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

To: neolib who wrote (182939)	3/5/2006 5:04:33 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<In the case of regular mail, the USPS has a monopoly.> Oh, you don't say. And you don't think that gives them quite an advantage in collection points, management costs and other ways? First, we tie one hand behind FedEx's back, then claim we are competing fairly. And hey, we are winning the competition. Well done. There's a special Olympics the Post Office could enter too [after deflating the opponent's tyres and banning prosthetics]. <<I think there is a statistical variation in their DNA>> <Nonsense> There really is. I suppose you are unaware of the extensive research showing how they are geneticly different. <<What are the weaknesses of capitalism again? I can't think of any.>> <Enron and the like. You never address that issue. > Where did you get the funny idea that in "capitalism" people would be able to commit crimes such as defrauding shareholders, customers, or whatever Enron is supposed to have done? I never have seen arguments that capitalism means people can be criminals [other than by ignorant people who don't like capitalism but like government spivism]. <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.> Me too. Of course capitalists and people like you need to be controlled by laws to stop you stealing, killing, defrauding, polluting and otherwise harming others. But I suspect you mean more than that. Which I think means you don't think people should be able to make a LOT of money. Envy is as old as the hills. You will notice that anti-monopoly cases never involved a corner store, which charges a much higher price for 100g of yoghurt than the supermarket further away with a long queue. The monopolist corner store rips off the consumer with impunity. But we don't see the anti-evil-monpolists charging in with writs and lawyers. That's because the lawyers and judges and government spivs want MONEY and power. They are not really interested in monopolies [other than their own, which they jealously protect and use to take huge amounts of money from innocent passers-by]. They want the loot. Their electorates egg them on because dopey, envious, greedy voters want everything "free" and don't like some people making huge piles of money. So, they invent a "monopoly" by defining the borders of the "monopoly" tightly enough to get the market share above 90% or whatever they arbitrarily define as a monopoly. Then, they send in the lawyers, who collect excellent fees. The lawyers for the defence collect loads of loot too and a great time is had by the government monopolist spivs and monopolist lawyers who bleat on about the "evil monopolist", which is hilarious and straight out of Alice in Wonderland. After extracting enough money, "breaking up" the monopoly or otherwise getting enough "juice", usually when the "monopoly" was about to be destroyed by competition anyway, they move on to the next victim. <<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.> Sure. In any particular year, I'd say there is a gain in efficiency of about double by avoiding government dopes running things. But each item would need individual evaluation. As a rule of thumb, I estimate governments as being about half as efficient as privately owned businesses. That's being generous. Maybe it's more like 4 times as good to have private business. But even if it was only 10%, the gain would be huge because gains compound. Money in the bank this year can be invested to make things better, and make even more money next year, and every year the compounding process continues. That's why Zimbabwe is a hole and San Diego is amazing. It's a lifetime of compounding advantages. Governments are like entropy in thermodynamics. One is stuck with some, but the less the better. If there were no criminals for example, that whole government department could be shut down. We don't need criminals. If the commons could be allocated, that would reduce government too. For example, spectrum has been sold on long term leases rather than have government spivs deciding which of their friends gets to have it. Mineral rights are sold. Oil exploration rights are sold. Imagine having a government exploration and oil selling industry. With a government car industry. We'd have the Lada and fuel costing a fortune, with queues are grotty gas stations. <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. > I wonder if the airports are allowed to charge what they like. I imagine not. Public demand usually leads politicians to make laws limiting profits to bank rates plus a bit. As they do in New Zealand when envy gets going. Note that I am NOT suggesting government assets be sold cheaply at whatever price is the highest at the time. Which is what usually happens because dopey government people can't even sell things properly. Mqurice