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Unfortunately they rarely cut programs immediately. It would be too easy to see the consequences. Instead: 1) freeze or reduce the budget 2) put incompetent

Unfortunately they rarely cut programs immediately. It would be too easy to see the consequences. Instead: 1) freeze or reduce the budget 2) put incompetent people in charge with crazy mission statements 3) wait a bit for the program to fail and skilled employees to leave 4) point at how inefficient and useless the government program is 5) replace it by private sector and contractors It is a classic move and not just in the US.

piva00 4y ago
A classic example of this strategy being used in the past 10-20 years outside of the US is the UK's NHS. It's been slowly crippled, putting more and more pressure in the system, and eventually the solution to be proposed when the system finally collapses through malicious maladministration will be to privatise it.
- the_optimist 4y ago
  If this idea were completely backwards, there would be no way to tell the difference from what you’ve suggested. In fact, there isn’t even a basic counterexample that holds without predominant confounding factors. In other words, unfortunately, this is theory is a non-falsifiable conspiracy theory. Edit: It is rather validating when poking a pet theory produces a negative yet non-substantive response. Sure, go on believing in fairies and yeti. Best of luck to your children.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    You might have got more traction had you provided at least one alternative explanation, or at least provided more detail as to why you believe the given explanation to be non-falsifiable. It seems obvious to me that it would be falsifiable by looking at a statement like "putting more and more pressure on the system" and seeing if that has actually been happening.
  - piva00 4y ago
    Jeremy Hunt co-authored this in 2005 [0]. Look at the bits about denationalising the NHS. I'd like to see your rebuttal to this book, genuinely [1]. Edit: also this op-ed contains some more examples of the process going on [2]. Please, refrain from name-calling and instead point exactly where I'm wrong on what you so called a "conspiracy theory". It's a baseless comment and you haven't provided me anything to look further. [0] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ebr.2005.05417eab.006/full/html https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ebr.2005... [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-NHS-Easy-Steps/dp/1785350455 https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-NHS-Easy-Steps/dp/178... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-johnson-conservatives-nhs-funding https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-...
    - the_optimist 4y ago
      Merely pointing out that a theory for attacking the system exists is not equivalent to attacking the system; you have to assume malicious intent. There is no way to differentiate merely scarce resources from supposedly adversarial depletion. This market is fixed. Abject failure is indistinguishable from success, in any form. You are merely saying, “I assume you are malicious,” which is a premise—not a conclusion. The same phenomenon exists with the Piven-Cloward opponents. There’s no ‘name-calling’ here. The point stands on itself.
      - piva00 4y ago
        To prove malicious intent without doubt would require me to have access to the minds of the perpetrators of a plan. I don't have such access, I do have access to their intentions through an agenda document and their further actions afterwards in government, such a plan would not be presented as malicious so I can only derive its intents from their agenda and actions to the results in reality. The results in reality is a system that has not coped with its usage, one such example is presented in the op-ed article I shared on [2] which states that McKinsey was commissioned to provide a report which they concluded there would be less need of nurses, which was false, that report was used to reduce the budget for nurses which as a result caused further reduction in force of nurses as they quit because of lower pay. I can only derive that it's malicious since the report is wrong and no action was taken to correct the government's actions when reality hit. The same op-ed links to another analysis with this exact question [0]. > “In other words we didn’t have enough nurses before to provide a high quality service? Ah!” said John Humphrys in shocked tones - as if this was a revelation the BBC’s flagship news programme had never heard before. > But the BBC failed to ask the key question – why were all the warning signs about nurse shortages, ignored? > After all, NHS chiefs and ministers had been warned clearly for years that there would be a shortage of nurses, as a result of David Cameron’s coalition government cutting training places for nurses and doctors from 2010 onwards. From 2010 through to 2013 the numbers of nursing places commissioned at universities in England were cut by 12.7% – resulting in 2500 fewer places. In 2012 experts warned that this would result in a “disaster” in two or three years. In all, the 2010 cutbacks (reversed only relatively recently) meant that around 8000 fewer nurses were coming into the system. Can you point me to any counterpoint to this where the government's actions align to a non-malicious plan to actually help the system, as misaligned as that plan might be? Because every action I can find points to a plan where the system is put under further struggle without giving a good reason why it is sensible to, for example, train less nurses when they were advised by NHS chiefs and specialists they will require more. You can't say that ignoring your chief specialists is not malicious. [0] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/nhs-staff-shortage-shock/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/nhs-staff-shortage-s...

