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Anything that is public health related is bound to be full of tradeoffs and "good enoughs". The water in Flint, MI was considered good enough by Flint's offici

Anything that is public health related is bound to be full of tradeoffs and "good enoughs". The water in Flint, MI was considered good enough by Flint's officials, as is the water in many other municipalities. Just as a private monopoly would start to reduce quality once it cornered the market, public, regulated monopolies behave similarly. Why care about quality if there is no competition and it's just another year earning a pension for the bureaucrats involved? Consider how the bidding process for building roads results in poorly built roads and no incentive to the winner of the contract to build something that will last. Nearly every piece of American infrastructure is riddled with corruption or incompetence (or both). Even basic construction is full of various rules intended to bolster union workers, etc. and adding enormous cost.

gl338 10y ago
I really want to be respectful here but your comment shows a large level of ignorance around the difference between public monopolies, public UTILITIES, public (regulated) goods, and the economics thereof. A lot of public utilities were created specifically to enforce a level of quality and compliance and protect the citizen. In situations where the quality of goods is reduced below a safe level, you should not blame lack of competition, but call it what it is: incompetence at best, corruption at worst. Good book on the topic that HN readers will appreciate is "The Master Switch": https://www.amazon.ca/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/0307390993 https://www.amazon.ca/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires...
- tn13 10y ago
  > A lot of public utilities were created specifically to enforce a level of quality and compliance and protect the citizen Calling others ignorant does not help an argument. I think he had a point that when you let government control something it is the worst kind of monopoly and the quality is bound go down the drain. Whether it VA affairs, public education or IRS.
  - josephg 10y ago
    > I think he had a point that when you let government control something it is the worst kind of monopoly and the quality is bound go down the drain. Whether it VA affairs, public education or IRS. Thats not necessarily true. Certainly outside the US there are many, many public institutions which do fantastic work. The ABC here in Australia and the BBC in the UK produce great television. The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) are highly regarded here, as was CSIRO before the government gutted their funding (CSIRO is an Australian government research group which invented parts of wifi). I don't know if the reputation US government agencies have for incompetence is real or due to media spin, but the problem is obviously not inevitable. To quote Bill Clinton: "The problem with ideology is that it gives you the answer before you've asked the question".
    - shard972 10y ago
      > The ABC here in Australia As an Australian, aside from their news which last I checked doesn't get the same kind of views as the private companies I would disagree. Maybe the parents enjoy ABC1 or whatever plays kids shows all day but I find the quality of their original shows to be quite poor and their flagships like QANDA have really gone off the rails in the last few years.
      - 8note 10y ago
        in Canada, the CBC was pretty great until the conservatives annihilated their budget. In that time, they lost the license to the theme of their flagship show, Hockey Nightnin Canada, and after that, the show itself. Also, they lost the rights to report the olympics, and the news is much lower quality. its almost like public services dont work well when you defund them.
    - tn13 10y ago
      >"The problem with ideology is that it gives you the answer before you've asked the question". Yupp. Looking at checks signed by other helps make the decision lot quicker. > BBC in the UK produce great television. What for ? At what cost to public taxpayer ? Is it even needed to be run using taxpayer money ?
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  I this is a little blinkered. You are making too much of merely verbal differences. Government organisations do don't magically do what they were nominally made for. Like all providers, their work is the product of various human motitivations operating under under various kinds of control. Approximately speaking: private providers are controlled by competition and regulation. Government organisations are controlled by politics and a command structure. Much of that is also regulation -- though sometimes under a different name. What you call incompetence and corruption happens when those controls fail. The resulting organisation is very much like a private monpoly: it has no competitors, and the chain of bureaucratic control stops short of making anyone accountable to the public.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    Exactly. Very well articulated.
- grandalf 10y ago
  I typed the comment in haste and so did not emphasize any of the differences. I think the main difference has to do with which of the entity's behaviors are regulated internally vs externally. This influences whether we consider failings to be incompetence or corruption, but it scarcely matters, since there is no chance for consumers/citizens to simply choose another option. What sorts of contaminants in drinking water are harmful? How much contamination is too much? What tradeoffs are important when determining that? Chlorine causes cancer, but it is added to the water supply to prevent bacteria growth while the water is in transit to buildings and residences. Those closest to the treatment facility get over-chlorinated water, and (assuming enough has been added) those furthest away get bacteria-free water. Fluoride is also sometimes added to water, but it too can cause health problems. How much is reasonable, what is the right tradeoff between the dental health benefits of fluoride and the harms? Who is to decide this? In Flint, the pipes began leaching harmful chemicals into the water supply, but the officials ignored reports of the problem. Why weren't citizens quickly aware that the water entering their homes (and bodies) was