commercial enterprises provide differing qualities of goods and services at differing prices.

Which is exactly what you'd want.

Originally Posted by I'm Supposn:
Unlike private enterprises, many, (if not most) services provided by the government of a democratic republic, must be provided without regard for individuals’ contributions to the government’s tax revenues.

Humans beings are well
known to be so reasonable when the costs of their demands is systematically borne out by someone else...

TheEconomist, on this first half of your response, we're apparently in complete agreement with each other. Respectfully, Supposn

 

[I'm Supposn]

Originally Posted by I'm Supposn
Our nation’s railway tracks and signals are in very poor conditions. They and our public transportation systems are inferior to those of many other nations. Possibly if the track beds, tracks, signals and traffic were all government controlled, our railroads would run much safer, faster and more efficiently? Government’s aircraft control does a good job.

Transportation happens to be heavily regulated. If a better service is sufficiently valued to outweight the costs of providing it, absent a pesky third party who gets in the way, why the hell would no one provide it? ...

The economist, much of USA’s infrastructures and public services are poor in comparison to other nations. This is particularly true in regard to USA’s railroads. This is an excerpt of my response within another group. The topic was “Why Doesn’t America Do High-Speed Rail?”. Respectfully, Supposn

” If a U.S. railroad corporation or associations of railroad corporations believed a high-speed railroad route was financially feasible, they would have found investors and done it. Although high speed rail does not attract financial investors, it would be of economic benefit to the regions that it serves, and of lesser economic benefit to our national economy. USA has an existing but not totally high-speed tracks between Boston and Washington D. C.

I wonder if it’s not conceivable for the state’s and the federal governments to acquire the existing route’s rail-line lands and build much higher speed infrastructure mostly, if not entirely in parallel with the existing railroad tracks. The governments could charge users tolls for their use of the infrastructure and the services of a government agency that controls traffic through both substantially parallel rail lines. … ”.

 

[I'm Supposn]

Originally Posted by CaughtInThe:
The correct mixture of government and the private sector is critical. Without either things go third world.

We do not have an example of a thriving economy that doesn't admit some role for government intervention in the form of regulations, subsidy programs and welfare programs. Markets aren't perfect and you might justifiably hold that other things beside efficiency matter.

On the other hand, in most circumstances, they appear to be doing a better job. None of that should be controversial, especially not from the vintage point in which we find ourselves, being able to look back at the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century. "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen" characterizes the relevant political space, with near anarchy on the one side and socialism on the other.

TheEconomist, you, CaughtInThe, and I are apparently in somewhat general agreement. I suppose we differ to some degrees regarding specific facets of the governments’ programs/nonprofits’ services/commercial enterprises mix. Respectfully, Supposn

 

[TheEconomist]

TheEconomist, on this first half of your response, we're apparently in complete agreement with each other. Respectfully, Supposn

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.

I have no problems with stores refusing to serve some customers, but I gather that you have a problem with that. I also pointed out that competition puts a serious bound on what private businesses will do in a way that is beneficial to society at large. That's a crucial piece of inentive that is missing for governments, so it's certainly not an argument in favor of having governments manage the production of goods and services. And when I said that "Humans beings are well known to be so reasonable when the costs of their demands is systematically borne out by someone else..." I was being sarcastic. That's actually a reason why providing goods and services irrespective of individual contributions can lead to wasteful behavior...

All of those things are reasons I gave for why you should not expect anything run by the government to not run smoothly. That would be the eact opposite of what you were trying to say. You may have other reasons to still want governments to pay for or to run some things, but efficiency and productivity are unlikely to be on your side.

If a U.S. railroad corporation or associations of railroad corporations believed a high-speed railroad route was financially feasible, they would have found investors and done it. Although high speed rail does not attract financial investors, it would be of economic benefit to the regions that it serves, and of lesser economic benefit to our national economy. USA has an existing but not totally high-speed tracks between Boston and Washington D. C. I wonder if it’s not conceivable for the state’s and the federal governments to acquire the existing route’s rail-line lands and build much higher speed infrastructure mostly, if not entirely in parallel with the existing railroad tracks. The governments could charge users tolls for their use of the infrastructure and the services of a government agency that controls traffic through both substantially parallel rail lines.

Getting the government involved in everything really helped clean up the streets and solve the housing shortages in California, so it surely cannot hurt with railroads...

 

[TheEconomist]

Marxism is intellectually glorified envy, it is the sorry excuse of the pathetic to parade around on the high horse of compassion while encouraging others to loot on behalf of what really is deeply seated selfishness.

