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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (182969)	3/5/2006 8:36:48 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

First, we tie one hand behind FedEx's back, then claim we are competing fairly Most USPS parcel post is handled in a similar way to UPS. I don't see any significant difference. The average household goes to the post office for USPS or a shipping store to send via UPS. Same difference. Both will pickup prewieghed and labelled packages as well if you phone in. Businesses have an easier time with both, if you are setup to preweigh and have an account. Any marginal benefit the USPS has from regular mail is most likely offset by more generous retirement benefits, so I don't buy your fairly part. Back in the 1970's the Post Office was pretty sucky, but somewhere in the 80's they got much more competitive, and now I use them about equally with UPS for small one or two day shipments. Before you object to those pensions BTW, you might want to comment on how corporate American has been handling, in stellar market efficient manner, their own pension liabilities. They end up dipping into the taxpayers pockets as well. There really is. I suppose you are unaware of the extensive research showing how they are geneticly different. Link please. My parents worked for government, and non-profits all their lives. I've worked for corporations and I've been self-employed as well. You think my genes maybe changed when I changed my type of employment? I never have seen arguments that capitalism means people can be criminals Unregulated capitalism allows criminals to flourish. There is plenty of historical evidence. You can dodge the issue all you like, but it does not go away just because you have a fantasy that it should. 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. Perhaps then you could post more extensively on what is needed, especially say in corporate defrauding. But I suspect you mean more than that. I have no problem with people making lots of money. I like to myself. Lets get back to Enron. You might recall that years ago, in many parts of the US, energy prices were quite regulated. The idea that energy could be more "efficiently" produced and used if prices were deregulated is a textbook example of free enterprise as championed by the likes of you. How did it go? What was wrong, and what should be done to correct such problems in the future. You claim that governments do a very poor job of price fixing. Yet look at the damage wrought in California by that hairbrained scheme, entered into without sufficient oversight (or foresight for that matter). When ever anyone like you pops up claiming terrible government efficiency and magical market efficiency in prices, I will, for the rest of my career simply say ENRON. But I doubt it phases you one bit, since you are a very strong philosophical type, and facts are not an issue. 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. So make a list and sort it showing individual gain from working in public vs. private sector jobs. Once again, the data does not support your claims at all. The only substantial wealth attributable to government position is obtained at the boundary of government/private corporations in the USA, where ex government workers can land very well paying jobs (10 - 100x or more of their government jobs) based largely on their exposure acquired in the public sector. 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. This is one I agree with you on, in that the government does a poor job on anti-monopoly practice. However, most of the Libertarian economists I have read on the subject seem to champion monopolies, or at least they churn out numerous papers claiming that they are not in fact monopolies. 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. Could your clarify that a little more. By 1/2 as efficient do you mean that any product or service that the government provides costs roughly double what private enterprise would provide? For instance, would I expect the same product at the US Postal Service to cost 2x what it does at UPS, given comparable financial performance? 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. A very interesting example is timber sales here in the NW. Several times environmental groups have been the high bidders on smallish stands of old growth up for auction by the US Forest Service. Boy does corporate america howl when that happens!