5 ms·

Usually economic 'equality' is at the expense of wealth creation. So you almost always end up in a situation where everyone's equally as poor.

sharemywin 10y ago
wealth creation at the expense of lower prices isn't a better outcome.
merraksh 10y ago
Or everyone's equally as rich, or well served. The purpose of a public transportation service should be to serve the whole city, not to run just the profitable courses.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Bingo. Postal services were usually priced such that the high volume central routes would subsidize the more remote ones.
  - bsbechtel 10y ago
    Yes, because our post office is doing great in comparison with its private competition these days.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      I can stuff a few papers in an envelope, scribble something resembling an address on the outside along with a few coins worth of stamps and leave it to be picked up without prior notification to be delivered anywhere in the country only a few days later. Maybe longer if I was particularly bad at writing the address. This is practically a super power.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      Yes, because our post office is doing great in comparison with its private competition these days. It is! The US Postal Service is required to operate under rules designed to financially destroy it (never mind that private shipping services often use USPS behind the scenes -- privatization would lower costs by making them, um, do more work and have to invest in more of their own infrastructure), and still manages to to keep working well. Make UPS or FedEx or DHL operate under even a rough facsimile of things like the USPS pension-funding requirements, and they'd issue you a tracking number for their bankruptcy proceedings.
    - paulmd 10y ago
      I don't know what world you're living in but I have a side business selling on eBay and my fiance runs an Etsy store and the Post Office's service is head-and-shoulders above that of private carriers. I suspect you don't have any experience in this area and based on your other posting you seem ideologically motivated. In practical terms, USPS package shipping rates are typically 1/2 to 1/3 of those of an equivalent service from a private carrier. It's often cheaper to send something via USPS 2-day than via UPS/Fedex ground service. Their bulk rates are even cheaper - Media Mail is usually the only cost-effective way to ship textbooks for example. And Fedex/UPS simply have no service that competes with first-class or second-class mail. In fact USPS's service is so effective that UPS and Fedex actually piggyback on their service to save money. Fedex and UPS will get the mailpiece to the local post office and the post office will handle the last-mile delivery. This is called SmartPost service and I can tell you from experience that the private carrier's involvement significantly worsens the quality of service. It often spends multiple weeks in the hands of the private carrier and I've noticed significantly more damage to mailpieces with it. They also provide subpar customer support on these packages, you cannot refuse delivery or do other basic postal operations with these packages. The opinion of the private carriers essentially seems to be that the blame will fall on the postal service so quality of service is irrelevant. Nobody is perfect, and all carriers are subject to variation in the quality of the last-mile delivery. If your USPS or UPS or FedEx guy is particularly terrible then you will get damaged packages.
      - bsbechtel 10y ago
        Yes, I do have a strong belief that environments that allow private individuals the freedom to experiment/innovate and compete with one another produce massively better outcomes. However, my comment about the USPS was based on a series of stories in the news over the past several years about their financial difficulties and the closing of numerous Post Offices in small towns across the country. Keep in mind the USPS has locked in one massive customer that continues to rely on post mail instead of electronic communication for virtually everything - the U.S. Government. So while yes, the USPS may produce better outcomes for the last-mile delivery, it is most likely being subsidized by the U.S. Government using their services to communicate virtually everything to 330 million U.S. Citizens. In that regard, UPS and Fedex are saving money off the back of taxpayers when they use the USPS to deliver packages to homes beyond their most profitable routes.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      How much of that is because of gutting by the people in charge? I seem to recall that British Railways was privatized basically by having politicians cut funding, then claim privatization would fix the problems that underfunding was producing...
      - UK-AL 10y ago
        If you actually look at the data though, the railways are actually better. They're more likely to be on time, and have higher customer satisfaction.
        crdoconnor 10y ago
        Yes, when you ask people "and how are things apart from the eye watering, wallet haemorrhaging, income annihilating cost?" they're mildly positive about the railways. Mildly.
