New York Transit Strike
POSTED BY: Hero
UPDATED: Friday, January 6, 2006 06:29
VIEWED: 3670
PAGE 3 of 5
You were being a dick. Don't defend it.
I'm not up for this at the moment and have nothing to gain by convincing you.
The govt. spends way more than private companies generally, and all services except the post office are subsidized.
That Japan and Korea can make a public school is no indication that our system works. I didn't say it couldn't be done, I said we couldn't do it. Because look, we can't.
We're not anywhere close to an agreement here, and I'm not going to argue the point any further, as I'm not likely to get anywhere. You like mommy govt. fine. I don't.
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Quote:Where is your data to back that up? Aside from a hand-waving comparison of students in choosy private schools who really do get to cherry-pick v public schools.
The govt. spends way more than private companies generally, and all services except the post office are subsidized.
And it's not that Japan and Korea can make public education work. It's that every other modern country makes both public education and public health work. Public services are not intrinsically built to fail, as you seem to think. They are built to work. The issue is why do they not work in the US where they are underfunded and put in competition with for-profit business which does skim off the most profitable elements and leaves the rest.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Almost no one has either education or healthcare at a level that even remotely passes as acceptable. I think you're way off base on this issue. Our schools are way over-funded, and with almost no private interest and competition, they're the soviet union of schools.
Public services fail because there is no competition, and no top down design system ever succeeds. Only through open natural selection through competition can progress be obtained.
Furthermore, I think it's very safe to say that I believe this on a level that Christian believe that Jesus is the son of God, and that you appear to believe in top down state-funded institutions to a similar degree. If I felt up to it I could really argue this one but I really don't. If you want to call that a victory, go ahead.
But usually I don't disagree with you that much, and since this is a very clear left-right split issue, the only way either of us will resolve this is by pull the other over to their side of the political spectrum, which is exceedingly unlikely.
I think if I ran the zoo, public schools would most likely be sold off and privatized and subjected to open competition, and if you ran the zoo I suspect all public funding for private institutions would stop, or the private ones might be shut down. Since this is probably in the ballpark of reality, it would really be best if we agree to disagree, and expect to respect that we're going to apply any potential solutions we come up with in completely different venues, me privately, you publicly.
If we have more to say on the subject it should probably address those things which could be done either way.
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DT- I think I understand your mistrust of large uniform institutions. As I understand it, you apply that same deep distrust to monopolies. You prefer that small entities exist in a millieu of competition because it fosters innovation and efficiency. However, you seem to be ignoring the reality that we are no longer a nation of shopkeepers and family farmers haggling over the price of tomatoes. The price of goods is controlled by corporations, which are a collective interest. In order to allow actual negotiations between parties of approximately equal strength, corporations must be faced by other collectives: unions, consumer organizations, governments, and stockholder groups (including pension fund managers). Unless/ until we are in a situation where the rule by coporations has been broken, eliminating these other collectives will only ensure total dominance by monopolies.
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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Quote:
DT- I think I understand your mistrust of large uniform institutions. As I understand it, you apply that same deep distrust to monopolies. You prefer that small entities exist in a millieu of competition because it fosters innovation and efficiency. However, you seem to be ignoring the reality that we are no longer a nation of shopkeepers and family farmers haggling over the price of tomatoes. The price of goods is controlled by corporations, which are a collective interest. In order to allow actual negotiations between parties of approximately equal strength, corporations must be faced by other collectives: unions, consumer organizations, governments, and stockholder groups (including pension fund managers). Unless/ until we are in a situation where the rule by coporations has been broken, eliminating these other collectives will only ensure total dominance by monopolies
Signym,
Yeah, you got my perspective exactly. But I don't think the world has changed. When I haggle over the price of tomatoes, I think we very much do still live in that world. Collectives seek to corrupt the free market, therefore, I oppose them. We aren't under a 'rule by corporations' collectively, we are under a 'rule by special interests.' The difference can be subtle, but is very important. Some of the special interests are corporations, some of them are govt. agencies, some are religious organizations and others are think tanks. But the fact that some corporations are among the conspirators doesn't mean that corporation rule. This is a drastic mischaracterization. It's about equivalent to saying during Bush's first term, blacks ruled America.
