Are collective efforts necessary?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 8, 2005 21:59
VIEWED: 5226
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Health care. Roads. Defense. Environmental protection. Education. Research. Some people deeply mistrust ALL government collective efforts. In their opinion the government should only be in the business of national defense."Rights" are what you cna carve out for yourself. Everything else should be a matter of personal responsibility or market forces. Others view health care, environmental protection, and education as societal rights, to be governmentally provided.
This brings up the fundamental question whether certain programs/ services can ONLY be provided governmentally, which ones should be left to individual effort/ market forces, and which ones can be provided either way (and which path is more advantageous).
Your thoughts?
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
This brings up the fundamental question whether certain programs/ services can ONLY be provided governmentally, which ones should be left to individual effort/ market forces, and which ones can be provided either way (and which path is more advantageous).
How bout the mail? No, UPS and e-mail and all.
How bout national defense? Yeah, thats one.
Border Control? Well, we've got the Minutemen dropping illegal immigration in their patrol zone by something like 85%.
Ok, here's some. The patent office, the courts, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the FBI, international relations, coining of common currency, banking regulation, Food and Drug safety, traffic control, sidewalk repair...
Yeah, some things we need a government for. But keep you Commie-lovin pinko hands outa my Doctor's office and away from anything resembling a real business. No offense.
H
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None taken. The concern many of we "commie-lovin' pinkos" have with extensive privatization is the lack of accountability. Public-owned or government-run institutions may not be perfect, but at least their officials are elected, and therefore answerable to we the people. Private corporations are only answerable to their major stockholders, which I'm pretty sure does not include you or me. Sure, we can vote with our dollars. Until huge, unchecked monopolies eliminate market competition. There's a balance to be struck between total government control and total anarchy. If we keep talking, maybe we'll find it.
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I think everyone knows where I stand on this issue by now :)
Govt. should defend america, but let us make it.
I totally want govt. out of everything else, if possible. The post office is fine. Just make it an independent corporation. Maybe then the workers would be friendlier. I'd pay a slight postage increase for that. But also, let's have competition for letter service, etc.
Get the govt. out of regulating healthcare. There was an article on yahoo this morning that suggest that american did not only have the most expensive healthcare system in world, but also the worst, in terms of accuracy of diagnosis and treatment. Apparantly, according to the article, you chances of getting the correct treatment, the one properly prescribed for your problem, when you go to the hospital in America is now less than 2/3.
I know the socialist leaning crowd will say "that's corporations for you. Let the govt. step it." Not our govt. Please. They bungle everything up. But this is the problem. Govt. has stepped in too much. A lot of healthcare is monopolistic, and state supported. If we had serious competition, no one would go to these sucky hospitals.
Well I suppose they would have to be educated for that to work. But why are americans so poorly educated? Oh yeah, public schools. Can we privitize schools now? please? At least let private schools compete openly. Right now the modified vouchers program I like to call couches for the rich gives $1500/child/year. But only to families who have already put up $1500/child/year. Aka, the rich. Education in manhattan is $15000/child/year. And the state and the city pay that. Since they got that money from us, actually, we pay that. I don't mind the redistribution via taxes that much, it's a good way to help the poor, but it should be done to help the poor buy competitive goods and services. Not to give mandated badness to the poor, and let the rich select from competitive goodness.
This sort of thing, just to let the left know, is where poor republicans are coming from. We're not stupid. :) well some of us.
I wouldn't be too unhappy with the military being at least partially privatized, or maybe fully, but backwards from how it is. I would privatize the funding, if at all.
Think of it this way. The main point of this war in Iraq is probably objectively oil. The secondary point is a keystone strategy of a bunch of global revolutionaries who have the reins at the moment. Or at least they see themselves as global revolutionaries.
But the main backing has to come from oil companies. And we foot the bill. If the oil companies had to pay for this war themselves, there would be no way that it would be worth doing. Some site suggested that the cost of getting oil by war was $6000 a barrel. I haven't challenged that math yet, but I get the point, this is never going to be profitable, if the people who reap the rewards are also paying the cost.
Part of the problem is no one is relly estimating the true cost, they're only counting dollars that go to Iraq, not all the auxilliary costs, which someone in the senate said over a trillion. but even at $200B, we've gotten way under 1B barrels, and even if it's pure profit, there's no more than $50B max that we've gotten from Iraq, probably closer to $10B. But the thing is that the American taxpayer pays the bill, and Chevron/Texaco collects the dividend. So it's win/win for them.