        UK-AL 10y ago
        Thats because that what it costs to get it up scratch. Taxes distribute the burden across everyone, and can be politically hard to get through. Privatization puts the burden on the people who use it.
        crdoconnor 10y ago
        Check your facts. They were and still are massively subsidized. Supplying the profit margins of the train operating companies were made the burden of people who use it.
        ptaipale 10y ago
        Actually, British passengers seem to be the second-most happy railway users within EU. [0] I'm from the happiest country of railway users (Finland), and I can tell you that also here, lots of people complain about the national railway service, both about reliability, speed and price. ([1] is a joke on announcements of VR, the train operator, about four seasonal outages in train service due to spring, summer, autumns and winter (clockwise).) And the (government-owned) railway company here offers train travel that is more expensive than in Britain (just checked my most recent trip, 37 € is the cheapest fare for a 250 km distance that is equivalent to London-Manchester). [0] http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_382a_sum_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_382a_sum_en.pdf [1] http://www.riemurasia.net/kuva/Juna-kulkee/176387 http://www.riemurasia.net/kuva/Juna-kulkee/176387
    - creshal 10y ago
      Actually it is in many countries. Sending a package from Germany to Austria via UPS takes longer than a package from Japan via Japan/Austrian state posts, despite customs inspection in the middle. More reliable, too.
      - bsbechtel 10y ago
        UPS is not particularly strong on international shipping. Is your example because those post offices are actually more efficient, or because there are bureaucratic roadblocks slowing down UPS (a U.S. based carrier)?
        creshal 10y ago
        > or because there are bureaucratic roadblocks slowing down UPS (a U.S. based carrier)? No, the market is fully deregulated. GLS (Dutch) isn't any better either.
    - chrisbennet 10y ago
      Actually, they are. They perform a public good while not consuming public dollars. Oh, you didn't know that they self funded? https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/top-10-things-to-know.htm https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/top-10-things...
      - bsbechtel 10y ago
        Not quite. Read my other comment above in this thread. When you have the US Government locked in as a customer, and that customer continues to rely on you for the majority of their communication instead of moving to electronic communications, you are relying on taxpayer dollars to pay for those stamps that fund your operations.
        hx87 10y ago
        Given that it would cost the US government more if they used UPS or FedEx to do their shipping, I don't see why that's a problem.
        bsbechtel 10y ago
        Given that electronic mail is an order of magnitude cheaper and more efficient, it would drive the US Government to adopt it much more widely than it is used today. Your assumption that UPS or FedEx prices would remain fixed if they were to compete for additional business from the US Government isn't necessarily true either.
    - the-dude 10y ago
      15 years ago we were shipping vast quantities of our devices worldwide via 'Priority Airmail'. This is regular postal mail. The business died down and I started shipping Priority Airmail last year again for a new product. I notice in some countries quality of delivery has dropped dramatically, worse reliability and transit times. The UK for example. I talked with a customer who acknowledged my feeling and said the workers were demotivated by the restructuring which seems to last for over a decade. In The Netherlands, our former national postal service PostNL is treating its workforce in the most egregious ways of all former monopolies. Consequently I found the Russian postal service to be fast and reliable, especially considering the vast distances serviced. 15 years ago, there was some corruption in Africa, South/Middle America. Not any more.
      - bsbechtel 10y ago
        Your comment is interesting, because it points out the fact that quality does vary over time, for all types of goods and services. I think this is one of the strongest arguments for creating an environment where healthy competition exists. The reason being that if a business/organization declines in quality, competition always exists to step in and serve those whom the organization previously served. When you have government controlled monopolies, private competition is literally killed off because the private competition's tax dollars typically go to subsidize the government entity serving the same customers. This keeps prices low, but it does nothing to address the quality of the services being provided, which oftentimes degrades over time (this is partially why most Fortune 500 companies weren't on the list 20 years ago). When the government steps in and serves a group of people in the marketplace, there is rarely a mechanism to give consumers an alternative should the government entity fail to provide adequate service.