It is the perfect excuse to foist on the shoulders of others all responsibility for your own failures which is precisely why we do not have a single example of a successful Marxist movement that did not institute a murderous, authoritarian regime. The count is at exactly zero and it is not for lack of trying in the 20th century. At this point, I am ready to call it as dead wrong in both theory and practice. To be a Marxist in the 21st century is to reveal oneself as at least one of three things:

(i) an irremediably stupid person
(ii) an historical illiterate
(iii) an evil human being

Or, possibly, all of them. I reckon communists and socialists to be as a disgustingly lacking in morality as nazis, except that the evils of communism far outshines those of nazism. Even if you put all the bodies fallen during the war as victims of nazism on top of those of the victims of the Holocaust, you would still fall short of the body count left behind by communists. Communism and socialism are deeply bad ideas in theory that went horribly wrong in practice... that's the summary of where your core political beliefs lead.


Grow up and take responsibility of your own life. As for Jonathan White, the only place Marxism is alive is in the academia among a minority of lunatics within a minority of professors. The only reason it survives is that governments are funding profoundly useless at best and deeply damageable garbage at worst. All of the postmodern inspired nonsense in the social sciences is a jargon-ridden cloack meant to shelter otherwise marxist beliefs and push activism under the guise of science. All of it is garbage and it's unsurprisingly in this intellectual inbred circle of morons that you will find the last remnance of Marxism.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

Or, possibly, all of them. I reckon communists and socialists to be as a disgustingly lacking in morality as nazis, except that the evils of communism far outshines those of nazism.

Scratch the capitalist and the Nazi hidden in him will be revealed.

"The post-pandemic recovery will be complicated by the fact that many sectors of the global economy are entering their cyclical downturn zones"

The tricky thought that even without the coronavirus, everything would have whooped.

Capitalists, your capitalism has broken down

 

[I'm Supposn]

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.

I have no problems with stores refusing to serve some customers, but I gather that you have a problem with that.

I also pointed out that competition puts a serious bound on what private businesses will do in a way that is beneficial to society at large. That's a crucial piece of inentive that is missing for governments, so it's certainly not an argument in favor of having governments manage the production of goods and services.

And when I said that "Humans beings are well known to be so reasonable when the costs of their demands is systematically borne out by someone else..." I was being sarcastic. That's actually a reason why providing goods and services irrespective of individual contributions can lead to wasteful behavior...

All of those things are reasons I gave for why you should not expect anything run by the government to not run smoothly. That would be the eact opposite of what you were trying to say. You may have other reasons to still want governments to pay for or to run some things, but efficiency and productivity are unlikely to be on your side.
Getting the government involved in everything really helped clean up the streets and solve the housing shortages in California, so it surely cannot hurt with railroads...

The economist, I wrote department stores can notify individual undesirable customers of their excessive rate of returns and exchanges will not be tolerated, and henceforth their rights to those services will be explicitly limited. Enterprises can (with legal cause), refuse to serve any individual. I suppose an individual customers’ excessive rate of returns and exchanges is legal cause to limit or no longer grant those services to the individual offending customer. I consider such a policy a very sensible. Why do you assume otherwise?

You wrote, “I also pointed out that competition puts a serious bound on what private businesses will do in a way that is beneficial to society at large. That's a crucial piece of inentive that is missing for governments, so it's certainly not an argument in favor of having governments manage the production of goods and services”.
Are the words “bound” and “inentive” typographical errors? You meant to write “bond” rather than “bound”? I don’t understand what you meant to communicate within those two sentences.

I understood your sarcasm, and I do believe “providing goods and services irrespective of individual contributions can lead to wasteful behavior”. Again I ask, why do you assume otherwise?

Commercial bureaucracies’ purpose is to financially profit. Our government’s purpose is to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”.
I believe both commercial and governments purposes are challenging, bureaucracies of governments are greater challenged. Many of the faults you find in government are due to those greater challenges. Your assumption that government employees are essentially less capable than commercial employees is another one of your false assumptions.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[TheEconomist]

TheEconomist, I wrote department stores can notify individual undesirable customers of their excessive rate of returns and exchanges will not be tolerated, and henceforth their rights to those services will be explicitly limited. Enterprises can (with legal cause), refuse to serve any individual. I suppose an individual customers’ excessive rate of returns and exchanges is legal cause to limit or no longer grant those services to the individual offending customer. I consider such a policy a very sensible. Why do you assume otherwise?

Given your earlier comment, I was assuming that this statement was intended as a criticism of such policies.

You wrote, “I also pointed out that competition puts a serious bound on what private businesses will do in a way that is beneficial to society at large. That's a crucial piece of inentive that is missing for governments, so it's certainly not an argument in favor of having governments manage the production of goods and services”. Are the words “bound” and “inentive” typographical errors? You meant to write “bond” rather than “bound”? I don’t understand what you meant to communicate within those two sentences.

