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Private industry is not always the superior solution.

TheEconomist said:
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.
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The orthodox Marxist view is that liberalism is an intermediary step between the old order and socialism. The reactionary (or fascist) and the socialist would agree on this point, as would the plain history of both Russia and China.

It's true that both reactionaries and communists disagree with the liberal view of "human rights". It's also true that modern liberals disagree with the classical liberal view of "human rights". Because it's an arbitrary concept, and it's inherently unlikely that we in the present happen to have found the "correct" view of things.

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.
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Sure. Which is why the left usually succeeds over time in democratic politics, and the few right-wing democratic movements that achieved real success aped this aspect of left-wing rhetoric.
 
AmNat said:
It's true that both reactionaries and communists disagree with the liberal view of "human rights". It's also true that modern liberals disagree with the classical liberal view of "human rights". Because it's an arbitrary concept, and it's inherently unlikely that we in the present happen to have found the "correct" view of things.
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There is an issue of semantics here.

Everywhere outside of the United States, liberalism refers to a fundamentally individualist political doctrine whose core tenets include individual rights and liberties, elected governments, the rule of law and the equality of all before the law. The reason we call this liberalism is the insistence on individual rights and liberties.

Even the arguments such people make for welfare programs and limited governmental intervention come from an individualist point of view. John Maynard Keynes would be a modern liberal. John Rawls would be a modern liberal. Martin Luther King would be a modern liberal. They all believe in letting people make the bulk of choices for themselves, they all believed in the rule of law, they all believed in elected governments and they all came from the point of view of individual people when they tried to justify themselves. If you believe that human rights are merely legal construction, you cannot be regarded as a liberal. You're attacking the foundation of liberalism.

The only reason Americans feel the need to add "classical" in front of liberal is that they're bundling together people who don't belong together. Denis Prager and Ben Shapiro often contrast "leftists" with "liberals" in a way that would be very confusing to a student of political philosophy or history because they understand there is a need to separate the jackass who adopts nazi tactics to attack ideological heretics from the guy who just don't care if homosexuals adopt children or who supports some types of welfare programs.


End the madness! People who walk around smashing windows with a mask all wearing black from head to toe aren't liberals. In fact, they hate liberalism.
 
Originally Posted by I'm Supposn:
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”.
TheEconomist said:
… 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.
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TheEconomist, I failed to guess your misspelled words were meant to be “bind” and “incentive”.

I agree that commercial competition does seriously bind what private businesses can feasibly do for their customers while remaining commercially competitive. But governments are similarly bound by their budgets. Increased government spending to provide additional public services will increase governments need for additional tax revenues and/or increase government debt.

There’s continuous political discussions within our nation while negotiations and compromises occur within our federal government, as how best to achieve our government’s purposes. Unlike yourself, I believe our government’s leaders and staffs are no less competent and motivated than those in commercial enterprises. But governing is usually the more difficult challenge.
In commerce, those controlling the purses, can make their enterprise’s final decisions. Final determinations of decisions are more complex within a democratic republic.

Unless you seriously believe our governments should not produce anything or provide any services, then the discussions, negotiations and compromises must continue if our nation’s government is to continue.
Respectfully, Supposn
 
TheEconomist said:
There is an issue of semantics here.

Everywhere outside of the United States, liberalism refers to a fundamentally individualist political doctrine whose core tenets include individual rights and liberties, elected governments, the rule of law and the equality of all before the law. The reason we call this liberalism is the insistence on individual rights and liberties.

Even the arguments such people make for welfare programs and limited governmental intervention come from an individualist point of view. John Maynard Keynes would be a modern liberal. John Rawls would be a modern liberal. Martin Luther King would be a modern liberal. They all believe in letting people make the bulk of choices for themselves, they all believed in the rule of law, they all believed in elected governments and they all came from the point of view of individual people when they tried to justify themselves. If you believe that human rights are merely legal construction, you cannot be regarded as a liberal. You're attacking the foundation of liberalism.

