Is the push towards privitization all it's cracked up to be?

interesting, i would have guessed there would have a lot more posts jumping up to defend the privatization of government functions and utilities. i guess this forum is even more liberal than i expected.

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Having had some real horror stories especially with online vendors, you would have to have a really good argument that the private sector does a better job in anything. Their answer is to lay people off and let their services deteriorate so that more people get pissed off and stop using them. Doesn't seem like private enterprise has all the answers either. Better go look at how many companies went bankrupt in the past ten years.

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LOL! Wait until craven gets back!

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It's so easy to feign a rosy political or economic picture and so futile to try and prove it.

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Okay, people who have been paying bills on the planet (specifically in the U.S., actually): is phone service better now than it was in 1970?

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Of course, the advent of fiberoptics which I have been heavily involved with in the past and is used in communication has made for faster, and clearer connections. However, getting someone of the phone after all the acrobatics one has to go through because of automated service is a bear and I think we all will agree on that. I've learned what buttons to push to get rid of the automated crap and speak to a real live person which is usually the only way one can get rid of a problem (why would one be calling on anything but a problem -- you can get balances, etc. online). So in that way, phone or personal service has deteriorated (you still have long waits to get to a real live person). This is suppose to represent a savings to the corporations but does it really? The point is, does big business really operate more efficiently that small business? I rarely order anything from Amazon unless it's their bargain offerings like Half.com. One can find everything cheaper from smaller businesses, granted with varying degrees of service. I like the question about just what should be privitized and an additional question is can it save money or make the service operate more efficiently? I think that's been answered with the power privitization which has increased the cost and lowered the efficiency quite dramatically. Growing pains? That's a lame excuse.

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BTW, there is not study saying the private schools are basically better tha public schools. Try to find one.

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Re: the phone:
With Sprint, to get to a live person, you actually haev to use a different phone number than the custoimer service # provided on the statements, a number you can only get after playing on the automated sustem for ten minutes or so!

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There are some things that should be privatized and some things that the government should take care of. For obvious examples, national security should remain a government responsibility. I also favor universal health care as a government responsibility, because privatization only increases administrative costs. One payer systems work much better (more efficient and cost effective) than the conglomeration we have in the US. If the government wants to privatize certain industries, it must do so without strings attached. A good example is what happened to utilities in California. In trying to privatize utilities, the government also limited construction of new energy plants and price limits. What actually happened was higher cost, and our governor signed up for long-term contracts that cost the state taxpayers some four billion dollars.

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Privatization of automobile insurance, in the provinces here where it has occured, has resulted in higher premiums.

But, as a central point in such a discussion, I question that 'efficiency' ought to considered be the proper measure. We could, for example, privatize our police forces and let Boeing or Disney cut away all that donut-dunking.

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Corporations have their albatroses due to mismanagement, bad decision making in such enterprises as Euro-Disney. How much do you suppose that cost the stockholders? Government is not the only entity who waste money. The question should really be, "Do We Need Government Oversight?" The Right would have us believe all the crooks and inefficient personnel is in government and that business is not to be tampered with because of its pristine reputation. What a joke.

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blatham, No, it's not always a matter of "efficiency." For privatization to work, it must have competition and less government intrusions. The government must only ensure that there is no hanky-panky of the officers of the company that are enriching themselves at the cost of their employees, customers and stock holders. We don't need any more Enrons, WorldComs, and Tycos to prove that privatization is not preferable to government takeover of industry.

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The notion that government is the bad guys and business the good guys is not a notion I subscribe to. I think, ci, that government has a much larger role than overview of financial hanky-panky. Eg, Love Canal, tobacco, and a squillion other examples.

If we take an issue such as climate change, for example, we can predict with confidence that large commercial enterprises who contribute to the problem will 1) deny the problem exists 2) attempt to inhibit regulation. The sphere of their interest is self and their look into the future is up to the next quarter.

There will come a point where, for example, the corporations which have an interest in ski resorts, or corporations involved with insurance claims, etc, will act as a counter voice to the petro-chemical and manufacturing industries on the matter of global warming...but by then...what havoc?

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blatham, I'm one of those that do not believe in "global warming," but agree to the control of polutants by industry. The fact that we can now find mercury in fish that we consume is very bad, but it doesn't seem the governments of the world are unwilling to cooperate to correct/control it. All we can do is consume less fish with higher levels of mercury. When it comes to the time when fish can no longer be consumed by humans, I'll be long gone. When we have people like GWBush that has been harmful to our environment, but the majority of Americans think he's doing a good job, what are we supposed to do as inviduals? Once harm is done, it's very difficult to correct them in the future. There are some things in life I just accept, because as an individual, I can't do anything that will change the course of what this president does. I was also against the war in Iraq, but my one voice means very little in the scheme of things. I hate fighting losing battles. Life is too short. I'll let the politicians battle most things I can't influence.

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blatham wrote:

But, as a central point in such a discussion, I question that 'efficiency' ought to considered be the proper measure. We could, for example, privatize our police forces and let Boeing or Disney cut away all that donut-dunking.

