Posted on 01/04/2002 5:34:10 AM PST by tberry
I don't see the point in any case, but your taxes just constitute a part of the salary paid out of the treasury, i.e. out of tax revenue, in the first place. Actually, taxes paid out of a government check, whether a federal payroll check, a social security check or a welfare check, make no sense. The government should just reduce the payment by an equivalent amount in the first place.
Insurance operates like your worst-case socialized system: it removes competition, drives up cost, and takes away accountibility. It is one of the worst developments of the modern economy. Basically, it is a private regulatory system. Just because it is "private" makes it no better than government regulation.
Insurance has made so many things expensive: auto parts & repair; health care, building construction, and so on. The only classes it has uniformly benefited are investors and lawyers.
And its worse than even that: participation in this "private" enterprise is no longer a voluntary act (even if not mandated by law, such as auto liability insurance). The individual cannot "opt out" of the insurance system any more easily than taxation.
If you want to know how business is as bad as government, try negotiating anything in your car loan contract. Sorry, you either sign or walk. Sure, you can walk, but you won't get a loan elsewhere. Business protects itself and screws the rest just as much as government. Pick and choose your evils carefully.
Carry_Okie: I'll look forward to your reply. Do I get to be a fascist welfare queen, too? lol! Please think about what I have said here to Aurelius about insurance: it acts like the worst government program. Just because it is private doesn't mean it works well. Likewise, just because it is government doesn't mean it is wrong. Each has its place. I know that doesn't fit into any clean political philosophy, but nothing does.
My objection is to the blanket condemnations and self-loathing of the "conservative-anarchists" (how sad, that label). Crab Tree is right to say that the world is complicated.
Our political system has dealt with reality better than any system ever. I am infinitely proud of it. (And I still have plenty to bitch about, so the discontent in me is readily served by it.)
Be careful or he will file a complaint with the FBI-G (federal bureau of "intellectual gaming"). (Just kidding--but he's the one who keeps offering trite basketball and gambling quips in response to serious ideas).
Seriously, I enjoyed your little venture capitalist rave and I eagerly await your response to Nicollo now that he has escalated it to the biggest scale industries.
"...he's the one who keeps offering trite basketball and gambling quips... "Trite? I'd better quit. And dammit, I've never used a basketball metaphor in my life.
Baseball, my man, baseball.
I question your blanket assumption that private enterprise would better manage major public works.
OK, that’s a premise.
The key advantage to the private sector is the accountability of the bottom line and competitive forces.
I believe you meant key advantages, but that’s only two of them (more on that later).
But if you think that business can manage large organizations any better than government, then you've never been in a committee hearing at G.M.
GM used to have over 50% market share in the US. It dropped 0ver 20% in the 90s from 36-28%. Management has been replaced, twice. I saw plenty of stupidity at the Becton Dickinson Glove Division, Teledyne, and Avantek. All three are gone. Those competitive forces spoke rather forcefully. One thing for certain, they weren’t trying to fail.
Have they halved the Education Department budget for its failures? Quite the contrary. They are succeeding at failure and we pay them more. You just don’t understand or believe that the objective IS failure. It’s proven. Try consulting Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt’s The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America and prepare to cry for what was once your country.
As bad as public solutions are, there are as many successes. Our government has proven itself more efficient than even your best run business in many ways. I'll bet if you try real, real hard, you can think of an instance or two. You'll be surprised.
Solution for whom? Now, true or not, one would hardly call, ‘Look real hard and you’ll find one shining example and then agree with me’ an argument. I think it’s incumbent upon you to provide that example. Methinks you would if you knew of one for a fact.
One of your solutions is to rid ourselves of public universities. The college I attended is private, and it employs a higher percentage of socialists than State U. And it's just as innefficient.
I’ll bet if you "looked hard" at that "private" school you cite, you would find out that the largest fraction of its budget comes from government sources in the form of student aid, research grants, and loans. In fact, I would like you to find a single college that doesn’t take government money (There is one I know of. It’s rather conservative and successful.) That aside, I want you to consider the effect of public education upon, for example, law schools. Candice Jackson Mayhugh conducted an analysis of the LSAT tests and found that they carry a liberal bias advocating statist solutions. Why? Who pays and who gives lawyers power? (Accuracy in Academia Address Delivered at AIA’s 1998 Summer Conference at Geo. Washington University). That’s the problem and the original 13th Amendment in the Bill of Rights was supposed to fix it (TONA was "lost" just after it was ratified). Even the definition of excellence in education, indeed the entire credentialing process in this country, is entirely distorted by government money because that is the predominant source of research funds. It is a built-in requirement to adhere to the tenets of PC socialism without which an advanced degree is nearly impossible. Vast numbers of graduates of environmental programs need make work jobs that turn into a way for government to acquire property and enrich political donors. They produce nothing (except for that fascism of which you are so enamored). Can we really afford that as a nation? The bill has yet to come due, but the trap is starting to trip. So far, you’re batting zero.