While the word "inentive" is obviously missing a "c" and it should have read "incentive," I did mean to use the word bound. It is used in the sense of a limit. It might have been clearer if I used the more common plural "bounds" instead. So, let me rephrase that.

Competition ensures that businesses will eventually pay a price for not properly fulfilling the demands of customers. For example, while it might be the case that engineers and designers working for car manufacturers such as Ford make decisions about how to modulate safety, comfort, space, style and more when building new cars, the truth is that they aren't the real boss here. Consummers are the boss. Try as they might, you cannot sell cars, trucks and SUVs to people by force; it has to fit the demands of consummers. As long as those consummers have some kind of outside option, this becomes a very serious problem for Ford: well, you can also buy from General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Kia, etc. So, the fact that they are after profits ends up playing in your favor. They have every motivation on Earth to provide people with something that comes as close as possible as matching all of their demands, possibly even demands they didn't even know they had, and to do it at the best price possible.

Now, none of the above is true of governments. Bureaucratic organizations do not benefit from providing you with exceptional service, nor do they benefit from making sure they are as cheap as possible to run for tax payers. In many cases, the incentives are actually quite perverse. Imagine that you task a governmental agency with deterring discrimination and encouraging the participation of a plurality of individuals in the labor market. That would be the job of the EEOC in the United States. What should the EEOC be doing? Ideally, we would like the EEOC to do such a good job as to put itself out of business... But, in reality, the political and social influence of managers and the jobs of hundreds of people hinge on the agency neither being disbanded, nor reduced. So, what you should expect from the EEOC is that it will always exaggerates the need for its services... If discrimination isn't happening on a grand scale, we'll expand the definition of discrimination; and if even this isn't enough, we will bully people into settling out of courts to use their settlements as evidence of rampant discrimination.

The mangement and the employees of the EEOC can profit from doing everything you wouldn't want them to do and, obviously, they can profit from exaggerating the amount of funds they need. Virtually none of what they do or of what they say can be trusted because there is a clear conflict of interest at play here -- and that's generally the incentives faced by bureaucratic organizations.

 

[TheEconomist]

Your assumption that government employees are essentially less capable than commercial employees is another one of your false assumptions.

None of what I said should be construed as a comment on the quality of employees working in governmental agencies. When I talk about incentives, I am talking about the social environment and how it structures the costs and benefits decision makers face for undertaking some actions instead of others. You could populate governmental agencies with exceptional employees and managers, all ripe with good intentions and all trying their best to live by a strict moral code and you would still find that the costs and benefits I highlighted above have consequences for their behavior.

You're still looking at people whose livelihood depend on demonstrating that the job they do is important, on convincing politicians to give them more funds, more authority, more influence. All of those things have value and can be used to make the lives of managers and employees more comfortable, so it seems to me like there is a clear conflict of interests here -- or, we say in economics, their incentives are not aligned with those of the general public. What I find really curious here is that if I was talking about a conflict of interests in the private sector, no one would ask me to explain myself. Everyone would see the problem immediately. Suppose you go see your financial advisor. He tells you that the difficulty of access to private equity can land you an exceptional risk-return trade off and he invites you to buy into XYZ as part of your portfolio. As it happens, the majority partner of XYZ is his brother in law and he owns much of it himself. Even if he shared this information from the start, wouldn't it be harder for you to be sold on the project than if he stood to gain nothing from increasing the equity of the firm XYZ? Everyone sees the problem: you cannot trust the advice, nor the justifications he provides. And this isn't a comment about him or her being a bad person. They could be lying, but they could also simply be blind to certain problems because of concerns for the well-being of their family or of themselves.


The same human beings populate governmental agencies, congressional committees, etc. so, I'm going to go ahead and assume that the same nonsense can happen when conflict of interests are involved, no matter where that happens. In plain English, my point is that markets generally erase or minimize those conflists of interests for the simple reason that transactions and associations must be voluntary. It's not always true, but it is generally true. On the other hand, the exact opposite is true of most governmental agencies and state-run businesses. They usually operate with interests that are entirely at odds with those of the greater public and they absolutely can get away with it because you are effectively forced to pay. Taxes are mandatory and as long as they can levy enough political support, they will keep their business running.

 

[TheEconomist]

Scratch the capitalist and the Nazi hidden in him will be revealed.

The communist doesn't know what nazism means. How characteristically unsurprising! Let me educate you out of your ignorance. Maybe it will cure your mind of the brainwash you received.

