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Bleah - government shouldn't be the default actor in a space unless it's absolutely necessary. It's actually a good thing if community problems can be solved by
by Uhhrrr 7y ago
Bleah - government shouldn't be the default actor in a space unless it's absolutely necessary. It's actually a good thing if community problems can be solved by smaller organizations which don't need tax money or coercive measures to get things done.
- JohnFen 7y ago> It's actually a good thing if community problems can be solved by smaller organizations As long as those organizations are not for-profit companies.
- p_roz 7y agoThat’s not true. If an organization benefits its customers/users in some way, it’s still doing a good thing if it captures some of that benefit in the form of profit.
- JohnFen 7y agoMaybe. My observation, though, is that whatever good thing it may be doing ends up costing people more, and being less good, when done by a for-profit company as opposed to a non-profit organization. Plus it is becoming increasingly risky to engage with for-profit companies for certain things because of their insatiable desire for data on their customers.
- pjc50 7y ago> need tax money or coercive measures to get things done. But those are pretty much all the remaining hard problems! If it was self-funding and didn't have any opposition, someone would be able to solve it.
- Uhhrrr 7y agoBut the space of problems solvable in this manner increases as technology progresses.
- save_ferris 7y agoI disagree with this. There are many spaces that can be maintained either publicly or privately that when privatized don't always result in the best outcomes for consumers. A good example are private utilities. I had a relative that sold his house in a municipality in east Texas and moved to a new development in central Texas. He intentionally chose a house just outside the nearest municipality to avoid paying local taxes. It all seemed great until he got his first water bill from the private water company, only to find that his water bill was astronomically higher (2.5-3x more). His other private utilities were a little higher than what he paid previously, but he was particularly upset about the water. The water company isn't some multinational corporation, but they have a profit incentive, zero competition, and they control the water infrastructure, so the community there doesn't have much leverage in that scenario.
- Uhhrrr 7y agoI find this thoroughly unpersuasive. A 2.5x water bill in exchange for no municipal taxes and no zoning laws and other picayune regulations?
- save_ferris 7y agoI have no idea what the zoning situation is for him. The bottom line in his case was that he thought he was saving money by staying out of the municipalities, only to find that his total cost of living really didn't change at all. On top of that, public utilities are accountable to the public, while private utilities are accountable to shareholders. There were no obvious economic reasons for the incredible disparity in price, other than one utility had an incentive to profit while the other didn't.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoI disagree. If the space involves a "public good" (a squishy term, I know) I'd rather have an actor that's paid for and accountable to the community, not one that's only accountable to its shareholders and has the additional motive of squeezing out a profit.