Corruption is the issue when governments are involved with capital. Social inequality is the issue when private owners control the capital.
My view is that having an army and control over the capital is too many eggs in the same basket.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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So... Without a government, there just wouldn't be armies? Rich and powerful private citizens wouldn't form their own armed forces?
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Even if it was more efficient on average it still would have major costs associated with privatization, namely ceding control from the public.
The government should not be efficient. The faster it moves the faster it can oppress.
Having worked on both sides. Private industry has the ability to quickly maneuver and change tact.
Imo
It depends on the industry. Huge publicly traded organizations are basically as bad as government
I've peaked inside large private companies. They're no better than public companies. Turns out, being large means you can't move very fast.
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But government likes to starve the stuff they run to make it look bad so they can carve it up and sell it to their mates. See literally anything Britain privatised.
Anything with no competition trends towards being shit over time.
Certain things, yes. Certain other things, not at all.
As much as I hate Elon Musk the company he owns that does space stuff pretty rapidly got a whole lot of new rockets up and got them to land instead of crashing into the sea. The newest govt produced rocket, the SLS, was years late and billions of dollars over budget, and they expend the rockets.
spaceX did some cool stuff. That being said, fuck Elon Musk, he had nothing to do with any of its success.
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The government needs to take over things which are not viable for the private sector, but important for society to work.
Lets say privatisation of public transport: In countries where it is completely private, only major cities have reasonable connections. Because those are the most profitable ones. But if you want people to actually use public transport, you need to have a fine and widely spread net of connections. For that to happen either the state completely owns the public transport, or takes off financial pressure and only partially owns it.
Exactly this mechanism enables (partially) state owned organizations to run suboptimal. As explained in the example, this is a desired effect. But it also enables memes like the lazy state employee - which are at least partially true.
E scooter services are a nice example. They are not covered under state-run public transport. You see those in major cities. There, where they are not required as much due to more dense public transport systems. But there, where they would be really useful, in more rural areas, due to a much less dense public transport system, they are lacking. And why is that? Because profits.
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Private companies are master at screwing customers for profit. Lefts not try to be private companies.
If you believe this, a year working at a Fortune 500 should cure you of it.
If private companies were more efficient than the public sector then you'd want to privatize the armed forces. The fact that no serious person argues for this tells you all you need to know.
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Where I live they have semi-privatized utilities and it's funny because unlike the fully private company they'll actually do their job, but then they'll make record profits and their directors will spend it all doing lines of coke. It's most noticeable when you compare the lines of the private company to the semi-private one, and one will be overgrown and decrepit while the other will be completely spotless.
We also have a fully public utility and you wouldn't even notice because the prices are dirt cheap and the infrastructure is taken care of. The only difference between public and private ownership is how much of your money goes into maintenance instead of up the board's nose.
You should see the companies in charge of the mexican government.
Which government?