5 ms·

> The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make t

by grecy 8y ago

> The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make tax filing as easy as it should be You know this applies to pretty much every service in the US right? A company wants to make massive profits, so it just lobbies and buys the laws it wants. Healthcare, private prisons, banking, "security" (TSA), education, transport, etc. etc. etc. If you were king for a day, I hope you'd fix a lot more than just doing taxes.

cr0sh 8y ago
I don't know why, but all of this "privatization" bugs the hell out of me. Maybe it has something to with wanting to see my taxes being used properly, rather than going to a private company's profits. Maybe it's the abstraction; that'd I like to know that the workers I see doing the work for the government are government employees, and that I am, in some small way, helping them? I mean, sure, with a private company that's still a thing - but maybe I also like seeing road crews with the city's emblem and such working on issues - not a private company doing it? You know that here in the USA, there is virtually a single private company that handles emergency and construction signage in every state? When you see signs out that say "Road Construction Ahead" or the flashing signs on trailers, or even just some construction cones - all of those are owned and placed by virtually one company? The name of the company is "United Rentals" - and while if you look on the back of those signs they may have different company names printed on them, when you call the number, it will always patch you through to the United Rentals phone bank/answering service. You might call "Bob's Signs" - but United Rentals will answer. We can't even handle placing road signs out using public means and employees. I'm sure somewhere in all of this, it was done as part of the whole process of breaking up (public) worker's unions.
- fifnir 8y ago
  > I don't know why You know exactly why it bugs you and you're absolutely right. I think what's confusing is how can other people NOT see these huge problems
- j_m_b 8y ago
  Ahh yes the classic "muh roads" comment.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  United and Sunbelt rent out basically everything you need for a construction business. Think of it as spinning up more instances in the cloud. It's actually often cheaper after taxes to rent than to own, especially if you need 10mi of traffic barrels but only for the duration of the project. Since construction is highly seasonal it makes sense that a lot of the stuff you need on a per-job basis is owned by a few central rental companies. I bet if you tracked individual items you'd see them migrate north in the summer and south in the winter.
- kristopolous 8y ago
  Many are convinced that paying the workers, the lobbyists, shareholders, board of directors, and contract overhead is cheaper than just paying the workers directly. I've been investigating why people think this for years. I've read a number of books, listened to lectures, went to proseminars in economics at UC schools, took some classes ... Recently, I've become increasingly convinced it's actually just a giant hustle. It's an elaborate ploy that makes people money. Things like Demand Theory or the Efficient Market Hypothesis are modern astrology psuedo-sciences with real world evidence that's incidental or statistically insignificant at best. This is especially true for the second-order implications like privatization. There's no persuasive material evidence of the purported theory that privatization is more efficient. The most favorable evidence from the supporters (for instance, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition by Bent Flyvbjerg he has 3 more on the topic) say that private and public projects are about the same. They go over budget about the same and fail about the same. Other more critical quantitative studies show dramatically better outcomes for publicly controlled systems - look at Oxfam studies for instance. There's also a lot of evidence that the private systems however mint millionaires who make an absolute killing off the taxpayer. Just like 500 years ago how religious people controlled the narrative and set up the rules of society and "laws of nature" to basically be giant money trees for them, there's a new class of people who have done the same thing. Recently I've been studying where this economic school originated from (essentially Chicago Boys style) and what was driving it. I haven't found any serious scholarly work on it beyond things written by journalists. The journalists track it to various organizations that formed after the new deal (each author has a different boogeyman) but the narrative is essentially the same: create think tanks, pack the colleges with