poisonous? Because the public trusts government to do a good job and not to be corrupt. Public health standards dictate whether an old person gets stents or a coronary bypass operation or neither. There are age limits that apply regardless of health, because of the average health of people of certain ages. In all cases, public health guidelines are fraught with tradeoffs that inflict intentional harm, usually to conserve resources, etc. The problem is that the public believes these guidelines to be in their individual best interest. Th public also believes that water deemed safe by regulators is actually safe to consume over the long term, when it may not actually be. Is it safe to ride in a car with seatbelts and no airbags? Is it safe to drink city water for municipality X for 20 years? How many people will die due to not having an airbag? How many due to low level contamination in the water? Someone is making this judgment call on behalf of everyone, but due to the need to preserve their political authority, the tradeoffs and weaknesses of the approach are not surfaced. They can't say "buy a home water filter" because then they are discriminating against people too poor to do so. How many poor people live in buildings with water pipes that were grandfathered into code compliance but still create health risks? How much health risk is "reasonable" to prevent the landlord from having to replace pipes? Similarly, regarding net neutrality, how many startups can never succeed because the "net neutral" latency is too high for the service they wanted to build? Many of these things are minor, but across the whole spectrum of imperfectly regulated things, are all exposed to significant risk and harm. It's the things we don't tend to focus on (like what constitutes safe water) that are the most likely to harm us, and when we're grieving because a grandparent is sick we are not likely to be thinking about the standard of care that made him/her ineligible for a therapy that had a 1 in 5 chance of extending his/her life by a few years. Institutions desire power and authority, and they often start out by doing some sort of useful service. But they are easily corrupted. One hallmark of tyranny is the creation of a top down idea of the "greater good". We must be vigilant to prevent our trusted institutions from embodying this sort of tyranny, even on issues that seem inconsequential or minor.
anigbrowl 10y ago
I dunno, maybe because you'll rot in a prison cell? I'm going to need something better than this for the 'competition fixes everything' argument. Yes, corruption in public utilities/institution is a serious problem. However I think you need to quantify that before breezily saying there is no difference between public and private monopolies. Private firms generally have far less internal accountability as far as I can see, and make the argument that loyalty to shareholders trumps obligations to customers.
- tn13 10y ago
  Walk into ATT showroom, BMW showroom or Wallmart or a Lasik clinic or other zillion private business and then walk into DMV, VA or IRS office. Even blind people would be able to tell the different. Loyalty shareholders is any day better than total lack of accountability which is the case with public utility companies.
  - pasquinelli 10y ago
    what into the irs then walk into an h&r block. i've done this one year when my taxes were particularly complicated and someone i had worked for was trying to screw me over on taxes. after a long wait, the guy at h&r block said there was nothing to be done. on the other hand i walked right into the irs, was given the form and assisted in filling it out. in the end i saved a couple thousand dollars. i never was that excited to go to h&r block, but figured they'd be an extra pair of eyes to catch anything stupid. now i don't bother. i've been to the irs a couple times since with my tax questions and get good answers from them. also haven't ever had a problem with the DMV. the VA, i've no experience with.
    - tn13 10y ago
      With HR Block you have an option of going somewhere else. with IRS ?
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    What's the throughput of both, the outcome, and the per user cost? Those are the metrics that should matter to the society as a whole. The BMW showroom looks shiny, and they explicitly kick out and don't include in their metrics the customers they fail to serve. Great if you've got the money to pay for that. Bad if you want a measure of social utility or overall efficiency, or if you don't have the money... Monopolies and businesses if great size have general issues also, regardless of being government or private...
honkhonkpants 10y ago
You obviously have some kind of political axe to grind, but factually I believe you are not correct about "Flint officials". The officials in question were installed by the state government using "emergency" powers.
- tn13 10y ago
  I dont see why people are attacking him with personal attacks. He has a point. You seem to be the one grinding any kind of axe.
toyg 10y ago
This is where ideology has a role: in absence of immediate threats (which cannot be introduced everywhere), you do your job well not because you benefit directly, but because it benefits $cause. Public services without a public-service ethic don't work well, and public-service ethic needs some sort of ideological system to build on -- be that a religion or something else.
thefastlane 10y ago
"Why care about quality if there is no competition" the implication in this statement is that any organization whose purpose is other than maximizing income streams will be dysfunctional and ineffective. i don't think that's the case. (edited for tone and concision.)
- grandalf 10y ago
  If you are offered two choices, A and B, and have to make a decision, how do you decide which to choose? By comparing characteristics of each. When there is only one choice, it doesn't really matter what the characteristics of it are, and any information that might reflect negatively on it can be kept hidden from view. This is not just for the purpose of maximizing income streams. Two competing charities might attempt to raise money to accomplish the same goal, but one may have a far better approach and get far better results. Imagine if you were given a large scoop of a mushy substance labeled "FOOD". There were multiple vats of it behind a counter, but they all contained the same thing.

