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

To: Solon who wrote (11786)	5/3/2002 11:25:41 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

"No my position has pretty much been the same the whole time" No, in the beginning you said you had: "reason to think that public employees are inherintly less productive than private sector employees." And one of the reasons they are less productive is that they don't face the discipline that the private sector faces where they have to produce things that are useful to the majority of their customers or they shrink or perish. That has been a point I have raised in different ways throughout the whole conversation. I have not "changed rooms" or "run away" from it. I also summarized how your original assertion had been discredited These seems to be one of your favorite tactics. You post an argument, someone else disagrees with your argument. If they ignore the argument they disagree with you post about how they have accepted it. If they reply that your argument is wrong and reassert their original point you make a statement about how their argument is discredited. Because buying "X-ray" glasses has no value for me, does not mean that private enterprise has no value. If "X-ray" glasses have no value to you then you don't buy these goods. You are not a satisfied of dissatisfied customer of the company that makes them. You presumably pay for a lot of government services that you don't want or need, and I would guess at least a few that you actually think are negative. If you are extremely satisfied with the parts of the government that you do like you may still be satisfied with the overall bundle you get, but there is a lot more opportunity for dissatisfaction when you have to pay for something whether or not you want it. I have already demonstrated for you that both private and public employees are enjoined to produce by the laws of supply and demand. You have demonstrated nothing like this at all. The public sector doesn't respond to normal supply and demand it can produce anything and then tax people to pay for it. The check on it is political not supply and demand. "Usually the more the government is involved in a project the more time it takes" This is a meaningless trip into another room. A project takes a certain amount of time. If you involve yourself in it for a longer time, then I guess it would take more time. Not a meaningless trip at all. The activities are heavily regulated by or are performed by, the government require more paperwork, often hearings and other things that delay the project. This reduces productivity as more resources and time get spent to produce the same output. Again you are missing it. Your first sentence is true; your last sentence is false. The second sentence follows logically from the first combined with your statements about the productivity of the government. If productivity depends on the value of what is produced, and value is subjective, then there is no objective way of determining or stating productivity. Many of us reach a stage in life where we have all the answers. Many of us reach the stage where some book or some guru has all the answers. I don't think I have ever been at such a stage, nor do I think it is likely that I will reach such a stage in the future. But in the end, life will gently teach us that the answers belong to all voices and not just to our own. Your posts frequently do not reflect this idea. If someone disagrees with your arguments they are apparently not only wrong, but illogical or deluded or immature or playing some sort of game rather then actually dealing with the subject. I don't claim to be perfect or to have all the answers, but that doesn't mean that I just accept what anyone else says as a valid answer. I do respect them enough not to assume that their viewpoint is discredited because it differs from mine or to accuse them of haughty disdain and prejudice because they continue to disagree with me once I have laid out my arguments. I suppose if I did have all the answers that it might be fair to do these things but since I don't I wouldn't think of doing them. Tim