The only reason Americans feel the need to add "classical" in front of liberal is that they're bundling together people who don't belong together. Denis Prager and Ben Shapiro often contrast "leftists" with "liberals" in a way that would be very confusing to a student of political philosophy or history because they understand there is a need to separate the jackass who adopts nazi tactics to attack ideological heretics from the guy who just don't care if homosexuals adopt children or who supports some types of welfare programs.


End the madness! People who walk around smashing windows with a mask all wearing black from head to toe aren't liberals. In fact, they hate liberalism.
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I understand the semantic issue with the way that the word "liberal" is used in America vs elsewhere.

Nonetheless, the ideas you call leftist/"progressive"/etc. are a natural historical development of liberalism. Once it's admitted that "justice" consists in deriving people's rights from abstract principles and imposing them (with guillotines, hot tar, or the like) on the world, it's inevitable that the unleashed crusade will go farther than it's originators intended. To use economics as an example, it may have seemed all well and good for classical liberals to deem aristocratic or guild privileges arbitrary and tear them down, but are all property rights not arbitrary in their origin? Certainly many have thought so, and were willing to use force (lots of it) to correct the supposed injustice of private ownership.
 
TheEconomist said:
Politics at the extremes of the right and the left is eerily similar.
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Us Ambassador to the USSR in 1937-39 Joseph Davis on communism and Nazism and their fundamental difference 06.08.12

"(July 7, 1941)

My friend Lindbergh surprised me by saying that he preferred Nazism to communism. In General, making such a choice is a desperate business, but the difference between these two subjects is too great. Both Germany and Russia are totalitarian States. Both are realistic. Both of them use strict and ruthless methods. However, there is one significant difference that can be shown as follows. If Marx, Lenin, or Stalin were Christian believers, and if one tried to place the Communist experiment performed in Russia within the framework of the dogmas of the Catholic or Protestant Church, the result would be declared the greatest achievement of Christianity in the entire history of mankind in its quest for humanity and the implementation of Christian precepts in the life of society. The fact is that the Christian religion can be combined with Communist principles without committing much violence to its economic and political goals, the main of which is the "brotherhood of all people". If we conduct a similar test with regard to Nazism, we will find that it is impossible to combine the two ideologies. The principle of Christian ideology cannot be imposed on the Nazi philosophy without destroying the political basis of the state. The fascist philosophy creates a state that is actually based on the rejection of the altruistic principles of Christianity. For the Nazis, love, charity, justice, and Christian values are only manifestations of weakness and decay if they contradict the needs of the state.

This is the whole difference - the Communist Soviet state can act with Christianity as the basis for achieving the ultimate goal - the universal brotherhood of people. The Communists allow the state to die out as man improves, whereas the Nazi ideal is just the opposite - the state is above all else."
 
TheEconomist said:
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.
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Of course, "Marxism is envy"! I heard this propaganda justifying the existence of capitalist exploitation... My grandfather before the war worked on construction sites of socialism in the USSR, creating an industry that allowed in a short time to become the second most powerful country in the world, during the war, he defended the socialist Fatherland and after the war, he restored and further developed the country's economy. Everything that he created and protected belonged to him and all the inhabitants of the USSR, everything created by him and millions of other people. And all this was stolen as a result of the coup of the early 90s, when capitalism was restored. How should I feel about the fact that everything my grandfather and father worked for has fallen into the hands of a small number of scoundrels and thieves? do you think I envy them? No, it's a different feeling.
 
Ringo Stalin said:
Of course, "Marxism is envy"! I heard this propaganda justifying the existence of capitalist exploitation.
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I did not say that it was envy, I said something considerably worse. Marxism is a moralistic façade that brought nothing to the world except misery, war and genocides.

Capitalism is built around free association and voluntary transactions. None of that involves anyone forcing you to do anything. On the other hand, the exact opposite would be true under every single communist regime that ever existed: centralized planning is all about others disregarding your aspirations, your desires and your preferences and forcing you to serve them.

