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Spot on. I don’t get how anyone who saw future dystopian sci fi in the 80s doesn’t understand that it’s all the result of increased privatisation. I would also

by dools 5y ago

Spot on. I don’t get how anyone who saw future dystopian sci fi in the 80s doesn’t understand that it’s all the result of increased privatisation. I would also hazard a guess that the future of screens is not more immersive screens but fewer screens at all. Voice control is a more important innovation than VR goggles.

rsj_hn 5y ago
> I don’t get how anyone who saw future dystopian sci fi in the 80s doesn’t understand that it’s all the result of increased privatisation. In what sense has there been increased privatization since the 1980s? Note that I'm not contradicting you, I'm just asking how you are measuring this. Note that Government spending has gone up. Since the 1980s, we've massively subsidized and increased regulation over healthcare (ACA, medicare expansion), housing (Federal Agencies have come to dominate lending market), education (massive infusions of loan guarantees and aids, micro-management of universities with Title 9), and employment (significant increase in licensing requirements as well as employment regulation).
- dools 5y ago
  I think the primary distinction is between government expenditure on private production and government production. While in many cases governments still pay for things, they're not running them. The idea of course being that a profit motive improves efficiency, but of course it is competition that does so and in almost all cases government purchasing of private production suffers from the principal-agent problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem I think my favourite source of information on the political side of privatisation (rather than the economic side) is this lecture series from Professor Shapiro at Yale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    If you are focusing on government production, then how would you measure that? Well, one thing I can think of is BEA gross output by industry tables. It only goes back to 1997 https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=150&step=2&isuri=1&categories=gdpxind https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=150&step=2&isur... But in 1997, government output (both state and local) as a share of GDP was was 12.8%, and in 2019 (skipping the covid stuff) it was 12.4%. A decline of 0.4% -- it doesn't seem really relevant as an explanatory variable, does it? Or are you measuring government production in some other way?
    - dools 5y ago
      I don't know enough about that data set, but I think that the difference between "general government" and "government enterprises" is the gap between spending and production. The "data" that demonstrates privatisation most clearly is the sale of government assets. I did a quick search for some reports, here's one but it's about 10 years old: https://www.oecd.org/daf/ca/corporategovernanceofstate-ownedenterprises/48476423.pdf https://www.oecd.org/daf/ca/corporategovernanceofstate-owned... Things like prisons, electrical infrastructure, toll roads, rail, educational institutions, are all examples where the government used to own and operate but there has been a shift towards either private ownership or private management or both. I don't think these things show up clearly in "spending" alone, because the amount that is spent may increase as a result of privatisation (a great example of this is that the US govt spends more per person on healthcare than Australia, where I'm from, despite having nowhere near the level of publicly avialable healthcare). Another example is that NASA pays Spacex to deliver payloads to the ISS. That would still show up as spending by the government, but it has a huge component of profit going to a private corporation, and there's no "competition" to produce improvements for the consumers in that case (us, the public) because of the aforementioned principal-agent problem. The use of military contractors is another example where govt spending != govt production, and the government can absolve themselves of some of the accountability that would otherwise result from direct management of those forces: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/06/30/military-contractor-study/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/06/30/...
      - 5y ago

by dools 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago

> I don’t get how anyone who saw future dystopian sci fi in the 80s doesn’t understand that it’s all the result of increased privatisation. In what sense has there been increased privatization since the 1980s? Note that I'm not contradicting you, I'm just asking how you are measuring this. Note that Government spending has gone up. Since the 1980s, we've massively subsidized and increased regulation over healthcare (ACA, medicare expansion), housing (Federal Agencies have come to dominate lending market), education (massive infusions of loan guarantees and aids, micro-management of universities with Title 9), and employment (significant increase in licensing requirements as well as employment regulation).

dools 5y ago
I think the primary distinction is between government expenditure on private production and government production. While in many cases governments still pay for things, they're not running them. The idea of course being that a profit motive improves efficiency, but of course it is competition that does so and in almost all cases government purchasing of private production suffers from the principal-agent problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem I think my favourite source of information on the political side of privatisation (rather than the economic side) is this lecture series from Professor Shapiro at Yale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  If you are focusing on government production, then how would you measure that? Well, one thing I can think of is BEA gross output by industry tables. It only goes back to 1997 https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=150&step=2&isuri=1&categories=gdpxind https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=150&step=2&isur... But in 1997, government output (both state and local) as a share of GDP was was 12.8%, and in 2019 (skipping the covid stuff) it was 12.4%. A decline of 0.4% -- it doesn't seem really relevant as an explanatory variable, does it? Or are you measuring government production in some other way?
  - dools 5y ago
    I don't know enough about that data set, but I think that the difference between "general government" and "government enterprises" is the gap between spending and production. The "data" that demonstrates privatisation most clearly is the sale of government assets. I did a quick search for some reports, here's one but it's about 10 years old: https://www.oecd.org/daf/ca/corporategovernanceofstate-ownedenterprises/48476423.pdf https://www.oecd.org/daf/ca/corporategovernanceofstate-owned... Things like prisons, electrical infrastructure, toll roads, rail, educational institutions, are all examples where the government used to own and operate but there has been a shift towards either private ownership or private management or both. I don't think these things show up clearly in "spending" alone, because the amount that is spent may increase as a result of privatisation (a great example of this is that the US govt spends more per person on healthcare than Australia, where I'm from, despite having nowhere near the level of publicly avialable healthcare). Another example is that NASA pays Spacex to deliver payloads to the ISS. That would still show up as spending by the government, but it has a huge component of profit going to a private corporation, and there's no "competition" to produce improvements for the consumers in that case (us, the public) because of the aforementioned principal-agent problem. The use of military contractors is another example where govt spending != govt production, and the government can absolve themselves of some of the accountability that would otherwise result from direct management of those forces: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/06/30/military-contractor-study/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/06/30/...
    - 5y ago