Nazis support centralizing political powers within the hands of a single leader. To paraphrase Mussolini, fascism of which nazism derives is the idea that everything is within the State, nothing exists outside the State and nothing is to stand against the State. This means that social, cultural and even private businesses should align their efforts with the goals set by the fascist leader. It also means that you have to view yourself primarily as a member of a nation, you have to view individuality as being subsumed by your national identity. This means that the notion of individual rights is at best instrumental to the exercise of political power and, at worst, a nuisance that the State may abolish. To a fascist, human rights are not intrinsic features of the moral landscape, but are the creature of governments and what the State giveth, the State may take away. With regards to the conduct of business in every day life, this also means that the pursuit of profit isn't the primary purpose of a business. Its purpose is to serve the national interests as defined by the State. Journals shouldn't expose the truth and inform the public, but should serve to instill attitudes, beliefs and behavior congruent with the goals set forth by the State...

None of this is congruent with liberalism as a political doctrine. It begins with the individual, his liberty, his rights and his duties. It builds an entire system of social interactions around the idea that individuals should make the bulk of decisions. Markets, elections and even science itself are the product of the individualism at the core of liberalism. None of this can be reconciled with fascism on account that it is a fundamentally collectivist doctrine. However, doesn't all of those things I mention sound oddly familiar? It's weird, but if you scratch off "Jew" and write "White," you get a damn good approximation of far left activists and Antifa. Most of them aren't sufficiently well read to know that they are borrowing arguments used by Nazis and Italian Fascists, as well as sometimes even arguments used by defenders of slavery in the 19th century, but this is exactly what they do. For example, I am sure you have at some point either yourself or heard someone else talk about how wage labor really is a form of slavery, that the entrepreneurs are taking advantage of you while not being obligated to take good care of you. During the 19th century, Democrats were using this exact argument to defend slavery, arguing that it was better for slaves because they did not have to worry about being fed, clothed, sheltered or about receiving medical care. George Fitzhugh, a socialist, took that argument to its logical conclusion and even proposed that slavery be tried on white people too...


Politics at the extremes of the right and the left is eerily similar.

For my part, I believe that individual rights and liberties are fundamental features of the moral sphere, the denial of which invariably leads to attrocities. I believe that the ultimate court of appeal for knowledge of the world is reason and reason alone. Since its exercise requires speech and that it is an individual capacity, I believe in freedom of speech, of press, of conscience and of thought. And I also believe that any body of people who grants themselves the authority to infringe upon that freedom, who take it upon themselves to decide on behalf of all of humankind of the merit of an idea, are committing a crime against all of humanity.

To call me a Nazi is to be a mouthpiece for dead philosophers you likely neither read, nor understand. Congratulations on being a pawn in the scheme of disgusting people who seek to enslave the world out of resentment and envy.

 

[AmNat]

Politics at the extremes of the right and the left is eerily similar.

Right and left wing "extremism" are only similar in that they both have actual principles underlying them. Any practical similarity is a coincidence (for example, religious conservatives and communists agree that private enterprise should be restricted on Sunday, but their motives are opposite).

For my part, I believe that individual rights and liberties are fundamental features of the moral sphere, the denial of which invariably leads to attrocities. I believe that the ultimate court of appeal for knowledge of the world is reason and reason alone. Since its exercise requires speech and that it is an individual capacity, I believe in freedom of speech, of press, of conscience and of thought. And I also believe that any body of people who grants themselves the authority to infringe upon that freedom, who take it upon themselves to decide on behalf of all of humankind of the merit of an idea, are committing a crime against all of humanity.

The myth of progress was responsible for the greatest crimes in human history, and most of the problems with the world today. The best recipe for large-scale violence and mayhem is the assertion that people have a right to what naturally belongs to others.

 

[D30 System Mech]

Your whole argument is contradicting the base of language for the
Whole human race. Society and community are also
Concepts your argument defaces.

The point of a state system is to serve each other as
A state system.

 

[TheEconomist]

Right and left wing "extremism" are only similar in that they both have actual principles underlying them. Any practical similarity is a coincidence (for example, religious conservatives and communists agree that private enterprise should be restricted on Sunday, but their motives are opposite).

I think the similarities are more than accidental. Both express themselves as a critique of liberalism, even if they come from different angles. Unsurprisingly, what immediately follows after argument against individual rights and liberties is their violation. It's more than a coincidence: communism and socialism share with fascism a a collectivist point of view and they are both attacking the same enemy.

The best recipe for large-scale violence and mayhem is the assertion that people have a right to what naturally belongs to others.

There is also a fair amount of tragedy to the world, so giving people a scapegoat -- the others -- on a gold platter is just asking for trouble.