My older brother is a civil servant and he's the smartest and most interesting person I know. Very hard working. Even too much so. And sorry about your skyrocketing electric rates and train fares. But I doubt those things paid for themselves while in the public sector. Just because you didn't see the hidden costs to taxpayers does not mean they weren't there. Like when people refer to "free" health care. Gives me a cramp every time.
It's not "free", it's paid for by our taxes. And there are no "hidden costs" because publicly owned corporations are subject to Freedom of Information regulation -
anybody can scrutinize their books and draw attention to wastefulness and irresponsible management, inadequate safety standards, poor maintenance - anything. A publicly owned corporation is accountable to the public. A privately owned corporation is accountable to
no-one, as long as they manage to stay just inside the limits of the law - or lobby to have the laws changed on their behalf (like Enron.)
Perhaps I am rapt with bias. Aren't you? Isn't everybody? But I'm not the one saying that you have to conform to mine.
You are infringing on my rights when you say the public has no right to agree upon and enforce labour standards such as minimum wage. You present the employer-employee relationship as a "negotiation" between two individuals, but the vast majority of employers negotiate thusly: "this is the wage. If you don't like it, shove off." When something like Walmart moves into your town and puts your local electrician, seamstress, pharmacist, cobbler, grocer etc. out of business, there's no "negotiation" when these people show up on Walmart's doorstep looking for a job - Walmart becomes the only retail game in town, and you'll take what they're paying and like it, or pack up your things and get out of town. An individual can't negotiate on a fair and equal footing with a corporation. However, a
group of individuals can. That's a union - the most despised bogeyman of the average free market capitalist, most of whom are perfectly happy to infringe upon the liberties of others as long as theirs are not infringed upon by organized labour. You're also infringing on my liberties when you argue a community has no right to agree upon and enforce bylaws (e.g. maximum square footage bylaws, zoning bylaws, etc) designed to prevent rampant industrialisation and environmental degradation.
And to once again bring up "environmental, labour or consumer protections" and the sorry state of the US economy as an argument against Libertarian principles makes me wonder if I write coherently. And what's with this continual demagoguery of profit making?
I don't know - you tell me. Why to free market libertarians argue that the profit motive alone (via voluntary charitable acts by those who have most benefited from it) will magically solve all the world's social problems, but only if the people (via their elected representatives) don't interfere by regulating minimum wage and safety standards or trying to provide a stable social safety net for anyone? Is the free market God? Is the free market better than democracy?
But, for what it's worth, I'm not as dogmatic as I sound. Libertarian principles make sense to me. But they are only a starting point. So I'm not always opposed to a collective of the whole, or to liberal ideas of social justice. I'm merely deeply skeptical of them. And my skepticism is renewed all to often.
Jackytar
Fair enough. The fact is we're all living in a mixed economy. There is a lunatic fringe on either end of the spectrum in every Western country that wants to either abolish private property altogether or ensure that
every product and service and square inch of soil is privately owned. What we need is to get the mix right. IMO,
all the basic necessities of life that the people agree must be universally accessible to everyone, regardless of income, should be offered either directly by the government, via the private sector with a single-payer system (Canada's health care model) or by publicly owned corporations. Everything else - everything we don't
need - should be left entirely in the domain of the private sector, but subject to meaningful and enforced regulation (labour standards, environmental protections, fraud prevention, etc). No bail-outs.
I suppose where we differ is that you think the private sector would do a better job of providing the necessities of life that must be universally accessible. I'd argue the private sector is too costly, chaotic, irresponsible and inefficient to be trusted with this task. Any private sector organisation (or group of organisations) that could provide universal access to something like water would need to be a monopoly, and would set extortionate prices due to a lack of accountability. If the universal necessity is
not provided by a monopoly, the clients of each provider end up paying the overhead for a whole team of superfluous, overpaid executives, and end up scratching their heads scabby trying to figure out how to go about acquiring the service, and from whom. So in my view, the most efficient, transparent, straightforward and accountable way to provide a necessary, universal service is by a single public organisation. If we can agree on that ("we" as a society - not "we" as in you and me - not much chance of that!), it only becomes a matter of what we include in the category of a "necessity".
Lucky for me, this is already how it works.