        sharemywin 10y ago
        But, is a service that is better/cheaper for 50% of the people and not available or too expensive for the rest a better outcome? For most things sure, for others that's why government programs exist.
        the-dude 10y ago
- ptero 10y ago
  IMO the purpose of public projects and services is almost always good, it's the implementation that is often the problem (so much so that when hearing about a new public project I think first about how it is likely to get screwed).
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Every so often this ends up with "everyone's equally as rich, but some are more equally rich than others".
crdoconnor 10y ago
No, usually the opposite. Greatest period of equality: 1950s Greatest period of growth: 1950s Greatest periods of inequality: 2010s/1930s Guess what?
- jbandela1 10y ago
  It is massively unfair to make comparisons to the 1950's. Basically, the USA was the only developed country with infrastructure that had not been bombed to rubble in WWII. In addition, China and India were undeveloped and just recovering from foreign occupation / colonialism. There was basically no competition for American manufacturing. Also, if you look at inequality, you have to differentiate domestic vs global inequality. The domestic inequality is higher now, but global inequality was much higher in the 1950s.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    The idea that inequality goes up with growth and growth goes down with equality was cited without a shred of supporting evidence. I presented two examples that indicated (although did not prove) that the opposite could happen. How is that massively unfair exactly? There might have been no competition for American manufacturing but that didn't automatically mean that the American middle class had to come into existence and be imbued with since unsurpassed spending power. If there were no Marshall Plan it's not like there would have been demand for American products and services either in spite of them being the sole manufacturing superpower - since other countries couldn't afford them. The decisions that imbued the middle class with spending power and gave money to Europe/Japan that enabled them to buy American products were deliberate political decisions that led not only to greater levels of equality, but greater levels of growth through higher demand.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    Don't forget that in the 1950s the US was legally (or quasi-legally) excluding huge portions of the population from the workforce. Women were only allowed to work in the "pink ghetto" (nurse, teacher, secretary) and African-Americans were locked out of high-paying union positions on the East Coast.
richmarr 10y ago
> Usually... Generalisations aside, this report doesn't seem to be about wealth being created unevenly. This report claims 5 specific ways that privatisation of services has caused life to become worse for low income and/or minority citizens.
matt4077 10y ago
There is scant evidence backing up that "usually". You obviously need some incentives for people to take risks or work hard, but no Zuckerberg or Gates or Kamprad or Ek would have been discouraged if his marginal tax rate had been 10% higher. Indeed a social safety net such as the one you could fund with such a tax increase may make it easier for people to start businesses, because they know failure wouldn't mean starvation. It's also pretty clear, that success requires more than motivation. You also need education, and access to (infrastructure/decision makers/capital/potable water ). Inequality, in the sense that the American right glorifies, stands opposite such access. The Ayn Rand crowd seems to really enjoy their phantasies of inflicting harm not only on the poor, but also descendants three generations down the road. And so you get some people to argue about "wealth creation" in a country that has created the greatest wealth ever amassed by humankind but also has major cities whose drinking water is unfit for human consumption.
- bsbechtel 10y ago
  >>There is scant evidence backing up that "usually". You obviously need some incentives for people to take risks or work hard, but no Zuckerberg or Gates or Kamprad or Ek would have been discouraged if his marginal tax rate had been 10% higher. Had Elon Musk's marginal tax rate been 10% higher, we wouldn't have Tesla or SpaceX, considering he nearly went bankrupt multiple times trying to build both companies. Your comment about drinking water is also inaccurate considering the water systems in nearly all US cities are government controlled monopolies.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    Or he would have structured his investments slightly differently to take into account the extra tax, and been fine. Or he would have gone bankrupt, but got back up again thanks to an improved social safety net. Or a better funded space program would have made greater progress on its own, and he could have focused on another aspect of his vision of colonising Mars. You can't just look at how people did under one set of circumstances and extrapolate to another.