favorable people, witch hunt the critics through red/left/whatever baiting, silence alternative views, create a media through movies, news, and television that support this view and so on. Not because it's accurate, right, or correct - but because it makes them a lot of cash. The narrative actually changes. Groups like the Heritage foundation or the American Enterprise Institute move their goalposts constantly over the years and defend it on supposedly principled economic grounds. The problem is that you can often find, such as in healthcare, documents where they make multiple fundamentally contradictory arguments because the underlying market mechanics they defend are pliable devices of convenience to push the agenda of making private capital and that's literally it. There's nothing deeper, nothing more fundamental. It's a giant hustle.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- spaginal 8y ago
  It’s done because private industry in most circumstances, does it better than government can, and at the end of the day it can be significantly cheaper and less of a boondoggle than if government did it all themselves as government likes to do. Think of the professional experience, supply chain, and logistics for each industry where you could theoretically involve government to control or produce on it’s own. The error of rolling everything possible under the sun into a government department, like sign laying, is you get a sign placer sitting around making a unionized $60k-$90k/year (for a $35k-$40k/year actual job), with a massive retirement pension that you will continue to pay for forever, a huge tax bill to cover the storage of all of these signs that the government has sitting around on a dirt lot somewhere, because they have zero incentive to rent them out and make money on them while not in use, and crumbling infastructure when the entire cost of the government does all attitude sucks the tax base and economy dry. United Rentals, as a private company, has a vested interest in running their company efficiently, renting out a maximimum share of their inventory for the most profit, and their profit derived from this is not immoral behavior because it saves all of us money at the end of the day and employs a lot of people along the way. This is one more thing we won’t have to worry about the government screwing up as tax payers. Now, let’s say a senator wrote a convoluted law that made it so only United Rentals can supply signs for government projects, cost be damned. That’s a more valid argument for moving it under government control if there is corruption and rent seeking behavior going on.
  - romwell 8y ago
    >you get a sign placer sitting around making a unionized $60k-$90k/year (for a $35k-$40k/year actual job) >United Rentals, as a private company, has a vested interest in running their company efficiently Indeed! So instead of the above, you get a non-unionized Joe the Sign Placer getting $25K/year for actual job (efficiency!), and Bob the CEO/Shareholder netting $25M/year of the difference. The government doesn't spend any less though, because: 1)Bob is the only game in town (at least as far as govt. contracts are concerned) 2)Bob pays the government for it to continue that way >Now, let’s say a senator wrote a convoluted law that made it so only United Rentals can supply signs for government projects, cost be damned. That’s a more valid argument for moving it under government control if there is corruption and rent seeking behavior going on. My only nitpick for this would be replacing "if" with "because".
mola 8y ago
The sad thing is that this is being exported across democracies around the world. This subversion of the democratic process would probably bring to its demise. And the waters are so muddled with identity politics and false enemies ("Bolsheviks") that we can't even have civilized discusssions on this problem. Sad state of affairs.
rayiner 8y ago
Almost all prisons are public. (Private prisons are illegal in some of the states, like New York, with the worst records of prisoner abuse.) TSA is a big public agency. Transportation infrastructure is almost entirely public. Education is almost entirely public.
ljm 8y ago
I believe this is a consequence of treating a financial policy as a religion or otherwise a fundamental truth. Everything is so much about money and accumulation that it subsumes everything else. I can’t see another reason why the lessons we learned from capitalism in the booming 20s and the following crash have very quickly been unlearned, as if the free market is a perfectly just and omnipresent force. Couple it with the utterly rabid obsession around communism and socialism, which might as well be swear words. This logic only holds true if you are the benefactor (one of the wealthy) or you think that you will become one.