If you are so fond of managing your business and organizing your life alongside that of others, you should know that nothing forbids you from founding a cooperative business or opening a commune in a capitalist economy. You can find other like minded individuals, pool your savings, acquire loans if necessary and sign all matters of legal documents to organize either of these things as you see fit. In fact, there probably are isolated towns that might help fund that sort of initiative. The only thing standing between you and that life is you. But I know that you will not do it because like nearly all communists you do not believe in what you say. It's not about the commune, or the cooperatives. It's all about expropriating people who have more than you have.

I know it's envy. If it's not envy, you can show me wrong by doing exactly what I said you would never do: build the life you want instead of making up excuses to justify thieving it out of the pockets of the next person.
 
Ringo Stalin said:
Of course, "Marxism is envy"! I heard this propaganda justifying the existence of capitalist exploitation... My grandfather before the war worked on construction sites of socialism in the USSR, creating an industry that allowed in a short time to become the second most powerful country in the world, during the war, he defended the socialist Fatherland and after the war, he restored and further developed the country's economy. Everything that he created and protected belonged to him and all the inhabitants of the USSR, everything created by him and millions of other people. And all this was stolen as a result of the coup of the early 90s, when capitalism was restored. How should I feel about the fact that everything my grandfather and father worked for has fallen into the hands of a small number of scoundrels and thieves? do you think I envy them? No, it's a different feeling.
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Marxism and fascism are two atheistic religions that were developed in the 20th century. The God of Marxism is a "paradise on earth" for all, built through violence. The god of fascism is a "paradise on earth" for one nation, built through violence as well. The main thing in these religions is violence, which they use to achieve a false goal. For, by the ways in which they operate (a form of state administration of property and society), it is impossible to achieve the goals declared by these atheistic religions.

For this reason, Marxism is a utopian form of socialism and communism. The form of economy that was actually built by Marxists is state capitalism. In this form of capitalism, private property is monopolized by the state and, together with the state, is in the hands of the Marxist class. That is, in the hands of adherents of this atheistic religion. Moreover, there are also commodity-money relations and private property (in state form) that characterize capitalism. Therefore, we cannot call this mode of production socialism, since that will be a substitution of concepts.

Now we need to determine what capitalism and what is socialism, not using the concept of the atheistic religion of Marxism, but based on the existing reality. There is no need to follow the lines of Marxism in this matter, as this will lead to misunderstandings.

Capitalism & Socialism

Capitalism is a system of commodity production.
Socialism is the stage of development of commodity production, characterized by the presence of mass production that meets the basic needs of all members of society. Consequently, socialism is the stage of development of capitalism.

Free capitalism, based on the freedom of private property, with the advent of mass machine production, develops into free democratic socialism, as a form of social existence based on the satisfaction of the basic needs of all classes.

State totalitarian capitalism, based on the state form of private property, with the advent of mass machine production, develops into totalitarian socialism, as a form of existence of a totalitarian society based on the partial satisfaction of the basic needs of all classes.

Under socialism, is preserved the social exploitation of producers by consumers, since labor is one of the factors of production.

At the same time under socialism, there are two forms of distribution of the product of consumption among the population - distribution according to work (wages), and distribution according to needs (taxes, budgets, budget programs). The reason for the distribution of a part of the product according to work is that labor is not a need and therefore requires stimulation by the product.
 
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Private industry is not always the superior solution.
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True. It should also be noted that private industry depends heavily on publicly funded research. That's just one of many examples.
 
Communism


Communism is also a stage in the development of commodity production, as is socialism. Consequently, communism is a stage in the development of capitalism.

Communism is also the stage of development of commodity production, based on mass fully automated production. Under communism, the social exploitation of man by man ceases, since labor is no longer a factor in production. In view of this, the distribution according to work withers away, and only the distribution according to needs remains, which takes the form of individual unconditional income and associated (collective, communal) unconditional income. At the same time, private property and commodity-money relations remain. In view of this, real communism, like socialism, are the stages of development of capitalism as a form of commodity production.

