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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (182931)	3/5/2006 5:57:27 AM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Government employees are different from large company and they are different from self-employed. ..... I think they might even have genetic differences LOL! The thought did cross my mind. In my experience, fwiw, I've known many families where children of public employees would also end up working for the government - either in the same, or in different sectors. Is there a genetic component involved? - I can't tell. Could be just because the idea must have been plenty bounced around the kitchen table as those kids were growing up. Generally, governments take care of their own... so, in many ways such a strategy is very sensible. Jobs tend to be not very interesting, but tell me, where in the private sector can you earn a liveable pension (and medical) for the rest of your days after a mere 20 years of fairly decently paid employment?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (182931)	3/5/2006 11:04:34 AM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You will only see that where they enforce their monopoly. Let's take the Post Office. They were a monopoly using public assets. I don't know USA laws, but in NZ, competition is now allowed in many ways, but of course a lot of taxpaer cash goes into the post offices, making it tough for competitors to compete. BS. The US Postal Service, UPS, FedEx, DHL, Airborne, all compete quite vigorously in the parcel shipment space. In the case of regular mail, the USPS has a monopoly. I think there is a statistical variation in their DNA Nonsense You are obviously white if you think that would disprove the point. I'm well aware of how to apply statistics. What are the weaknesses of capitalism again? I can't think of any. Enron and the like. You never address that issue. The problem with the Ayn crowd is that they claim only the "good" capitalists as true believers. Anyone "bad" is claimed to belong to another crowd. It does not work that way. A system is composed of all those who play in it, the good and the bad. The system is judged on the merits of how well it performs. Capitalism is not just some fictional idea, it is the total functional system. I'm very much in favor of regulated capitalism, that is a system which has enough checks and balances to provide safety against the excess of unfettered capitalism. The nonsense that went on with the energy traders in the Enron era, had direct links to the philosophy of free markets as king. People who try to dodge that are clueless about the dynamics of complex systems involving human greed. To say that greed is good on the one hand as the source of capitalistic motivation, but bad on the other hand when it leads to illegal or unethical behaviour is the damning blindspot of Libertarians IMO. It is in fact true. But Libertarians fail to understand that greed needs to be channeled somewhat carefully, and regulated. We need to promote the one aspect, while dampening the other. Ideological purity is not a help in such situations. Governments can't even do what they need to do very well. Roads should be sold, sewerage too, water supplies, airports and so on. Could you put a numerical figure on the gain to be had from such an approach? You might note that in the eastern US, there are many private toll roads, in the west very few. Surely some economic analysis exists showing the percentage difference. As far as airports go, many are privately owned. Don't know what fraction in the US are. It would be interesting to see comparisons between private and public ownership of them.