What we have here is a machine, which was once a socialist, and if I call it socialist now I seem to get a lot of rotten tomatoes thrown at me. But the principle remains the same:
Groups of people in govt. seek permanent control through the use of a corporation, and simultaneous, corrupt heads of corporations seek to rob the public till. Often this same circle is the head of the corporation and also the govt. force, like in the case of Halliburton, where Dick Cheney, corporate head, made a deal with Bill Clinton, govt. head, to get Halliburton permanently installed not just in our military industrial complex, but in the military itself. Then you have Dick Cheney, govt. head, turning around and strengthing ties with Halliburton, and David Lesat, corp. head, who used to be Cheney's 2nd. Clearly were dealing with a very close knit group of people here.
But this analysis is missing a key part. There is another side to this gay marriage. A group of people in govt, such as Dick Cheney and PNAC, the group he is still a member of, have a long term agenda. Members of PNAC made up this agenda when they were in the SWP, and still socialists, under the direction of Max Shachtman and others. Part of this plan was set out then re: corporations and their uses to a socialist agenda, and it goes about like this:
1. If you create a govt. agency, and then you lose control of govt. by losing an election to the opposition, then that opposition leader can take out your agency head and it replace it with his own, and then he owns and controls what you created, and will undoubtedly alter its course from the agenda you set out.
2. Instead if you have your agency as a corporation, if you lose power in govt., your opponent will not be able to replace its head and gain control.
3. But if you have open bidding and contracts where anyone might get in, your opponent, should he come to power, can simply switch contracts to another firm.
4. So the corporation would need to become and entrenched monopoly in order for the plan to work.
This was clearly spelled out then, and it's how the govt. side of this plan works. The opposition here, of course, is not democrats or republicans, but an outsider like Russ Feingold or Chuck Hagel, someone not in the same circle. Any examination at all reveals that the Bush admin and Clinton admin are in the same circle.
True monopoply onl
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Hi DT,
We do focus on the same things - the Bush administration's corruption, the disaster that is Iraq, the bankrupting of the US, the rise of China, inefficiency of the medical system etc. And we both conclude there is a crisis around the corner. Yet we propose diametrically opposite solutions. With these complex problems there is plenty of room for disagreement between honest good intentions. So I hope you read my posts in that light, as I read yours.
The main thing I got out of your post to SignyM is that cooperative groups will invariably overpower individuals. It reads like a mathematical certainty.
Given that, and given that it is human nature to form, live in, and maintain cooperative groups, I think your efforts to reverse the trend are doomed. Especially b/c even if the US had an internal revolution and broke these groups up, it would face a globe of well-organized large groups. (Two comments: I never, and I do mean never, make any claims about 'human nature' except that particular one. Secondly and off topic, I read you more as a libertarian than republican.)
While businesses/corporations/consortiums/monopolies have the power of concentrated capital (it's a dogmatic phrase that describes the facts), theoretically democracies/unions/consumergroups (which are supposed to represent the interests of individuals) have the power of organized agreement.
Unfortunately, a phrase my sister coined many years ago seems more and more true - 'one dollar, one vote'. That is why wealthy entities become the government (even in a democracy).
I see the problem this way: how do you keep business interests from controlling every part of society?
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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DT- Wow. Lots of highly textured soy protein in your post! Needs digestion! But I agree with more in your post than you might imagine, especially (paraphrased) behind every monopoly is a government that created it.
I will reply in depth after Xmas. But when you have a kid you just gotta do Xmas, know what I mean? Let me lob this out for your consideration. I can think of a couple of examples where a monopoly was challenged by simple refusal to play the game: Free Software and the Orange Revolution. Is that paradigm meaningful in this case?
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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Signym,
Yuschenko screwed the orange revolution.
Or were you talking about something else?
Rue,
Quote:
how do you keep business interests from controlling every part of society?
You prevent monopoly, and stifle an abundance of cooperation that would lead to conspiracy.
Collectively, the businesses of the world want society to run smoothly and for people to have money to buy things, virtually everything else there's going to be some disagreement on. Govt. needs to intervene to see that everything does run smoothly, and that no one is destroying the earth or abusing its people.
But govt., from a old-style right wing perspective, should refrain from doing anything directly when it is possible to put rules in place to enable the people to do this themselves.