Here's a successful socialized industry for ya: road building.
Oh really? I would like you to come here to the socialist capital of America, Santa Cruz County California and look for yourself at the difference between public and private roads. I have built a few of the latter myself. I have written whole chapters on the topic. It’s too big for this medium, but let’s try a few simple facts on the very road in front of my house.
The County road we live on is pretty typical. It is dangerous. Some people will not even attempt to drive it. In the last five years there have been two instances where a driver has slid down a 70 foot embankment just beyond the property line: same spot. You get to see this bleeding driver walking down the driveway asking to use a phone. You don’t have to guess where the car is. For a real thrill try stopping on a bicycle going downhill. It’s tough to make enough ground contact to slow down. About 10-20 cyclists per day (30-50 on weekends) use the road for its lack of traffic and scenic value. The blind turns, trapped leaves, and uneven pavement, and invisible oncoming traffic are a death in the making. The cost of the lawsuit would repave the whole thing.
The road is unstable. Every winter we get to wonder if and where it will slip out again and if we will be stranded. It has slipped out on at least four locations in nine years, leaving us with a single access that added thirty minutes each way to our commute for over a year. The extra time for evacuation of a medical emergency could have caused a death. The cost of the lawsuit would repave the whole thing.
In the winter it rains about 30-80 inches per year depending upon location and the year. The road embankments, with great predictability (and sometimes even written, advance notice) slip out and cause landslides because of poor drainage design and/or no maintenance at all. The sedimentation from county road failures likely exceeds that from all new construction. The slip-outs on our road alone in the last five years total over 1000 yards of sediment. When the roads slip out, the county goes running to FEMA begging for cash to fix the results of a "natural disaster", rain. FEMA mandates only repairs, improvements are not allowed with FEMA money (even if they cost less than the repairs). The result is hundreds of yards of crib-walls and huge concrete pilings cast into the rock holding toxic, pressure treated lumber retaining walls; the most expensive roads, per mile, that money can buy, and they are falling apart.
It is exceedingly difficult for a group of citizens to raise the cash to make improvements. It’s also interesting how much more of the job the DPW simply must do once you raise the money. If you want to do anything yourself the road maintenance people appear out of nowhere to tell you about the liability you are assuming. They solemnly warn you how it is illegal for you to prevent a shoulder from collapsing by placing a few rocks in a runoff trough or to cut up a fallen tree because you are not doing the work to their specification or under coverage of their insurance. Then they drive away chortling in their shiny new pickup trucks. This is not an exaggeration.
The county road we live on is just over five miles long. The county maintenance budget is $8,000 per mile per year for a single lane, which is enough to pave it approximately every ten years. Unfortunately, a road "budget" is a lot like the budgeted cost per student in public school: much of the money never gets out of the County Government Center. We have never seen a county laborer clear a culvert though we’ve done many ourselves. They say they don’t have the money to fix it. Over the last ten years, it has had over a half million dollars in major repairs and another half million in operating budget, easily enough to pave the whole thing.
Ask them where the money goes. They point out that mowing the brush costs about $35,000 per year alone. Did they give us a choice? No, they mow it even if after you have cleared the brush yourself and ask them not to mow. Then they dig the mowers into the ground, pick up the seeds from exotic weeds, and spread the seed for miles along the roads. It is possibly the largest single adverse environmental impact in the county, perpetrated by the county itself. They clean the ditches with graders and pour the cleanings over the outside embankments (an illegal practice on a timber harvest) only to have the rain wash the weed seeds and the silt down the hill.
It’s our money. Think about the sheer quantity in gas taxes you pay. Where does it go? Roads?