OK, for the most part I agree with this but there IS a point where efficiency SHOULD become A measure. Some functions are plainly things that government does do well and should handle. IMO, where most of these projects go wrong is in finding that line.

Even with a function like Policing there are functions that can (and usually are) be done better by non-government entities. The police don't build their own cars or maintain all of their own equipment/systems for example unless it happens to be a very large force.

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dlowan wrote:

LOL! Wait until craven gets back!

What's the point? Thus far the arguments have been really absurd (along the lines of "Billions of humans have died, it's obvious that humans aren't fit to live.") The simplistic pointing to corporate failure is really too dumb of an approach to tackle (though I would if challenged on this).

The only relevant argument that I read against privatization is that there are indeed some things that due to an inherent conflict of interest and incompatibility with business-definitions of efficiency should not be privatized.

e.g. the police.

No duh. That does not say anything about privatization that we did not already know, of course, as it's obvious that some areas are better suited for privatization than others.

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Re: Is the push towards privitization all it's cracked up to

Centroles wrote:

Privatization seemed to be a god send at first. Let the corporations take care of previously govt. controlled enterprises. They'll find a way to make things smoother and more efficent and pocket a nice chunk of change in the process. But what one must realize in politics is that there is no gain without loss.

If memory serves me, it was damn near a century ago the last time "privatization seemed to be a God send." Adam Smith and the laissez-faire economic approach he pioneered worked for a while, sure. But then when his unfettered economy collapsed in the 1930's it was generally accepted that some form of government intervention in the economy was needed. That is when the Keynesian approach was developed. It seems to have served us well since then - in the sense that we have avoided the type of major market collapses that plagued us in the 1930's. I see no reason why we would go back to ultra-privatized free markets. Haven't we learned our lesson in the past.

If our own free market failures aren't enough to convince us of this fact then surely the failure of ultra-privatization in other places around the world should. The World Bank and IMF continue to force economic values like privatization and free market liberalization around the world - which are met either with total failure or only halting success followed by total failure. This was the case in Argentina. It has also been the case for every nation in Africa. It is no coincidence that Botswana was the only African nation to completley ignore the World Bank and IMF's development stratagies and it was also the only African nation to enjoy steady economic gains for the better part of the last decade.

Privatization is certainly no God send. Privatization of water, for example, has never resulted in lower water prices anywhere it has been tried. But we continue to support it......

Makes no sense to me. But then again, I am not an economist.

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Re: Is the push towards privitization all it's cracked up to

IronLionZion wrote:

The World Bank and IMF continue to force economic values like privatization and free market liberalization around the world - which are met either with total failure or only halting success followed by total failure. This was the case in Argentina.

No it wasn't. Laughing

Quote:

Privatization is certainly no God send. Privatization of water, for example, has never resulted in lower water prices anywhere it has been tried. But we continue to support it......

What makes you think a lower price is the ideal?

An artificially lower price can be worse than a more realistic higher price. It can mean the infrastructure will collapse through lack of investment and development. Water is something that has traditionally been a bad thing to privatize. That does not say anything about privatization, of course, except that there are some things that are better to privatize than others (no duh).

Now imagine that an artificially lower price is the ideal and note that through subsidy this is not incompatible with privatization either.

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ebrown_p wrote:

Comcast service is without question much worse than the DMV. I got through a very well-run RMV in Massachusetts last week to renew a registration. They had a modern system where they give you a number and you *sit* in a reasonably comfortable waiting room until your number is flashed on a screen above a registry window. It was fairly painless and only took about 20 minutes.

I won't tell you about my experience with Comcast which was both painful and interminable. The basic problem still hasn't been resolved (and it has been considerably more than 20 minutes).

If Comcast weren't the only way to get high speed internet in my apartment I would be long gone.

I would chose the RMV government "bureaucracy" over Comcast "service" any day.

What's the opposite of "privatize"? Should I try "publicize" my Internet service?

That really isn't as absurd as it sounds; the nationalization of cable. And just have the service in private hands.
Thank God that the FCC required Time-Warner to allow Earthlink to provide internet service on their cable lines as a condition for the merger with AOL. If only they would do that with cable TV.

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in a concilliatory moment, fishin wrote

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OK, for the most part I agree with this but there IS a point where efficiency SHOULD become A measure.

Yes. There are, for example, a lot of operations surrounding a school's functions (cafeteria, janitorial) which can be privatized, but the classroom ought not to be. Here in British Columbia, the maintenance of highways were privatized a couple of decades ago, and that has worked out fine (after an initial period when it became clear that a bunch of contracted companies were out for the quick buck, and the contracts got more specific). It's easy enough to quantify and graph 'mile of asphalt laid per day', but tougher to measure human well-being this way. Deb's examples show other cases where privatization is too often not a grand thing.

An interesting and relevant new aspect to privatization is what is presently occuring with armed forces in the west, and how that is playing out in Iraq. Clearly, the more dangerous the environment, the more complicated privatization becomes...how many soldier hours do you expend to protect x number of private contractor hours? Liability issues, etc.

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Is the push towards privitization all it's cracked up to be?

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