gl338 10y ago

I really want to be respectful here but your comment shows a large level of ignorance around the difference between public monopolies, public UTILITIES, public (regulated) goods, and the economics thereof. A lot of public utilities were created specifically to enforce a level of quality and compliance and protect the citizen. In situations where the quality of goods is reduced below a safe level, you should not blame lack of competition, but call it what it is: incompetence at best, corruption at worst. Good book on the topic that HN readers will appreciate is "The Master Switch": https://www.amazon.ca/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/0307390993 https://www.amazon.ca/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires...

tn13 10y ago
> A lot of public utilities were created specifically to enforce a level of quality and compliance and protect the citizen Calling others ignorant does not help an argument. I think he had a point that when you let government control something it is the worst kind of monopoly and the quality is bound go down the drain. Whether it VA affairs, public education or IRS.
- josephg 10y ago
  > I think he had a point that when you let government control something it is the worst kind of monopoly and the quality is bound go down the drain. Whether it VA affairs, public education or IRS. Thats not necessarily true. Certainly outside the US there are many, many public institutions which do fantastic work. The ABC here in Australia and the BBC in the UK produce great television. The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) are highly regarded here, as was CSIRO before the government gutted their funding (CSIRO is an Australian government research group which invented parts of wifi). I don't know if the reputation US government agencies have for incompetence is real or due to media spin, but the problem is obviously not inevitable. To quote Bill Clinton: "The problem with ideology is that it gives you the answer before you've asked the question".
  - shard972 10y ago
    > The ABC here in Australia As an Australian, aside from their news which last I checked doesn't get the same kind of views as the private companies I would disagree. Maybe the parents enjoy ABC1 or whatever plays kids shows all day but I find the quality of their original shows to be quite poor and their flagships like QANDA have really gone off the rails in the last few years.
    - 8note 10y ago
      in Canada, the CBC was pretty great until the conservatives annihilated their budget. In that time, they lost the license to the theme of their flagship show, Hockey Nightnin Canada, and after that, the show itself. Also, they lost the rights to report the olympics, and the news is much lower quality. its almost like public services dont work well when you defund them.
  - tn13 10y ago
    >"The problem with ideology is that it gives you the answer before you've asked the question". Yupp. Looking at checks signed by other helps make the decision lot quicker. > BBC in the UK produce great television. What for ? At what cost to public taxpayer ? Is it even needed to be run using taxpayer money ?
adrianratnapala 10y ago
I this is a little blinkered. You are making too much of merely verbal differences. Government organisations do don't magically do what they were nominally made for. Like all providers, their work is the product of various human motitivations operating under under various kinds of control. Approximately speaking: private providers are controlled by competition and regulation. Government organisations are controlled by politics and a command structure. Much of that is also regulation -- though sometimes under a different name. What you call incompetence and corruption happens when those controls fail. The resulting organisation is very much like a private monpoly: it has no competitors, and the chain of bureaucratic control stops short of making anyone accountable to the public.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Exactly. Very well articulated.
grandalf 10y ago
I typed the comment in haste and so did not emphasize any of the differences. I think the main difference has to do with which of the entity's behaviors are regulated internally vs externally. This influences whether we consider failings to be incompetence or corruption, but it scarcely matters, since there is no chance for consumers/citizens to simply choose another option. What sorts of contaminants in drinking water are harmful? How much contamination is too much? What tradeoffs are important when determining that? Chlorine causes cancer, but it is added to the water supply to prevent bacteria growth while the water is in transit to buildings and residences. Those closest to the treatment facility get over-chlorinated water, and (assuming enough has been added) those furthest away get bacteria-free water. Fluoride is also sometimes added to water, but it too can cause health problems. How much is reasonable, what is the right tradeoff between the dental health benefits of fluoride and the harms? Who is to decide this? In Flint, the pipes began leaching harmful chemicals into the water supply, but the officials ignored reports of the problem. Why weren't citizens quickly aware that the water entering their homes (and bodies) was poisonous? Because the public trusts government to do a good job and not to be corrupt. Public health standards dictate whether an old person gets stents or a coronary bypass operation or neither. There are age limits that apply regardless of health, because of the average health of people of certain ages. In all cases, public health guidelines are fraught with tradeoffs that inflict intentional harm, usually to conserve resources, etc. The problem is that the public believes these guidelines to be in their individual best interest. Th public also believes that water deemed safe by regulators is actually safe to consume over the long term, when it may not actually be. Is it safe to ride in a car with seatbelts and no airbags? Is it safe to drink city water for municipality X for 20 years? How many people will die due to not having an airbag? How many due to low level contamination in the water? Someone is making this judgment call on behalf of everyone, but due to the need to preserve their political authority, the tradeoffs and weaknesses of the approach are not surfaced. They can't say "buy a home water filter" because then they are discriminating against people too poor to do so. How many poor people live in buildings with water pipes that were grandfathered into code compliance but still create health risks? How much health risk is "reasonable" to prevent the landlord from having to replace pipes? Similarly, regarding net neutrality, how many startups can never succeed because the "net neutral" latency is too high for the service they wanted to build? Many of these things are minor, but across the whole spectrum of imperfectly regulated things, are all exposed to significant risk and harm. It's the things we don't tend to focus on (like what constitutes safe water) that are the most likely to harm us, and when we're grieving because a grandparent is sick we are not likely to be thinking about the standard of care that made him/her ineligible for a therapy that had a 1 in 5 chance of extending his/her life by a few years. Institutions desire power and authority, and they often start out by doing some sort of useful service. But they are easily corrupted. One hallmark of tyranny is the creation of a top down idea of the "greater good". We must be vigilant to prevent our trusted institutions from embodying this sort of tyranny, even on issues that seem inconsequential or minor.

