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Simple thought experiment. There are plenty of markets that are mostly private. All have some regulation, but some markets are mostly left alone. Let's pick o

Simple thought experiment. There are plenty of markets that are mostly private. All have some regulation, but some markets are mostly left alone. Let's pick one. How about pickles? If my local government wanted each of it's citizens to have a jar of pickles, what would be the best way to do that? I'd argue that a gift card to Amazon for pickles handed out is probably the easiest way. They don't get into the produce business, they don't get into the warehousing or distribution business, they just hand out gift cards. Somebody else -- who is really good at that other stuff, by the way, handles the rest. This is what every enterprise learns: stick to what you do best. Let everybody else to do the same. So obviously strict product movement and provisioning, such as municipal water and electric services, are solved problems. There is no value added here based on who is doing what. Social services, on the other hand, is a mess of nuance and policy. It's not a solved, commoditized problem, so it doesn't make sense to have somebody else do it. If your local government does their social services well, it's something they've been tweaking for quite some time. We don't need to continue the thought experiment any further. "privitization increases inequality" is far too broad of a statement, since easy examples are found both supporting it and opposing it. Some further narrowing of terms is required for this to have enough meaning to discuss.

sharemywin 10y ago
vouchers don't work over the long haul. look at education prices have skyrockets. health care skyrockets. I think you need "normalized pricing" were the government pays X% based on income. So, that hospitals cost 3 times as much as doctors visits but if your really poor maybe its $9 instead of $3 or something.
- sharemywin 10y ago
  or as in your pickle example the government doesn't contract with 1 pickle company and you only get that pickle choice.
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  Vouchers do not work for things that you have to have, are only purchased from a limited number of suppliers, and there is no feedback mechanism in place. Contrast my pickle story with another scenario: the local government announces that everybody must keep a jar of a certain kind of pickles at home. To facilitate that, vouchers will be provided to purchase these pickles from a vendor/distributor. Can you imagine how that'd work out? I can. Pickles would soon be costing 100 bucks a jar. And they'd contain one pickle if you were lucky.
pessimizer 10y ago
> I'd argue that a gift card to Amazon for pickles handed out is probably the easiest way. They don't get into the produce business, they don't get into the warehousing or distribution business, they just hand out gift cards. Somebody else -- who is really good at that other stuff, by the way, handles the rest. I'd argue that if you did that, one hedge fund would buy up all of the pickle producers, fund a bunch of research saying that children needed at least 3 pickles a day, buy a bunch of lobbyists to insist that the government provide at least 20 pickles a week for each poor child (to allow them to compete fairly with their pickle-rich brethren), and then raise the price of pickles to $20 a piece. Government cheese is the counterexample. edit: explicitly; Government wants all people to have cheese. Government decides what qualities it wants that cheese to have, government goes to cheesemakers and asks for that cheese while figuring out how much it would cost to go into the cheesemaking itself. If any number of cheesemakers can provide cheese to the standard for less than the government can produce cheese, they are all given contracts to produce cheese. If they do not, the government produces cheese. The government gives cheese to people. Depending on how well cheese can be warehoused, government uses the timing of cheese purchases to support private cheesemaker production capacity when cheese market is weak.
jhoechtl 10y ago
But you have one fundamental flaw in your otherwise compelling idea. > If my local government wanted each of it's citizens to have a jar of pickles, what would be the best way to do that? The government want's everyone to have a jar of pickles. For what reason ever. They might increase inteligence on the long run? Contrived, but let's go on. If you provide gift cards, some will buy a jar of pickles. Some will buy a game for a gaming console. Some will buy dog food. You see the problem? The idea is or was that everybody should get a jar of pickles but now everybody get's what he wants. For most of the time getting what you wan't is good but be frank: You seldom get what you want because for the bigger part of it you do not know what you want. It's advertisment and clever selling strategies which make you think you need something. So the government policy was to get a jar of pickles, planted by local farmers. Instead you buy a game produced in !?!?. Target missed.
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  You touch on a really deep problem. One that poisons political discussion. People vote for outcomes. Politicians make up various programs and policies promising these outcomes. This is why my pickle example was purposely contrived: it's a thing. You get it or you don't. There is a clear success criteria. We have a lot of things in the world like pickles. I don't go to the store looking for pickles and come back with a game. I want it, they have it, I push a button, now I have it. But once you start selling me feelings? There's no end to it. This is like hiring consultants without clear deliverables, timelines, or accountability. You're always going to get something, but most of the time it's just regurgitated policy promising to fix things you have been talking about that need fixing. I want it, they don't have it (it might not exist in this universe), I push a button, and now I have a bunch of reasons why it didn't work and why I need to push 7 more buttons to get what I actually wanted. I really don't want to go there in the current political climate. There are far too many button-sellers and people desperately wanting all sorts of ill-defined and perhaps ephemeral things. So all I've got is pickles. If you understand why pickles work one way and social services work another? Then we can move one step forward and continue the analysis. Quite frankly a lot of people won't be able to take that first step. (I guess if I believed I could push a button and get something really awesome, I wouldn't want to take that first step either.)