A lot of it goes into needless overhead. We have a road management system designed by attorneys. Attorneys need to know whom to sue, the guilty party, THE cause of THE PROBLEM. To win cases attorneys need documentation and responsible parties with sufficient insurance to at least break even, for them. Every participant in every transaction has to provide it to prove that the work was done to specification. To get that proof, lab tests are done, site visits by technicians are made, and fancy electronic test equipment is designed. All of this is to assure that the work will last the design life of the job under the contract, long enough for that engineer to retire. If the job fails, that’s OK. The work was done to spec.
The spec generator, usually an engineer, thus generates a spec with only one goal, not getting successfully sued. This results in massive overkill and unprovable requirements. That means the job costs too much because the contractor has to make enough money to take the hit if it goes bad. That means the job doesn’t get done or that the scope of work is constrained until it fixes the failure without addressing its usually numerous causes.
Every few years, white lines appear all over the road. Sweeping arcs are drawn in white spray paint with words like "crib" or "patch" inside. Cute little crosses at calibrated distances appear. It looks technical. Though the spray paint does help seal the road surface and add to the sense of hope that somebody is going to do something "someday soon" all they end up doing is add a touch of decorative appeal. It’s an engineering survey. Try to get a copy of one. They don’t want it on paper that they knew it was going to fail. It would then be their customer’s fault if it did. Thus the engineer gets paid to study it and mark it without result. The road account pays the charge.
The ability of the public to recover damages for a reverse condemnation is dependent upon the ability to win a legal case and collect damages. No data, no lawsuit. The road is washed out. You get to waste an hour per day in extra driving if you are lucky and wait while they figure out whose fault it is, who gets to fix it, and whose failure gets fixed first. You may get a Band-Aid unless they can call it a disaster, in which chase there is FEMA money!
And so it goes. I could go on at considerable length about this and would have only started. You should see what the government pulls to prevent competition from the private sector.
That discussion was just about management, and doesn’t include financing and capitalization, much less the opportunity cost of that capital. Consider the viability of building a ten-lane freeway in an empty valley (Rancho California, near Temecula, a blatant real political estate subsidy to the LAT Mirror Corp. and Southern Pacific). I could discuss everything from general obligation bonds to Mello Roos financing to show you how crooked it gets, but I think the point is starting to sink in. It’s because of public power and the temptation to use it with a few campaign dollars that these things happen. The problem is that because explaining how it works goes against your popular brainwashing it takes a considerable case to make them. I don’t have time to even start. This is just a hint.
Nor do I suppose you want to go into the externalities of public roads and how they confiscate property value for the politically favored (such projects are the foundation of the Democratic Party in California). Then there are the risks to your liberty; i.e., how public roads and the power to police them threatens your very life with an act of extortion unequaled since the founding of the Soviet Union. Do you really want to discuss the history of the first Federal Highway as an act of WAR? Next time you drive one, ask yourself why most of the scenic byways run north and south.
You see, the other "key advantage" to which I alluded is that a private company doesn’t collect its money for its monopoly product at gunpoint, that is, unless it uses government to get it done (which is why we have the UN and the Federal Reserve BTW).
The private sector tried it and failed. W.K. Vanderbilt had to piece together his L.I. Parkway (1908-1930s) like a quilt around lands he could not obtain passage rights or simply purchase (farmers quickly learned the market principle of supply and demand, especially when holding a last connector slice of land). NY commissioner Moses simply paved a straight path with the force of eminent domain and taxation, and put Vanderbilt out of business. Although traffic jams could be avoided on the Vanderbilt parkway by jacking up the price, the Hamptons are more conveniently reached on the public highway, even by people who could afford Vanderbilt's tolls.
Vanderbilt wasn’t that smart. He could have put together an option system that paid a small amount for a commitment but only paid the bulk upon completion of the corridor. That creates the collective will among the sellers to buy out the single resistor. What you don’t consider about private roads is that the big problem was the cost of toll collections. That’s been fixed by technology (of course government toll bridges still primarily use unionized collectors). Instead of some 75 year bygone debacle, maybe you should consider a more contemporary case, such as the new private highways in Singapore, San Diego County, Upstate New York... There are more coming too.
Maybe all business needs is eminent domain, and it would build and run better highways? Sure didn't work with the railroads. Put it this way: you wouldn't want to have been a mid-western farmer in the 1870s. Or a Standard Oil competitor in 1900. The railroads basically begged government to regulate their problems away (read Kolko; also, Woodrow Wilson proved that both solutions could be equally stupid...).
As I recall, the market power of the railroads was precisely because of their connections in government. You call that free market capitalism? LOL! The answer was to then kill the railroads with regulation. Great idea.
