9 ms·

Earlier (30+ yrs ago) a view accepted by most was that commercial companies deliver services much more efficiently than governments and bureaucracies. Profits a

by ptero 10y ago

Earlier (30+ yrs ago) a view accepted by most was that commercial companies deliver services much more efficiently than governments and bureaucracies. Profits and all, it is still cheaper for government to buy something than to develop it. That mindset seems to have changed. I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now, governments and non-profits are more efficient or is this purely a perception shift.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> That mindset seems to have changed. I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now No, its just that -- with the 1980s and beyond push for privatizing governments services -- we now have experience as well as pro-corporate astract theory. And while experience has sometimes shown some benefits, its shown a lot of problems with privatization, as well. (Including that it often promotes a particularly intense, single-beneficiary variation on regulatory capture.)
- mc32 10y ago
  Governments could run things more efficiently, perhaps, if they only had the service in mind, but you have to figure in union effects. That means no easy allocation of resources, pensions, oversight, need to accommodate many different interests within government, etc. So in the end, it can be cheaper for a for-profit or a non-profit to run rather than a gov itself.
  - maxsilver 10y ago
    I don't see why that's a problem. Your comment basically reads: "Governments could run things more efficiently, perhaps, but you have to figure in that they'll treat employees with a minimum level of respect and dignity". Unions and pensions and oversight are good things that help ensure people are treated fairly (or at least, better than they otherwise would be). I want my tax dollars spent giving locals a decent retirement, and not going into some California VC's portfolio. And "no easy allocation of resources" strikes me as a good thing as well. This is public infrastructure. People depend on this for their daily lives. The last thing we want is for it to be easily unallocated.
    - mc32 10y ago
      The US versions of unions (not speaking to Canadian unions) are very antagonistic and not so much cooperative that means they will drive the department into the ground before they acquiesce to anything. So for example, if the demographics of the community change such that transportation needs change, or technology changes (automation of many kinds) meaning fewer employees needed or different kinds of employees are needed, it becomes hard to reflect those needs in the workforce because of the union agreements.
notatoad 10y ago
more people need to spend time working for the government, to understand why government-run services aren't always the best way to do things.
prostoalex 10y ago
> That mindset seems to have changed. I dunno. State schools are only sometimes and somewhat cheaper than private counterparts, USPS is sometimes better in terms of price + speed, but many times it loses to UPS and FedEx, and anyone extolling the virtue of government-run service should get an option to change their medical provider to a VA hospital and report back in a few years.
- siidooloo 10y ago
  The VA hospitals arn't the only government run healthcare in the world. Some others are good, some are bad. As with everything reducing the options down to two political choices just seems to makeveryone stop thinking about creative ways to solve problems. The uber thing is a good choice for Innisfil. They wouldn't have the money to roll their own ride share, and they can't afford the infrastructure to create a bus system.
  - kennywinker 10y ago
    I'm a little more skeptical than you. I think it's interesting they are trying this, but uber being a good choice? We'll see. How many drivers sign up? Are rides available when needed? etc. Uber has shown they replace taxis pretty well, but have they shown they can replace public transit? Let's find out...
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    The VA hospital example is an interesting one. I was at a town hall with Lindsey Graham where he used it as an argument against universal public healthcare. And clearly, no one wants universal public healthcare to be like the VA system -- where there are a limited number of understaffed government-run hospitals, and you get no choice as to your doctors. But the interesting thing is that absolutely no one is proposing that; what's being proposed is Medicare-for-all, where you get your choice of providers (pretty much any existing provider), and you pay the government for low-overhead insurance through your taxes. It's kind of a really obvious rhetorical bait and switch, but it seems to resonate with people.
- eastWestMath 10y ago
unsigner 10y ago
Perception, part of the neverending shift of society/culture leftwards. Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left.
ProblemFactory 10y ago
> commercial companies deliver services much more efficiently than governments and bureaucracies. That is often true, but the efficiency comes from competition in a free market, not the ownership of the service provider. The government usually has a monopoly, so there is little pressure to be efficient other than the personal motivation of some government employees to improve life in their city. If there are instead 5 service providers who compete for customers, then they are forced to be efficient or lose their business. But if there is just one commercial company with an effective monopoly - due to mergers between all providers in an area, poorly structured contracts, or plain old corruption - then there is no pressure to be efficient either.
usrusr 10y ago
In addition to the other excellent answers, one piece of the puzzle is that back in the 1980ies, privatization meant local businesses or at least local branches of nationals or internationals. Offices would be built or rented, people employed, the whole snowball effect. Contrast this with today's digital services: if Uber gets rich providing hailing intermediation, all that wealth goes straight to the headquarter, with the local economy getting nothing besides the drivers' share which Uber will inevitably push down to subsistence level. Local inefficiency on the other hand would at least keep the money circulating locally.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  Good point. It's the same with companies like Walmart. All the gains in efficiency go to headquarters. The locals don't benefit.
dahauns 10y ago
> I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now No. Stuff like UK rail privatization or US electricity deregulation happened. It's just that today, even in die-hard free market countries, people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time.
- dnautics 10y ago
  > people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time. It's too bad. Because singapore, which arguably has the world's best (or maybe second best, after Seoul) public transit system, is basically an entirely privatized system.
  - snaily 10y ago
    Wait, what? While the Singapore MRT (subway, metro) system is top-tier (along with Seoul and Hong Kong) it is not a deregulated free market wet dream. The public Land Transport Authority built and still owns most of the assets, and enacts strong regulation for the duopoly of service providers (SBS and SMRT) - not only on service levels, but also on operational processes. Even so, there's awkward UX quirks on the boundaries between lines run by the different companies. If anything, the Singapore MRT runs closer in spirit to a US taxicab system - that is, surprisingly regulated on a global scale.
    - dnautics 10y ago
      You are conflating unregulated with privatized, these are related but totally different concepts.
  - sfifs 10y ago
    It's is merely privatized in name. They're basically owned by the government. Shareholding just passed from one government body to another.
    - dnautics 10y ago
pikzen 10y ago
In the US, maybe. It has since been proved time and time again that replacing government workers with private entities provides a worse service, which is more expensive. You literally cannot make something more profitable than the government. More efficient, yes, but since it has no profitability goal, it's effectively perfect in that regard. Improve your services, don't privatize them.
- quickben 10y ago
  Except in this case. As far as I know Uber is still subsidizing every ride to gain adoption. The town is just using the free subsidy, in a way.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  You are absolutely right and public private partnerships are often the worst of both worlds. You get the lack of accountability of a private company with the lack of competition of the government option.
- dagw 10y ago
  I've worked for several companies that bid on government contracts, and I've seen several cases where companies will offer do a job at a loss because they think that winning the contract will have a secondary effects that will let them make up the loss later.