Marxism, being a form of utopian capitalism and socialism, which has developed into an atheistic religion, incorrectly describes the corresponding forms of capitalism, socialism and communism. The reason for this incorrect description is the erroneous economic and socio-political theory underlying Marxism and known as the labor theory of value. Including the labor theory of the formation of surplus value and surplus product. And also the class theory of Marsism built on this basis. This whole set of errors that served to create this form of atheistic religion called Marxism.
 
"NASDAQ has entered the green zone since the beginning of 2020."

Milk is drained into the gutter, meat supplies are disrupted, and unemployment is rampant. But the Casino has again sucked in trillions of money and doing great!
 
TheEconomist, I do not argue that government services are superior to goods and service products provided by non-government providers, but there are often some differences between the goods and service products and how they should be provided. That’s why this thread’s entitled “Private industry is not ALWAYS”, rather than ‘not usually” or “never” the superior solution.
As provided by our existing governments’ constitutions and laws, our elected legislators’ and officials and the officials they in turn have appointed, determined what public goods and service “products” should be provided by government, rather than by non-government provided labor.
Our governments’ often contract out purchases of goods and services. Doing so while striving to reduce corruption within our governments’ and not actually increasing direct and indirect costs to our governments or the public, requires a purchasing bureaucracy that is itself of some government cost.

New York City has its own fleet of garbage and snowplow trucks, but they do contract out work when they’re dealing with an unusually severe storm.

If garbage and/or snow removal were only to be contracted out, the city would be dependent upon competitive bid from the very few large businesses that could assemble the large number of employees and equipment at such great scale. The eventual cost to the government would be greater rather than lesser. Additionally, the administrators of the city’s departments of sanitation and of public works would loss the flexibility required to meet other or completely unanticipated emergencies.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcSLtAMU8AATVqt?format=jpg
Over $1.1B in total between the three largest player contracts in North American sports.
For comparison, the annual budget of Kyrgyzstan in 2019 is ≈ $2 billion, and the budget of Armenia is ≈ $3 billion. Do you think I'm right in thinking that something is wrong in this world?
 
In PRINCIPLE, a market economy cannot do and even exist without the state. Since such an economy is subject to regular crises and in moments of crisis, marketers instead of taking their ass off the couch and working, for some reason run to the state for help, i.e. for our common money.
 
Rogue Valley said:
Members of Putin's EEU are perennially GDP sinkholes.
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There is a rhyme in russian about such thoughts, translated as:
Mama cat abandoned her kittens
It's Putin's fault!
 
If you think that it was a migrant who took your job, and not a capitalist who hired a migrant instead of you, then you have taken a wrong turn in your ideology...
 
Capitalism in the United States (by the way. the richest country of capitalism) led to:
- unemployment
- homelessness
- poverty
- starvation
- illiteracy

US capitalists: "The greatest threat to society is communism!"
 
The bourgeoisie in the United States has perfectly adjusted the System to itself: not only does it steal surplus value from employees, but it also forces employees to get into loans for education, which will then be used to create surplus value for the bourgeoisie.
If we take into account that employees in the United States are increasingly getting into loans and paying for medical insurance, it turns out that the bourgeoisie has generally thrown off labor expenses! Brilliant!
 
MrPeanut said:
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.
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Exactly.

Private for profit corporations have to be closely regulated by government. They have no social conscience. They exist for one reason only. Profits.

Problem is these wealthy corporations they have been able to buy favorable treatment by the very people we elected to regulate them. Same way with the wealthy and our tax code.

Capital owns our government. To say we have free market capitalism is a lie.
 
rickc said:
Exactly. Capital owns our government. To say we have free market capitalism is a lie.
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We have the economic system that we deserve. And it will not change until there is a shift of political power to the Left.

Which means that more attention is paid to the fact that the Income Disparity in the US is amongst the developed world's worst - and must be corrected. Meaning quite simply that the spiral upwards to exorbitant wealth that started in the 1980s, with the drastic reduction of upper income taxation by a Republican administration, must stop and be reversed.

Tax Dollars should be returned to the people who were taxed in the form of, say, a National Healthcare System (to prolong lifespan) and, above all, free Tertiary Education. Without the latter, the country will not have the talent necessary to escape to a higher standard of living.