sharemywin 10y ago

wealth creation at the expense of lower prices isn't a better outcome.

merraksh 10y ago

Or everyone's equally as rich, or well served. The purpose of a public transportation service should be to serve the whole city, not to run just the profitable courses.

digi_owl 10y ago
Bingo. Postal services were usually priced such that the high volume central routes would subsidize the more remote ones.
- bsbechtel 10y ago
  Yes, because our post office is doing great in comparison with its private competition these days.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    I can stuff a few papers in an envelope, scribble something resembling an address on the outside along with a few coins worth of stamps and leave it to be picked up without prior notification to be delivered anywhere in the country only a few days later. Maybe longer if I was particularly bad at writing the address. This is practically a super power.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    Yes, because our post office is doing great in comparison with its private competition these days. It is! The US Postal Service is required to operate under rules designed to financially destroy it (never mind that private shipping services often use USPS behind the scenes -- privatization would lower costs by making them, um, do more work and have to invest in more of their own infrastructure), and still manages to to keep working well. Make UPS or FedEx or DHL operate under even a rough facsimile of things like the USPS pension-funding requirements, and they'd issue you a tracking number for their bankruptcy proceedings.
  - paulmd 10y ago
    I don't know what world you're living in but I have a side business selling on eBay and my fiance runs an Etsy store and the Post Office's service is head-and-shoulders above that of private carriers. I suspect you don't have any experience in this area and based on your other posting you seem ideologically motivated. In practical terms, USPS package shipping rates are typically 1/2 to 1/3 of those of an equivalent service from a private carrier. It's often cheaper to send something via USPS 2-day than via UPS/Fedex ground service. Their bulk rates are even cheaper - Media Mail is usually the only cost-effective way to ship textbooks for example. And Fedex/UPS simply have no service that competes with first-class or second-class mail. In fact USPS's service is so effective that UPS and Fedex actually piggyback on their service to save money. Fedex and UPS will get the mailpiece to the local post office and the post office will handle the last-mile delivery. This is called SmartPost service and I can tell you from experience that the private carrier's involvement significantly worsens the quality of service. It often spends multiple weeks in the hands of the private carrier and I've noticed significantly more damage to mailpieces with it. They also provide subpar customer support on these packages, you cannot refuse delivery or do other basic postal operations with these packages. The opinion of the private carriers essentially seems to be that the blame will fall on the postal service so quality of service is irrelevant. Nobody is perfect, and all carriers are subject to variation in the quality of the last-mile delivery. If your USPS or UPS or FedEx guy is particularly terrible then you will get damaged packages.
    - bsbechtel 10y ago
      Yes, I do have a strong belief that environments that allow private individuals the freedom to experiment/innovate and compete with one another produce massively better outcomes. However, my comment about the USPS was based on a series of stories in the news over the past several years about their financial difficulties and the closing of numerous Post Offices in small towns across the country. Keep in mind the USPS has locked in one massive customer that continues to rely on post mail instead of electronic communication for virtually everything - the U.S. Government. So while yes, the USPS may produce better outcomes for the last-mile delivery, it is most likely being subsidized by the U.S. Government using their services to communicate virtually everything to 330 million U.S. Citizens. In that regard, UPS and Fedex are saving money off the back of taxpayers when they use the USPS to deliver packages to homes beyond their most profitable routes.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    How much of that is because of gutting by the people in charge? I seem to recall that British Railways was privatized basically by having politicians cut funding, then claim privatization would fix the problems that underfunding was producing...
    - UK-AL 10y ago
      If you actually look at the data though, the railways are actually better. They're more likely to be on time, and have higher customer satisfaction.
      - crdoconnor 10y ago
        Yes, when you ask people "and how are things apart from the eye watering, wallet haemorrhaging, income annihilating cost?" they're mildly positive about the railways. Mildly.
        UK-AL 10y ago
        Thats because that what it costs to get it up scratch. Taxes distribute the burden across everyone, and can be politically hard to get through. Privatization puts the burden on the people who use it.
        crdoconnor 10y ago
        Check your facts. They were and still are massively subsidized. Supplying the profit margins of the train operating companies were made the burden of people who use it.