anigbrowl 10y ago

I dunno, maybe because you'll rot in a prison cell? I'm going to need something better than this for the 'competition fixes everything' argument. Yes, corruption in public utilities/institution is a serious problem. However I think you need to quantify that before breezily saying there is no difference between public and private monopolies. Private firms generally have far less internal accountability as far as I can see, and make the argument that loyalty to shareholders trumps obligations to customers.

tn13 10y ago
Walk into ATT showroom, BMW showroom or Wallmart or a Lasik clinic or other zillion private business and then walk into DMV, VA or IRS office. Even blind people would be able to tell the different. Loyalty shareholders is any day better than total lack of accountability which is the case with public utility companies.
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  what into the irs then walk into an h&r block. i've done this one year when my taxes were particularly complicated and someone i had worked for was trying to screw me over on taxes. after a long wait, the guy at h&r block said there was nothing to be done. on the other hand i walked right into the irs, was given the form and assisted in filling it out. in the end i saved a couple thousand dollars. i never was that excited to go to h&r block, but figured they'd be an extra pair of eyes to catch anything stupid. now i don't bother. i've been to the irs a couple times since with my tax questions and get good answers from them. also haven't ever had a problem with the DMV. the VA, i've no experience with.
  - tn13 10y ago
    With HR Block you have an option of going somewhere else. with IRS ?
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  What's the throughput of both, the outcome, and the per user cost? Those are the metrics that should matter to the society as a whole. The BMW showroom looks shiny, and they explicitly kick out and don't include in their metrics the customers they fail to serve. Great if you've got the money to pay for that. Bad if you want a measure of social utility or overall efficiency, or if you don't have the money... Monopolies and businesses if great size have general issues also, regardless of being government or private...

honkhonkpants 10y ago

You obviously have some kind of political axe to grind, but factually I believe you are not correct about "Flint officials". The officials in question were installed by the state government using "emergency" powers.

tn13 10y ago
I dont see why people are attacking him with personal attacks. He has a point. You seem to be the one grinding any kind of axe.

toyg 10y ago

This is where ideology has a role: in absence of immediate threats (which cannot be introduced everywhere), you do your job well not because you benefit directly, but because it benefits $cause. Public services without a public-service ethic don't work well, and public-service ethic needs some sort of ideological system to build on -- be that a religion or something else.

thefastlane 10y ago

"Why care about quality if there is no competition" the implication in this statement is that any organization whose purpose is other than maximizing income streams will be dysfunctional and ineffective. i don't think that's the case. (edited for tone and concision.)

grandalf 10y ago
If you are offered two choices, A and B, and have to make a decision, how do you decide which to choose? By comparing characteristics of each. When there is only one choice, it doesn't really matter what the characteristics of it are, and any information that might reflect negatively on it can be kept hidden from view. This is not just for the purpose of maximizing income streams. Two competing charities might attempt to raise money to accomplish the same goal, but one may have a far better approach and get far better results. Imagine if you were given a large scoop of a mushy substance labeled "FOOD". There were multiple vats of it behind a counter, but they all contained the same thing.