Govt.'s job is to protect the rights of the people. The American people in this case, because it is the American govt. In so doing, it must do certain things, like defend the borders and protect the environment, because if it doesn't, then it's core task is impossible. But this is all it must do. It doesn't need to provide healthcare, because that's a service that can be done by people. For something like that, it just needs to set up rules for the people who do provide healthcare to prevent abuse.
I want to take a step aside for a moment to say why protection, military or environmental, is categorically different from providing a service for which people may pay:
It isn't doing something, it's ensuring that no one does anything. It's preventing societies destruction. Arguably another job that fits this description is law enforcement. Firefighting is more a grey area, but I can see that as an extension. Even disaster relief, but when you get as far away from the original protection idea as to get to disaster reconstruction, you're in to an area defined by people doing things. This is where, in my right wing view, govt. ends and the people, in the form of corporations, take over the task.
Once tasks are defined, as different from protections, and tasks are done by people who aren't govt., there are certain tasks which a society may wish to guarantee for the creation of successful citizens. These include at least education, probably healthcare, and possibly housing, utilities and food.
The responsibility of the govt. towards these services it wants to have are:
a) to pay for them when the people can't. This means picking up the tab for certain populations, for schools, this is going to be a lot higher a portion, less for medicial, and even less for the others.
b) to ensure that they are done reasonably well, particularly if the govt. is to pay for them under certain circumstances.
c) to ensure that in paying for them, the govt. is not people ripped off, as the govt. is spending the people's money, it has a responsibility to spend it well.
If I put Bush through the ringer on this one, it's probably point c that he falls most resoundingly short on, he has no sense of fiscal discipline at all. I was pleasantly surprised this week when first Jack Cafferty who does CNN in the money came out with an onslaught against Bush, and then someone told me Barrons did, I haven't seen it yet.
Quote:
Secondly and off topic, I read you more as a libertarian than republican.
And if Republican long term continues to mean GWB, then I agree. But I still have hope that this is an 8-year nightmare, and maybe we can even cut it short. I was all for kicking out this incumbant for the '04 election, but no one was interested. I think that the kicking out of johnson midway in '68 for the democrats was blamed for the following resounding defeat and no one wants to do it again.
I'm very republican if you take a pre-reagan view, and even with reagan and Bush despite the rise of neocon influence, I'm still more republican than any other stripe anywhere from 1824 with the nat reps, to 2000. But I have to confess the recent turn of events has me a little worried. I thought Bush Sr. was more of a return to traditional republican
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Rue,
Nothing on this earth can waste money the way a government can waste money, that isn't a matter of dogma but a statement of fact. The problem with government financed programs is that they are not allowed to fail, they are just given more and more money to keep them afloat. Failure is good, failure allows the kind of changes that improve efficiency, it is the life blood of any evolutionary system.
Private services in a functional market will be more efficient. I would characterise the problems with current private systems as follows.
1) Is it really a functional market or is it a restricted market or a cartel, in which case market forces are corrupted to no longer work in the consumers benefit.
2) Are the profits taken by the service provider greater than the savings we get from the improved efficiency?
3) Given that we do not subject a whole range of government services to the trials of the market because we decide that quality of service trumps lowest possible price (defence being an example) should we consider other government functions like healthcare and education to be of the same Market excluded class.
My problem with the current situation is that things like defense get money thrown at them and wasted because certain elements in government choose to give them a walk. Those same people are happy to leave healthcare and education to the whims of "free" markets or local government. If defence is so important the Federal government has to spend trillions (and probably waste billions) on it then aren't health and education also such critical functions that they should be treated the same? Or looked at another way, shouldn't sacred cows like defence and welfare be subject to the same market conditions as health and education?
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Fletch,
I feel certain that govt. would f^&k up anything it touched, and I agree that defense spending is out of control, way out of control, but I don't think it's safe to privatize. I don't think that anyone thinks defense is 'more important' or 'too important.' It's that private interests effecting our military policy is an amazingly bad idea. Just look at oil and halliburton in Iraq.
The two things I can think of to do right off the bat:
1. Split it in two. Two budgets. One relating only to measures within the US to defend the US from actual threats; the other for foreign wars, etc.
2. Be honest about taxes. The portion of tax on the bill that goes to foreign wars is War Tax, and the part that goes to defending America as defense tax.
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