        ptaipale 10y ago
        Actually, British passengers seem to be the second-most happy railway users within EU. [0] I'm from the happiest country of railway users (Finland), and I can tell you that also here, lots of people complain about the national railway service, both about reliability, speed and price. ([1] is a joke on announcements of VR, the train operator, about four seasonal outages in train service due to spring, summer, autumns and winter (clockwise).) And the (government-owned) railway company here offers train travel that is more expensive than in Britain (just checked my most recent trip, 37 € is the cheapest fare for a 250 km distance that is equivalent to London-Manchester). [0] http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_382a_sum_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_382a_sum_en.pdf [1] http://www.riemurasia.net/kuva/Juna-kulkee/176387 http://www.riemurasia.net/kuva/Juna-kulkee/176387
  - creshal 10y ago
    Actually it is in many countries. Sending a package from Germany to Austria via UPS takes longer than a package from Japan via Japan/Austrian state posts, despite customs inspection in the middle. More reliable, too.
    - bsbechtel 10y ago
      UPS is not particularly strong on international shipping. Is your example because those post offices are actually more efficient, or because there are bureaucratic roadblocks slowing down UPS (a U.S. based carrier)?
      - creshal 10y ago
        > or because there are bureaucratic roadblocks slowing down UPS (a U.S. based carrier)? No, the market is fully deregulated. GLS (Dutch) isn't any better either.
  - chrisbennet 10y ago
    Actually, they are. They perform a public good while not consuming public dollars. Oh, you didn't know that they self funded? https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/top-10-things-to-know.htm https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/top-10-things...
    - bsbechtel 10y ago
      Not quite. Read my other comment above in this thread. When you have the US Government locked in as a customer, and that customer continues to rely on you for the majority of their communication instead of moving to electronic communications, you are relying on taxpayer dollars to pay for those stamps that fund your operations.
      - hx87 10y ago
        Given that it would cost the US government more if they used UPS or FedEx to do their shipping, I don't see why that's a problem.
        bsbechtel 10y ago
        Given that electronic mail is an order of magnitude cheaper and more efficient, it would drive the US Government to adopt it much more widely than it is used today. Your assumption that UPS or FedEx prices would remain fixed if they were to compete for additional business from the US Government isn't necessarily true either.
  - the-dude 10y ago
    15 years ago we were shipping vast quantities of our devices worldwide via 'Priority Airmail'. This is regular postal mail. The business died down and I started shipping Priority Airmail last year again for a new product. I notice in some countries quality of delivery has dropped dramatically, worse reliability and transit times. The UK for example. I talked with a customer who acknowledged my feeling and said the workers were demotivated by the restructuring which seems to last for over a decade. In The Netherlands, our former national postal service PostNL is treating its workforce in the most egregious ways of all former monopolies. Consequently I found the Russian postal service to be fast and reliable, especially considering the vast distances serviced. 15 years ago, there was some corruption in Africa, South/Middle America. Not any more.
    - bsbechtel 10y ago
      Your comment is interesting, because it points out the fact that quality does vary over time, for all types of goods and services. I think this is one of the strongest arguments for creating an environment where healthy competition exists. The reason being that if a business/organization declines in quality, competition always exists to step in and serve those whom the organization previously served. When you have government controlled monopolies, private competition is literally killed off because the private competition's tax dollars typically go to subsidize the government entity serving the same customers. This keeps prices low, but it does nothing to address the quality of the services being provided, which oftentimes degrades over time (this is partially why most Fortune 500 companies weren't on the list 20 years ago). When the government steps in and serves a group of people in the marketplace, there is rarely a mechanism to give consumers an alternative should the government entity fail to provide adequate service.
      - sharemywin 10y ago
        But, is a service that is better/cheaper for 50% of the people and not available or too expensive for the rest a better outcome? For most things sure, for others that's why government programs exist.
      - the-dude 10y ago
ptero 10y ago
IMO the purpose of public projects and services is almost always good, it's the implementation that is often the problem (so much so that when hearing about a new public project I think first about how it is likely to get screwed).
ptaipale 10y ago
Every so often this ends up with "everyone's equally as rich, but some are more equally rich than others".