You really don’t want to get into a discussion with me on government and farm failures, much less the real causes of the financial panics of the late 19th Century. That discussion could go on for days. Your arguments aren’t worth the effort.
I'm amused by the way the progressives turned to big business to solve the world's problems, while at the same time business turned to governemt to solve its problems.
This is a really bizarre argument. Business has turned to using big government because it has failed so badly that the pork is ripe for the picking. It’s just like using an unconstitutional power of eminent domain for the railroads. You call it big business, I call it fascism.
The progressive movement that orginally turned on fighting the "trusts" ended up trying to join them.
In some respects that is true. I have a problem with it too. Who isn’t enforcing anti-trust laws and why? Would it have anything to do with European socialism?
If the trusts and the progressives had had their way, the business-government partnership would have gone the way of German national socialism. Nice.
Nice all right. If you are going to use a straw man, at least use one that has something to do with something I have advocated. While you are at it, you might try representing your argument in an accurate context. National socialism was about government control of industry, not the other way around. It appears to me that YOU are the fabian socialist here. You want government to make real estate decisions, control business operations…
The thinking that got them into these idiot proposals was that "business efficiencies" would overcome all problems.
You have a penchant for grossly over-simplified and subjective interpretations of history. As I deal with your arguments, I am starting to wonder why I bothered.
If most of our "public" functions were handled by business, I'd bet we'd have ended up in a socialized system a lot quicker than the extent to which we are now (not much: no public ownership of industry; but that's an argument on another thread here: Is America a Socialist Country? )
Going back to the railroads shows us how ugly a mix it is when public/private interests collide.
I look upon it all as impurities: there is no total solution, and each creates its own problems. Thus I would go back to tberry's reply #45 and review which system would better serve the public good, public or private.
The "myth" is not that there is no "limited" government, but that there would be anything "limited" that would replace it.
Seeing as you know NOTHING of what I propose to replace the regulatory function, much less understand it well enough to criticize it, your argument is little more than ideological shadow-boxing.
While you're bitching about that statement, let me help: Yes, government is too big. Business couldn't do it any better, and at least I can vote for the CEO.
Oh really? Try replacing Kofi Annan. That’s where your precious solutions are going.
Here's an example: ever try to cash a check at a bank in which you don't have an account? You have to give your fingerprint.
Bull crap. You could pay a fat discount instead. You just don’t want to because you want someone else to foot the bill for the risk associated with the transaction.
How would we all feel about that if government required a fingerprint for... a library card, a drivers license (apparantly some States do???).
They do, and more. Consider the freebies that you get from business as well, such as broadcast TV?
And do you think that business wouldn't ask for more power than government is able to weild to accomplish the same things? Foggetaboutit.
I don’t think I ever advocated offering the police power to business.
The solution is to fight it out at each instance. Dept. of Education: gone. State Hwy Dept: fine by me. Condemnation of the whole is intellectual gaming.
The solution in your case is to know what you are talking about.
Private insurance has been one of the chief contributors to the cost of living today. My first child was born in South America in 1989: brilliant service and excellent facilities for 1,000 bucks. My son was born in Miami two years later. The "maternity rider" hadn't yet kicked in on a new policy and I had to pay $12,000 cash. There was no negotiation and no advantage to me as a consumer for not having insurance coverage (which is why I had to buy insurance in the first place). The insurance industry is responsible for driving up the cost so drastically over the past 30 years (I believe I cost my parents about $500 in 1963).
Wonder why? Of course you do. It’s a combination of the free coverage and services mandated by government for the indigent, along with the result of litigation by a government-protected interest group: lawyers. See TONA.
Insurance operates like your worst-case socialized system: it removes competition, drives up cost, and takes away accountibility.
This it totally wrong. Just watch what happens if you get a couple of traffic tickets. The reason the pooled risk market is dysfunctional to the degree that it is, is that people like you whined to your legislators that you didn’t like paying for your risky behavior (see above). That increases the pool and subsidizes risky behavior. Just imagine what would happen if gay men were charged a premium for their health care. It’s because of state regulation, interference into the market that these costs have gone out of sight.
It is one of the worst developments of the modern economy. Basically, it is a private regulatory system. Just because it is "private" makes it no better than government regulation.
You just don’t like paying the full cost of the goods you want. You are a fascist after all.
Insurance has made so many things expensive: auto parts & repair; health care, building construction, and so on. The only classes it has uniformly benefited are investors and lawyers.