by grecy 8y ago

cr0sh 8y ago

I don't know why, but all of this "privatization" bugs the hell out of me. Maybe it has something to with wanting to see my taxes being used properly, rather than going to a private company's profits. Maybe it's the abstraction; that'd I like to know that the workers I see doing the work for the government are government employees, and that I am, in some small way, helping them? I mean, sure, with a private company that's still a thing - but maybe I also like seeing road crews with the city's emblem and such working on issues - not a private company doing it? You know that here in the USA, there is virtually a single private company that handles emergency and construction signage in every state? When you see signs out that say "Road Construction Ahead" or the flashing signs on trailers, or even just some construction cones - all of those are owned and placed by virtually one company? The name of the company is "United Rentals" - and while if you look on the back of those signs they may have different company names printed on them, when you call the number, it will always patch you through to the United Rentals phone bank/answering service. You might call "Bob's Signs" - but United Rentals will answer. We can't even handle placing road signs out using public means and employees. I'm sure somewhere in all of this, it was done as part of the whole process of breaking up (public) worker's unions.

fifnir 8y ago
> I don't know why You know exactly why it bugs you and you're absolutely right. I think what's confusing is how can other people NOT see these huge problems
j_m_b 8y ago
Ahh yes the classic "muh roads" comment.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
United and Sunbelt rent out basically everything you need for a construction business. Think of it as spinning up more instances in the cloud. It's actually often cheaper after taxes to rent than to own, especially if you need 10mi of traffic barrels but only for the duration of the project. Since construction is highly seasonal it makes sense that a lot of the stuff you need on a per-job basis is owned by a few central rental companies. I bet if you tracked individual items you'd see them migrate north in the summer and south in the winter.
kristopolous 8y ago
Many are convinced that paying the workers, the lobbyists, shareholders, board of directors, and contract overhead is cheaper than just paying the workers directly. I've been investigating why people think this for years. I've read a number of books, listened to lectures, went to proseminars in economics at UC schools, took some classes ... Recently, I've become increasingly convinced it's actually just a giant hustle. It's an elaborate ploy that makes people money. Things like Demand Theory or the Efficient Market Hypothesis are modern astrology psuedo-sciences with real world evidence that's incidental or statistically insignificant at best. This is especially true for the second-order implications like privatization. There's no persuasive material evidence of the purported theory that privatization is more efficient. The most favorable evidence from the supporters (for instance, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition by Bent Flyvbjerg he has 3 more on the topic) say that private and public projects are about the same. They go over budget about the same and fail about the same. Other more critical quantitative studies show dramatically better outcomes for publicly controlled systems - look at Oxfam studies for instance. There's also a lot of evidence that the private systems however mint millionaires who make an absolute killing off the taxpayer. Just like 500 years ago how religious people controlled the narrative and set up the rules of society and "laws of nature" to basically be giant money trees for them, there's a new class of people who have done the same thing. Recently I've been studying where this economic school originated from (essentially Chicago Boys style) and what was driving it. I haven't found any serious scholarly work on it beyond things written by journalists. The journalists track it to various organizations that formed after the new deal (each author has a different boogeyman) but the narrative is essentially the same: create think tanks, pack the colleges with favorable people, witch hunt the critics through red/left/whatever baiting, silence alternative views, create a media through movies, news, and television that support this view and so on. Not because it's accurate, right, or correct - but because it makes them a lot of cash. The narrative actually changes. Groups like the Heritage foundation or the American Enterprise Institute move their goalposts constantly over the years and defend it on supposedly principled economic grounds. The problem is that you can often find, such as in healthcare, documents where they make multiple fundamentally contradictory arguments because the underlying market mechanics they defend are pliable devices of convenience to push the agenda of making private capital and that's literally it. There's nothing deeper, nothing more fundamental. It's a giant hustle.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
spaginal 8y ago
It’s done because private industry in most circumstances, does it better than government can, and at the end of the day it can be significantly cheaper and less of a boondoggle than if government did it all themselves as government likes to do. Think of the professional experience, supply chain, and logistics for each industry where you could theoretically involve government to control or produce on it’s own. The error of rolling everything possible under the sun into a government department, like sign laying, is you get a sign placer sitting around making a unionized $60k-$90k/year (for a $35k-$40k/year actual job), with a massive retirement pension that you will continue to pay for forever, a huge tax bill to cover the storage of all of these signs that the government has sitting around on a dirt lot somewhere, because they have zero incentive to rent them out and make money on them while not in use, and crumbling infastructure when the entire cost of the government does all attitude sucks the tax base and economy dry. United Rentals, as a private company, has a vested interest in running their company efficiently, renting out a maximimum share of their inventory for the most profit, and their profit derived from this is not immoral behavior because it saves all of us money at the end of the day and employs a lot of people along the way. This is one more thing we won’t have to worry about the government screwing up as tax payers. Now, let’s say a senator wrote a convoluted law that made it so only United Rentals can supply signs for government projects, cost be damned. That’s a more valid argument for moving it under government control if there is corruption and rent seeking behavior going on.
- romwell 8y ago
  >you get a sign placer sitting around making a unionized $60k-$90k/year (for a $35k-$40k/year actual job) >United Rentals, as a private company, has a vested interest in running their company efficiently Indeed! So instead of the above, you get a non-unionized Joe the Sign Placer getting $25K/year for actual job (efficiency!), and Bob the CEO/Shareholder netting $25M/year of the difference. The government doesn't spend any less though, because: 1)Bob is the only game in town (at least as far as govt. contracts are concerned) 2)Bob pays the government for it to continue that way >Now, let’s say a senator wrote a convoluted law that made it so only United Rentals can supply signs for government projects, cost be damned. That’s a more valid argument for moving it under government control if there is corruption and rent seeking behavior going on. My only nitpick for this would be replacing "if" with "because".

mola 8y ago

The sad thing is that this is being exported across democracies around the world. This subversion of the democratic process would probably bring to its demise. And the waters are so muddled with identity politics and false enemies ("Bolsheviks") that we can't even have civilized discusssions on this problem. Sad state of affairs.

rayiner 8y ago

Almost all prisons are public. (Private prisons are illegal in some of the states, like New York, with the worst records of prisoner abuse.) TSA is a big public agency. Transportation infrastructure is almost entirely public. Education is almost entirely public.

ljm 8y ago

I believe this is a consequence of treating a financial policy as a religion or otherwise a fundamental truth. Everything is so much about money and accumulation that it subsumes everything else. I can’t see another reason why the lessons we learned from capitalism in the booming 20s and the following crash have very quickly been unlearned, as if the free market is a perfectly just and omnipresent force. Couple it with the utterly rabid obsession around communism and socialism, which might as well be swear words. This logic only holds true if you are the benefactor (one of the wealthy) or you think that you will become one.