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> If this wasn't true, then the government wouldn't contract the private sector for various tasks. There are other possibilities: corporate lobbying, the revol

by dghf 12y ago

> If this wasn't true, then the government wouldn't contract the private sector for various tasks. There are other possibilities: corporate lobbying, the revolving door, regulatory capture, plain old corruption ...

sillysaurus3 12y ago
... which would lead to the civilization being destroyed (EDIT: subsumed) by a more effective one, if the private sector wasn't actually effective. Therefore the private sector must be effective.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Over what timeframe? All the evidence is that failed states can stick around for quite a while before collapsing or being subjugated. As the US has been (re)discovering the hard way, there's a massive cost in taking over a failed state even where the intention is to rebuild it and leave - and countries like Afghanistan and Iran were obviously dysfunctional for decades. Even the Soviet Union persisted for a long time despite its fundamental economic contradictions. Even if we hypothesize some similarly fundamental dificiency in the private sector of the US of the sort that Marxists are fond of toying with, in an economy of this size it might take most of a century to play itself out. Look at Japan, whose economy has been stagnant for 20 years and whose territorial security basically derives from the US nuclear umbrella.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    My claim isn't that the civilization will be wiped out. It's that it will no longer be in control of its own destiny. If the private sector model of an economy is worse, then why has every first-world country begun to follow it? Because it's more effective. You can argue that the private sector is a different tool for a different sort of job, but my point is that regardless of the job, small organizations almost always do it better. (Incidentally, that's the thesis of startup investing.) The exception is with highly parallelizable tasks, like fighting a war. But space exploration isn't that sort of job. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe. Strange day. It seems like it should be perfectly obvious that private sector control is more effective than public sector control in almost every area where people need to accomplish things. There is practically a mountain of evidence in support of this viewpoint, and it's hard to find examples that contradict it, unless it's also a highly parallelizable task like constructing a highway system. The most obvious counterexamples that come to mind are the justice system and monetary regulation. But those are two counterexamples in a sea of examples.
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      The UK was a model of privatisation of public enterprise. Only it turns out that a hell of a lot of the companies that bought stuff like the utilities and railways are actually the public enterprises of other countries. So 20 of the UK rail lines are still publicly owned and run, just by another countries public sector, while our own is banned by law from bidding. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/revealed-how-the-world-gets-rich-from-privatising-british-public-services-9874048.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/revealed-how...
      - dghf 12y ago
        Indeed. The only UK rail franchise still in public hands is also the only one that makes money for the state rather than requiring a public subsidy. So, with impeccable logic, the government has privatised it.
        lotsofmangos 12y ago
        Presumably, while in public hands though profitable, it has not been paying dividends. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of our services eventually get renationalised through a legal challenge based on competition law opening up the bidding again, as the whole logic breaks down rather completely at the point at which you try and fix it by banning any foreign publicly owned industry from bidding, then realise that you have knocked out most of the best qualified bids.
        dghf 12y ago
        > Presumably, while in public hands though profitable, it has not been paying dividends. But it has been returning money to its "shareholder", the government, which is kind of analogous.
        lotsofmangos 12y ago
        I was being cynical. While profits are going to the government it is hard to line your own pockets through buying shares, or get appointed to the board after leaving office.
- peterashford 12y ago
  History is littered with civilizations that had an extended period of corruption and decay before their final collapse. Rome is one example - its "death" arguably occurred over most of a century. Anyway, your argument is really weird. It implies that all existing regimes are optimally fit since they exist. But that's clearly not true.

by dghf 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

... which would lead to the civilization being destroyed (EDIT: subsumed) by a more effective one, if the private sector wasn't actually effective. Therefore the private sector must be effective.

anigbrowl 12y ago
Over what timeframe? All the evidence is that failed states can stick around for quite a while before collapsing or being subjugated. As the US has been (re)discovering the hard way, there's a massive cost in taking over a failed state even where the intention is to rebuild it and leave - and countries like Afghanistan and Iran were obviously dysfunctional for decades. Even the Soviet Union persisted for a long time despite its fundamental economic contradictions. Even if we hypothesize some similarly fundamental dificiency in the private sector of the US of the sort that Marxists are fond of toying with, in an economy of this size it might take most of a century to play itself out. Look at Japan, whose economy has been stagnant for 20 years and whose territorial security basically derives from the US nuclear umbrella.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  My claim isn't that the civilization will be wiped out. It's that it will no longer be in control of its own destiny. If the private sector model of an economy is worse, then why has every first-world country begun to follow it? Because it's more effective. You can argue that the private sector is a different tool for a different sort of job, but my point is that regardless of the job, small organizations almost always do it better. (Incidentally, that's the thesis of startup investing.) The exception is with highly parallelizable tasks, like fighting a war. But space exploration isn't that sort of job. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe. Strange day. It seems like it should be perfectly obvious that private sector control is more effective than public sector control in almost every area where people need to accomplish things. There is practically a mountain of evidence in support of this viewpoint, and it's hard to find examples that contradict it, unless it's also a highly parallelizable task like constructing a highway system. The most obvious counterexamples that come to mind are the justice system and monetary regulation. But those are two counterexamples in a sea of examples.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    The UK was a model of privatisation of public enterprise. Only it turns out that a hell of a lot of the companies that bought stuff like the utilities and railways are actually the public enterprises of other countries. So 20 of the UK rail lines are still publicly owned and run, just by another countries public sector, while our own is banned by law from bidding. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/revealed-how-the-world-gets-rich-from-privatising-british-public-services-9874048.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/revealed-how...
    - dghf 12y ago
      Indeed. The only UK rail franchise still in public hands is also the only one that makes money for the state rather than requiring a public subsidy. So, with impeccable logic, the government has privatised it.
      - lotsofmangos 12y ago
        Presumably, while in public hands though profitable, it has not been paying dividends. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of our services eventually get renationalised through a legal challenge based on competition law opening up the bidding again, as the whole logic breaks down rather completely at the point at which you try and fix it by banning any foreign publicly owned industry from bidding, then realise that you have knocked out most of the best qualified bids.
        dghf 12y ago
        > Presumably, while in public hands though profitable, it has not been paying dividends. But it has been returning money to its "shareholder", the government, which is kind of analogous.
        lotsofmangos 12y ago
        I was being cynical. While profits are going to the government it is hard to line your own pockets through buying shares, or get appointed to the board after leaving office.
peterashford 12y ago
History is littered with civilizations that had an extended period of corruption and decay before their final collapse. Rome is one example - its "death" arguably occurred over most of a century. Anyway, your argument is really weird. It implies that all existing regimes are optimally fit since they exist. But that's clearly not true.