You still don’t understand how pooled risk works. Housing costs more because of insurance, but when Oakland burned the insurance companies paid nearly $1.7 billion dollars and lost their butts. Most housing in California is underinsured for fire risk. If you really think insurance is such a scam, try investing it yourself. If you understood the market, you would be throwing the rocks at government for its interference in pooled risk markets.
And its worse than even that: participation in this "private" enterprise is no longer a voluntary act (even if not mandated by law, such as auto liability insurance). The individual cannot "opt out" of the insurance system any more easily than taxation.
As a result of clowns like you, insurance really isn’t a "private" enterprise anymore. Even so, anyone can opt out of insurance, if they have the capital to do it. Now, let’s talk about taxes…
If you want to know how business is as bad as government, try negotiating anything in your car loan contract. Sorry, you either sign or walk. Sure, you can walk, but you won't get a loan elsewhere. Business protects itself and screws the rest just as much as government. Pick and choose your evils carefully.
Now this is just plain stupid. You can go get an unsecured loan. You can save your money. You just want it cheaper. There are risks associated with cheap money. You just want somebody else to pay for them.
Carry_Okie: I'll look forward to your reply. Do I get to be a fascist welfare queen, too? lol!
You bet. You want everybody else to foot the bill for your risks.
Please think about what I have said here to Aurelius about insurance: it acts like the worst government program. Just because it is private doesn't mean it works well. Likewise, just because it is government doesn't mean it is wrong. Each has its place. I know that doesn't fit into any clean political philosophy, but nothing does.
Yet. Too bad you didn’t bother to read and understand my proposals before you tried to "instruct" me. Remember, insurance pricing is highly regulated. Insurers are forced to subsidize high-risk behavior instead of pricing it objectively. That raises the rate-base and prevents accountability on the part of the risk-taker. In a regulated market, it’s the only way that they can make money. If you bitch about that, do it into a mirror.
My objection is to the blanket condemnations and self-loathing of the "conservative-anarchists" (how sad, that label). Crab Tree is right to say that the world is complicated.
It’s complicated all right, because politics has intruded into every business decision. It’s too complicated for central planning to work. Take the hint. One thing that has complicated it is the power of government to control the use of private property and distort valuation to meet a democratic demand. You thugs just can’t see the results of your own invisible hand. It’s time for a few changes.
Our political system has dealt with reality better than any system ever. I am infinitely proud of it. (And I still have plenty to bitch about, so the discontent in me is readily served by it.)
Spoken like a person looking at the clouds on the way to the precipice. You don't know your peril.
Perhaps you are thinking of Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania? Although they had a good record for "anti-discrimination" going back a long time before it was an issue, they were so annoyed by the time consuming paper work that the government required to document it, as a condition of receiving any government funds, that they decided to reject government money all together. Of course they were told that the government could still demand the documentation as long as they had students whose tuition was paid for, in full or in part, with government grants or loans. So, they decided to prohibit their students from using those sources and found instead private sources from which their students could obtain similar financial aid.
As I deal with your arguments, I am starting to wonder why I bothered.As you've slashed & burned my posts into little pieces, there's not much for me to say in reply. Really. I would like others to know that you display zero understanding of the progressive era and the development of the nation's road systems. And your take on my insurance discussion is equally misguided: my example was to illuminate how business can equally create a socialized, choking, regulatory system as government. Unfortunately, you don't seem to mind that, so long as its "private." You merely blame all problems on government. Oh, well.
If you want to put up a link on whatever you've written about the financial panics of the 19th century, I'll look at it.
I hope you feel better for having assumed my personal motivations and political affiliations. Going beyond argument to such conclusions merely pathetic. I better understand you now, though, so thanks.
I did enjoy this one:
Spoken like a person looking at the clouds on the way to the precipice. You don't know your peril.I guess I'll be seein' ya on the way down! At least I'm enjoying the trip...
#231: I do agree with you on the importance of the antebellum period but for entirely other reasons than the "missing" Title of Nobility Amendment. You and I ought not bother with that one.
The source of political rights is what provides the distinction between the terms "citizen" and "subject". You may find this to be "a distinction without a diffence", but I don't think you'll find may here who agree.
So, in a span of less than 250 years, we have "evolved" ethically, morally, and legally to a point where we may consider the principles laid out in the Preamble and the Constitution to be unnecessary or irrelevant to our current situation?
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