Our expenditure on the DoD proves that point - it has already cornered more than half the nation's Discretionary Spending. That money can be better employed elsewhere (to get our kids through university at state schools) ...
 
rickc said:
Capital owns our government. To say we have free market capitalism is a lie.
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Capital certainly owns this PotUS. But, after all, it was a blatant mistake that got DT the presidency. The way the Electoral College counts the votes must be changed. No other developed nation on earth has mimicked the American manner of doing so.

The presidential election is aa an aggregate vote of 50 states, that is, the total population. We need no "Electoral College" to manipulate the vote. Above all, the fact that the winner of the Electoral College vote obtains ALL OF ITS VOTES is undemocratic ... !

The simple popular-vote of each state for the presidency should be reported to Congress, which makes the tally, and announces the winner of the presidency.

It's really quite easy - so why are we still employing a voting anachronism that has lasted more than two centuries?

And no other developed democracy has ever employed because of its manipulation of the popular-vote ... !
 
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TheEconomist said:
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.

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.
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Look, the government is "we, the sheeple" in America. We barely vote and when we do the Electoral College elects a PotUS who has lost the popular-vote of the American people.

There is something very, very wrong with the electoral-system when a nation elects FIVE TIMES historically the wrong person as PotUS. And, at least in the EU, there is no "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen". The EU has a parliamentary system that does not interfere with the purely national parliament.

When the European Union was rebuilding itself from the ashes of WW2, it looked at both winners as role-models. It did NOT decide to adopt the American model of democracy because of the Electoral College machination. It did decide to emulate the British parliamentary model - but left out the House of Lords bit ...
 
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WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

Ringo Stalin said:
Capitalism in the United States (by the way. the richest country of capitalism) led to:
- unemployment
- homelessness
- poverty
- starvation
- illiteracy

US capitalists: "The greatest threat to society is communism!"
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Oh come off it, will you? Communism is long-since dead and forgot.

You are supposedly an economics prof - so let's see some arguments about capitalism that are RELEVANT!

Definition: Capitalism is a mechanism of negotiation that substitutes "money" in the exchange of goods/services replacing barter. And that is all!

If capitalism leads to the domination of any particular political group then let's look at that particular aspect. For instance, the wholesale reduction of upper-income taxation started by RR in the 1980s. Now, there you've got a provable argument because the rise in amassed Wealth skyrocketed in the US thereafter.

That's what the US economy is "all about" at present. A key criteria called Income Disparity! And against that criteria, the US is the worst of any developed nation. Period!
 
TheEconomist said:
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..
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That's a very bold assumption you are making.

Because employing a huge bundle of money to perform services is NOT the foremost motivator of Public Employees. Most know full well that their jobs are well within what we could call "The services industries". They ARE public servants.

Their motivations are thus very different from those who work in other Services Industries that are profit motivated and thus highly competitive. This latter factor changes everything.

In fact, when comparing the two economic entities that are most comparable, the EU and the US, very much more of of key-services remain in the US public-domain. Namely Healthcare and post-secondary education. Which are under government control not only in the EU but in a good many other countries that looked at the private alternative in the US and opted for a public-service.

And why? Because the Public Service of healthcare treated more patients and was far less costly.

And that is what their people wanted. Not being fools they saw the very high cost of healthcare in the US and wanted none of it. Ditto private postsecondary education that effectively educates far less students in the US than public post-secondary schools do in Europe.

The idiocy of it all is that the very high-cost of getting a Medical degree was/is the prime reason that the service of medicine remains so costly in the US. Let's face some basic facts - doctors need not indulge in much competition to obtain their clients. Neither are they willing therefore to lower their fees because they graduate with significant educational-debt. Which means the cost of Healthcare is much higher in the US than Europe.

Quite simply because Europe trains its medical staffs free, gratis and for nothing. And, thus, medical-school graduates are not faced with an humongous education-debt in Europe - but they very definitely are so in the US ... !
 
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