crdoconnor 10y ago

No, usually the opposite. Greatest period of equality: 1950s Greatest period of growth: 1950s Greatest periods of inequality: 2010s/1930s Guess what?

jbandela1 10y ago
It is massively unfair to make comparisons to the 1950's. Basically, the USA was the only developed country with infrastructure that had not been bombed to rubble in WWII. In addition, China and India were undeveloped and just recovering from foreign occupation / colonialism. There was basically no competition for American manufacturing. Also, if you look at inequality, you have to differentiate domestic vs global inequality. The domestic inequality is higher now, but global inequality was much higher in the 1950s.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  The idea that inequality goes up with growth and growth goes down with equality was cited without a shred of supporting evidence. I presented two examples that indicated (although did not prove) that the opposite could happen. How is that massively unfair exactly? There might have been no competition for American manufacturing but that didn't automatically mean that the American middle class had to come into existence and be imbued with since unsurpassed spending power. If there were no Marshall Plan it's not like there would have been demand for American products and services either in spite of them being the sole manufacturing superpower - since other countries couldn't afford them. The decisions that imbued the middle class with spending power and gave money to Europe/Japan that enabled them to buy American products were deliberate political decisions that led not only to greater levels of equality, but greater levels of growth through higher demand.
- coredog64 10y ago
  Don't forget that in the 1950s the US was legally (or quasi-legally) excluding huge portions of the population from the workforce. Women were only allowed to work in the "pink ghetto" (nurse, teacher, secretary) and African-Americans were locked out of high-paying union positions on the East Coast.

richmarr 10y ago

> Usually... Generalisations aside, this report doesn't seem to be about wealth being created unevenly. This report claims 5 specific ways that privatisation of services has caused life to become worse for low income and/or minority citizens.

matt4077 10y ago

There is scant evidence backing up that "usually". You obviously need some incentives for people to take risks or work hard, but no Zuckerberg or Gates or Kamprad or Ek would have been discouraged if his marginal tax rate had been 10% higher. Indeed a social safety net such as the one you could fund with such a tax increase may make it easier for people to start businesses, because they know failure wouldn't mean starvation. It's also pretty clear, that success requires more than motivation. You also need education, and access to (infrastructure/decision makers/capital/potable water ). Inequality, in the sense that the American right glorifies, stands opposite such access. The Ayn Rand crowd seems to really enjoy their phantasies of inflicting harm not only on the poor, but also descendants three generations down the road. And so you get some people to argue about "wealth creation" in a country that has created the greatest wealth ever amassed by humankind but also has major cities whose drinking water is unfit for human consumption.

bsbechtel 10y ago
>>There is scant evidence backing up that "usually". You obviously need some incentives for people to take risks or work hard, but no Zuckerberg or Gates or Kamprad or Ek would have been discouraged if his marginal tax rate had been 10% higher. Had Elon Musk's marginal tax rate been 10% higher, we wouldn't have Tesla or SpaceX, considering he nearly went bankrupt multiple times trying to build both companies. Your comment about drinking water is also inaccurate considering the water systems in nearly all US cities are government controlled monopolies.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  Or he would have structured his investments slightly differently to take into account the extra tax, and been fine. Or he would have gone bankrupt, but got back up again thanks to an improved social safety net. Or a better funded space program would have made greater progress on its own, and he could have focused on another aspect of his vision of colonising Mars. You can't just look at how people did under one set of circumstances and extrapolate to another.