by ptero 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> That mindset seems to have changed. I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now No, its just that -- with the 1980s and beyond push for privatizing governments services -- we now have experience as well as pro-corporate astract theory. And while experience has sometimes shown some benefits, its shown a lot of problems with privatization, as well. (Including that it often promotes a particularly intense, single-beneficiary variation on regulatory capture.)

mc32 10y ago
Governments could run things more efficiently, perhaps, if they only had the service in mind, but you have to figure in union effects. That means no easy allocation of resources, pensions, oversight, need to accommodate many different interests within government, etc. So in the end, it can be cheaper for a for-profit or a non-profit to run rather than a gov itself.
- maxsilver 10y ago
  I don't see why that's a problem. Your comment basically reads: "Governments could run things more efficiently, perhaps, but you have to figure in that they'll treat employees with a minimum level of respect and dignity". Unions and pensions and oversight are good things that help ensure people are treated fairly (or at least, better than they otherwise would be). I want my tax dollars spent giving locals a decent retirement, and not going into some California VC's portfolio. And "no easy allocation of resources" strikes me as a good thing as well. This is public infrastructure. People depend on this for their daily lives. The last thing we want is for it to be easily unallocated.
  - mc32 10y ago
    The US versions of unions (not speaking to Canadian unions) are very antagonistic and not so much cooperative that means they will drive the department into the ground before they acquiesce to anything. So for example, if the demographics of the community change such that transportation needs change, or technology changes (automation of many kinds) meaning fewer employees needed or different kinds of employees are needed, it becomes hard to reflect those needs in the workforce because of the union agreements.

notatoad 10y ago

more people need to spend time working for the government, to understand why government-run services aren't always the best way to do things.

prostoalex 10y ago

> That mindset seems to have changed. I dunno. State schools are only sometimes and somewhat cheaper than private counterparts, USPS is sometimes better in terms of price + speed, but many times it loses to UPS and FedEx, and anyone extolling the virtue of government-run service should get an option to change their medical provider to a VA hospital and report back in a few years.