sharemywin 10y ago

vouchers don't work over the long haul. look at education prices have skyrockets. health care skyrockets. I think you need "normalized pricing" were the government pays X% based on income. So, that hospitals cost 3 times as much as doctors visits but if your really poor maybe its $9 instead of $3 or something.

sharemywin 10y ago
or as in your pickle example the government doesn't contract with 1 pickle company and you only get that pickle choice.
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
Vouchers do not work for things that you have to have, are only purchased from a limited number of suppliers, and there is no feedback mechanism in place. Contrast my pickle story with another scenario: the local government announces that everybody must keep a jar of a certain kind of pickles at home. To facilitate that, vouchers will be provided to purchase these pickles from a vendor/distributor. Can you imagine how that'd work out? I can. Pickles would soon be costing 100 bucks a jar. And they'd contain one pickle if you were lucky.

pessimizer 10y ago

> I'd argue that a gift card to Amazon for pickles handed out is probably the easiest way. They don't get into the produce business, they don't get into the warehousing or distribution business, they just hand out gift cards. Somebody else -- who is really good at that other stuff, by the way, handles the rest. I'd argue that if you did that, one hedge fund would buy up all of the pickle producers, fund a bunch of research saying that children needed at least 3 pickles a day, buy a bunch of lobbyists to insist that the government provide at least 20 pickles a week for each poor child (to allow them to compete fairly with their pickle-rich brethren), and then raise the price of pickles to $20 a piece. Government cheese is the counterexample. edit: explicitly; Government wants all people to have cheese. Government decides what qualities it wants that cheese to have, government goes to cheesemakers and asks for that cheese while figuring out how much it would cost to go into the cheesemaking itself. If any number of cheesemakers can provide cheese to the standard for less than the government can produce cheese, they are all given contracts to produce cheese. If they do not, the government produces cheese. The government gives cheese to people. Depending on how well cheese can be warehoused, government uses the timing of cheese purchases to support private cheesemaker production capacity when cheese market is weak.

jhoechtl 10y ago

But you have one fundamental flaw in your otherwise compelling idea. > If my local government wanted each of it's citizens to have a jar of pickles, what would be the best way to do that? The government want's everyone to have a jar of pickles. For what reason ever. They might increase inteligence on the long run? Contrived, but let's go on. If you provide gift cards, some will buy a jar of pickles. Some will buy a game for a gaming console. Some will buy dog food. You see the problem? The idea is or was that everybody should get a jar of pickles but now everybody get's what he wants. For most of the time getting what you wan't is good but be frank: You seldom get what you want because for the bigger part of it you do not know what you want. It's advertisment and clever selling strategies which make you think you need something. So the government policy was to get a jar of pickles, planted by local farmers. Instead you buy a game produced in !?!?. Target missed.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
You touch on a really deep problem. One that poisons political discussion. People vote for outcomes. Politicians make up various programs and policies promising these outcomes. This is why my pickle example was purposely contrived: it's a thing. You get it or you don't. There is a clear success criteria. We have a lot of things in the world like pickles. I don't go to the store looking for pickles and come back with a game. I want it, they have it, I push a button, now I have it. But once you start selling me feelings? There's no end to it. This is like hiring consultants without clear deliverables, timelines, or accountability. You're always going to get something, but most of the time it's just regurgitated policy promising to fix things you have been talking about that need fixing. I want it, they don't have it (it might not exist in this universe), I push a button, and now I have a bunch of reasons why it didn't work and why I need to push 7 more buttons to get what I actually wanted. I really don't want to go there in the current political climate. There are far too many button-sellers and people desperately wanting all sorts of ill-defined and perhaps ephemeral things. So all I've got is pickles. If you understand why pickles work one way and social services work another? Then we can move one step forward and continue the analysis. Quite frankly a lot of people won't be able to take that first step. (I guess if I believed I could push a button and get something really awesome, I wouldn't want to take that first step either.)