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Quote:
Originally posted by oddness2her:
None taken. The concern many of we "commie-lovin' pinkos" have with extensive privatization is the lack of accountability. Public-owned or government-run institutions may not be perfect, but at least their officials are elected, and therefore answerable to we the people. Private corporations are only answerable to their major stockholders, which I'm pretty sure does not include you or me. Sure, we can vote with our dollars. Until huge, unchecked monopolies eliminate market competition. There's a balance to be struck between total government control and total anarchy. If we keep talking, maybe we'll find it.
Why, your the most sensible Commie I've spoken to in years. Good for you. Out of respect I'll refrain from derogatory characterizations for your chosen philosophy.
I suggest that accountability can be found in sensible regulation, strict criminal enforcement, and the unscrupulous practice of civil litigation (forcing manufacturers to be safe by suing them for millions over the slightest safety defect).
H
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Dare I ask what your definition of "sensible regulation" entails?
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Okay let me try again. More succinctly, hopefully.
Socialism, as defined by wikipedia:
Focus on general welfare rather than individuality, cooperation rather than competition.
I posted on another thread a long thing about how this cooperative governance led the nazis and commies to kill hunrded million plus people, that wouldn't have been possible if the same a**holes had been in our competitive individualistic society.
So, My take:
Socialism bad.
Ergo, no cooperative efforts. Groups of people should cooperate with eachother, and then compete with one another. When everyone cooperates, dissent is lost, badness ensures.
So to answer item points:
"The patent office,"
Nah. Patent office is horridly corrupt. It needs some sort of reform, not sure what yet.
"The courts,"
Maybe. I hate our legal system though. I can see a problem with private courts, but our current system is bogus. Much prison, not a lot of reason, nothing productive being done by prisoners, virtually no successful rehabilitation, and a lot of error. There can be improvement, I'm not sure how it should go.
"the Interstate Commerce Commission,"
Another one I haven't thought about. I think this also isn't perfect though.
"the FBI,"
This is one of our govts. good points. That and the CIA. Let's do away with Dept. of Homeland Security though. But if these were privatized it could be really interesting. FBI Inc. CIA Inc. all making their separate cases for guilt or innocence, and then the courts deciding.
"international relations,"
Because we're doing so well at it.
J/k. But seriously, sure maybe, maybe not. Corporations do seem to be getting on much better with other nations than govt.
"coining of common currency,"
This is interesting. If everyone made their own money...
"banking regulation,"
And a whole lot of other regulation. But then there was the whole S+L, whitewater and all reagon bush clinton bush been ripping people off so I guess this is flawed.
"Food and Drug safety,"
Food I agree, the govts. been doing well. It would suck much worse without that. The FDA drug section is horridly corrupt though. I mean without it, sure there would be Miracle Cure eat-your-liver-azine on the market.
"traffic control,"
Air traffic control? Hmm. Another good point.
"sidewalk repair..."
Or you mean local? I thought we were on federal govt.
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In a democracy, what is government but the collective will of the people? Should not people be free to determine the society in which they must live?
To say that 'government' should stay out of the running of society is to say that people should not be allowed to govern themselves as a group.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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I think accountability is a natural side effect of open competition, and an independent media informing the educated consumer with an honest appraisal of business. I think all of those things will also be the basis of open fair competition in the media and education.
The govts. job therefore becomes to ensure that that fair competition take place in an unfettered manner. Unfortunately what we have is govt. trying to undermine that fair competition. Ergo, we need new govt.
Rue,
Govt. never pretended to be the collective will of the people. Govt. is a ruling elite which at best helps to ensure the rights of the people in a noble selfless yet talented manner. We elect a very small number of the people in govt. and we have very limited options in doing so. We use what little information we have about these people to make an informed judgement about whether or not they will be competent to help form the rest of our vast govt. Unfortunately, as always, there are flaws. The people are stupid, yet equal, and so if the best educated think long and hard about this, their voice carries no more wait than the average couch potato's random pulling of a lever. In addition, some people are completely marginalized and will never get a serious say in their govt. Under our system, it will be very hard for African Americans do ever be able to determine the nature of their federal govt, or quite likely their state govt. As a result, they will get less funding for their schools, etc. This is not news of course, they figured this out a long time ago, but with no real say in govt. what can they do about it?
So clearly, govt. in practice is very far from the will of the people.
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Govt. never pretended to be the collective will of the people. Never pretended? That's an extreme statement. What about the document that starts out "We the people ..."? Surely that's a brazen pretense if I ever saw one.
But seriously, do you see no difference between the governments of Idi Amin and Bill Clinton? Or between Somalia and Canada?
I'm just wondering how you can make a statement that lumps all governments into a single category.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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