siidooloo 10y ago
The VA hospitals arn't the only government run healthcare in the world. Some others are good, some are bad. As with everything reducing the options down to two political choices just seems to makeveryone stop thinking about creative ways to solve problems. The uber thing is a good choice for Innisfil. They wouldn't have the money to roll their own ride share, and they can't afford the infrastructure to create a bus system.
- kennywinker 10y ago
  I'm a little more skeptical than you. I think it's interesting they are trying this, but uber being a good choice? We'll see. How many drivers sign up? Are rides available when needed? etc. Uber has shown they replace taxis pretty well, but have they shown they can replace public transit? Let's find out...
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  The VA hospital example is an interesting one. I was at a town hall with Lindsey Graham where he used it as an argument against universal public healthcare. And clearly, no one wants universal public healthcare to be like the VA system -- where there are a limited number of understaffed government-run hospitals, and you get no choice as to your doctors. But the interesting thing is that absolutely no one is proposing that; what's being proposed is Medicare-for-all, where you get your choice of providers (pretty much any existing provider), and you pay the government for low-overhead insurance through your taxes. It's kind of a really obvious rhetorical bait and switch, but it seems to resonate with people.
eastWestMath 10y ago

unsigner 10y ago

Perception, part of the neverending shift of society/culture leftwards. Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left.

ProblemFactory 10y ago

> commercial companies deliver services much more efficiently than governments and bureaucracies. That is often true, but the efficiency comes from competition in a free market, not the ownership of the service provider. The government usually has a monopoly, so there is little pressure to be efficient other than the personal motivation of some government employees to improve life in their city. If there are instead 5 service providers who compete for customers, then they are forced to be efficient or lose their business. But if there is just one commercial company with an effective monopoly - due to mergers between all providers in an area, poorly structured contracts, or plain old corruption - then there is no pressure to be efficient either.

usrusr 10y ago

In addition to the other excellent answers, one piece of the puzzle is that back in the 1980ies, privatization meant local businesses or at least local branches of nationals or internationals. Offices would be built or rented, people employed, the whole snowball effect. Contrast this with today's digital services: if Uber gets rich providing hailing intermediation, all that wealth goes straight to the headquarter, with the local economy getting nothing besides the drivers' share which Uber will inevitably push down to subsistence level. Local inefficiency on the other hand would at least keep the money circulating locally.

maxxxxx 10y ago
Good point. It's the same with companies like Walmart. All the gains in efficiency go to headquarters. The locals don't benefit.

dahauns 10y ago

> I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now No. Stuff like UK rail privatization or US electricity deregulation happened. It's just that today, even in die-hard free market countries, people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time.

dnautics 10y ago
> people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time. It's too bad. Because singapore, which arguably has the world's best (or maybe second best, after Seoul) public transit system, is basically an entirely privatized system.
- snaily 10y ago
  Wait, what? While the Singapore MRT (subway, metro) system is top-tier (along with Seoul and Hong Kong) it is not a deregulated free market wet dream. The public Land Transport Authority built and still owns most of the assets, and enacts strong regulation for the duopoly of service providers (SBS and SMRT) - not only on service levels, but also on operational processes. Even so, there's awkward UX quirks on the boundaries between lines run by the different companies. If anything, the Singapore MRT runs closer in spirit to a US taxicab system - that is, surprisingly regulated on a global scale.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    You are conflating unregulated with privatized, these are related but totally different concepts.
- sfifs 10y ago
  It's is merely privatized in name. They're basically owned by the government. Shareholding just passed from one government body to another.
  - dnautics 10y ago

pikzen 10y ago

In the US, maybe. It has since been proved time and time again that replacing government workers with private entities provides a worse service, which is more expensive. You literally cannot make something more profitable than the government. More efficient, yes, but since it has no profitability goal, it's effectively perfect in that regard. Improve your services, don't privatize them.

quickben 10y ago
Except in this case. As far as I know Uber is still subsidizing every ride to gain adoption. The town is just using the free subsidy, in a way.
michaelmrose 10y ago
You are absolutely right and public private partnerships are often the worst of both worlds. You get the lack of accountability of a private company with the lack of competition of the government option.
dagw 10y ago
I've worked for several companies that bid on government contracts, and I've seen several cases where companies will offer do a job at a loss because they think that winning the contract will have a secondary effects that will let them make up the loss later.