piva00 4y ago

A classic example of this strategy being used in the past 10-20 years outside of the US is the UK's NHS. It's been slowly crippled, putting more and more pressure in the system, and eventually the solution to be proposed when the system finally collapses through malicious maladministration will be to privatise it.

the_optimist 4y ago
If this idea were completely backwards, there would be no way to tell the difference from what you’ve suggested. In fact, there isn’t even a basic counterexample that holds without predominant confounding factors. In other words, unfortunately, this is theory is a non-falsifiable conspiracy theory. Edit: It is rather validating when poking a pet theory produces a negative yet non-substantive response. Sure, go on believing in fairies and yeti. Best of luck to your children.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  You might have got more traction had you provided at least one alternative explanation, or at least provided more detail as to why you believe the given explanation to be non-falsifiable. It seems obvious to me that it would be falsifiable by looking at a statement like "putting more and more pressure on the system" and seeing if that has actually been happening.
- piva00 4y ago
  Jeremy Hunt co-authored this in 2005 [0]. Look at the bits about denationalising the NHS. I'd like to see your rebuttal to this book, genuinely [1]. Edit: also this op-ed contains some more examples of the process going on [2]. Please, refrain from name-calling and instead point exactly where I'm wrong on what you so called a "conspiracy theory". It's a baseless comment and you haven't provided me anything to look further. [0] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ebr.2005.05417eab.006/full/html https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ebr.2005... [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-NHS-Easy-Steps/dp/1785350455 https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-NHS-Easy-Steps/dp/178... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-johnson-conservatives-nhs-funding https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-...
  - the_optimist 4y ago
    Merely pointing out that a theory for attacking the system exists is not equivalent to attacking the system; you have to assume malicious intent. There is no way to differentiate merely scarce resources from supposedly adversarial depletion. This market is fixed. Abject failure is indistinguishable from success, in any form. You are merely saying, “I assume you are malicious,” which is a premise—not a conclusion. The same phenomenon exists with the Piven-Cloward opponents. There’s no ‘name-calling’ here. The point stands on itself.
    - piva00 4y ago
      To prove malicious intent without doubt would require me to have access to the minds of the perpetrators of a plan. I don't have such access, I do have access to their intentions through an agenda document and their further actions afterwards in government, such a plan would not be presented as malicious so I can only derive its intents from their agenda and actions to the results in reality. The results in reality is a system that has not coped with its usage, one such example is presented in the op-ed article I shared on [2] which states that McKinsey was commissioned to provide a report which they concluded there would be less need of nurses, which was false, that report was used to reduce the budget for nurses which as a result caused further reduction in force of nurses as they quit because of lower pay. I can only derive that it's malicious since the report is wrong and no action was taken to correct the government's actions when reality hit. The same op-ed links to another analysis with this exact question [0]. > “In other words we didn’t have enough nurses before to provide a high quality service? Ah!” said John Humphrys in shocked tones - as if this was a revelation the BBC’s flagship news programme had never heard before. > But the BBC failed to ask the key question – why were all the warning signs about nurse shortages, ignored? > After all, NHS chiefs and ministers had been warned clearly for years that there would be a shortage of nurses, as a result of David Cameron’s coalition government cutting training places for nurses and doctors from 2010 onwards. From 2010 through to 2013 the numbers of nursing places commissioned at universities in England were cut by 12.7% – resulting in 2500 fewer places. In 2012 experts warned that this would result in a “disaster” in two or three years. In all, the 2010 cutbacks (reversed only relatively recently) meant that around 8000 fewer nurses were coming into the system. Can you point me to any counterpoint to this where the government's actions align to a non-malicious plan to actually help the system, as misaligned as that plan might be? Because every action I can find points to a plan where the system is put under further struggle without giving a good reason why it is sensible to, for example, train less nurses when they were advised by NHS chiefs and specialists they will require more. You can't say that ignoring your chief specialists is not malicious. [0] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/nhs-staff-shortage-shock/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/nhs-staff-shortage-s...