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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (11346)	4/30/2002 3:15:38 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

What you don't seem to understand about the public sector is one very simple factor--the only factor that matters: OUTCOME. That is all there is to the interaction of public agencies with the public: OUTCOME. If the outcome is what pleases the public, then the public is pleased--period. Often the public, or at least large sections of it is not displeased or just doesn't know or care. Trade barriers and corporate welfare are great examples if this. How many people in the US know that they pay tremendously more then the world price for sugar, or know any of the details of the trade spat with Canada over lumber imports? How many people other then the few beneficiaries of these programs support the dairy compact or mohair subsidies? Is there a huge groundswell of support for all the pork that goes to Archer Daniels Midland? Also outcome is not the only factor. Even when people like the outcome the input that goes in to it is important. People don't like paying the level of taxes that they pay, but if you move to cut taxes then the politicians say that very popular programs will have to be drasticly cut (when smaller cuts or cuts in less popular programs would get the job done). In the private sector its different. Yes there can be some confusing items but when I pay my mortgage I know that I am paying the bank back for the loan on my house. When I pay my cable bill I know I am paying for cable TV. If my spending is too high and I need to cut back I can spend less and have the cutback go to dropping HBO without having to worry about my mortgage payment being insufficient. And private business, while it may not actually FORCE you to use its services--nevertheless, coerces you to a degree to which choice is essentially an illusion. You drive 60 miles to work, you gotta buy gas. You don't like paying for electricity, where are you gonna get the wood to heat your shack, if you're in the desert? Etc., and so forth. The choice is not an illusion. If you don't want to buy that much gas you can move closer, or buy a more fuel efficient car, maybe even an electrical one (not very practical for most people but they are an option), and that ignores the choice that even if you still drive 60 miles in a gas guzzler you get to pick what gas station you want tot stop at. If you don't like the electric company you can generate your own you can switch to natural gas or oil heat if you don't want to use electric heat. In some places you can switch electric companies. Generating your own electricity is more expensive in most cases, but you can do it. I can't go to the government and say "I don't want to pay for this program, I'll put aside money to take care of the problem if it happens to me, please deduct my share of the cost of this program from my taxes." This can be done without abuse to the assumption of equality of character As I have said probably a half dozen times, I am not attacking the character of public sector employees as either lacking in a general sense or of being worse then that of private sector employees. I just said that the incentives they face are different. Put the private sector employees in a situation with the same incentives and I don't expect them to do any better. Good workers do their best; bad ones do their worst. It doesn't matter who they work for. It matters a lot who you work for. Not just government or private, but what agency or what company you work for. Different companies and agencies have different cultures, different goals and methods, and a different amount of resources. If you where a very productive, skilled and motivated employee and then you are put in charge of a program that's goal is negative or useless but you are still good at achieving that goal then you have not produced anything very useful. If you are in charge of an department that doesn't have a purpose that is important enough to justify all the money spent on it, you will face a strong incentive to just try and do the job you are assigned very well, rather then arguing that the department you head should be eliminated. This applies to the divisions of private companies as well but private companies have to atleast eventually make a profit. If the division is totally useless its odds of sticking around for years or decades is low it either becomes useful, is sold, or is shut down, or perhaps it brings the whole company down and thus ends its own existence. Federal agencies and departments on the other hand are very difficult to get rid of. Every attempt is a political fight and even those who think they should go often feel its better to expand their political capital elsewhere. Not only is it certain they will never keep "completely useless or counterproductive programs going" Nonsense. The government is riddled with them. You can now say that the public wants completely useless programs, but you beg the argument by such arbitrary and circular tap-dancing. The people who work in the program and the people who are in charge of them want them to continue, and usually someone benefits from them and the special interest that benefits from the program wants it to continue even if it costs the rest of the country far more then it benefits the special interest. Naturally, it is quite applicable to discuss or argue the value of any PARTICULAR and specific public (or private) service. And this can be done rationally, without prejudice, and without injustice. I don't think it is injustice to look at the public sector services and see that a large number of these particular services are of litle value or at least return far less value then their costs. You can then see that a private sector company that was run with so little attention to the needs of its "customers" would not be wrong for this world unless it was protected or subsidized by the government. Nothing this is not unjust, unfairly prejudiced or irrational. Tim