US politics 2

[lupis42]

Continued from

I believe you mentioned earlier how most businesses are closed within five years. Stuff like health insurance and retirement savings are extremely critical to the general welfare. If put in private hands, they might be run more efficiently--until they are lost as the company goes under. The government guarantees reliability at the cost of some efficiency. Because of the loss of efficiency government is not apt to run all aspects of the economy, but in some cases the trade off is worth it. And for instance, in terms of health care, if everyone has insurance they can get regular checkups and treat problems early, which saves money. If someone cannot afford insurance then they are apt to wait under a health problem becomes crippling, in which case they become unable to work while they recover and society pays the more expensive bill anyways. Which is better? That's why government has a role in some areas, even if it is less efficient. Because short-term profit is not always the best scenario.

You don't want to conflate business with industries - businesses fail in 5 years because other businesses do a better job providing the same service, or nobody wants the service badly enough to sustain a provider. So to use your health insurance example, if my current insurance company goes out of business, I just have to buy insurance elsewhere.

As for insurance being a requisite for regular checkups, that's simply not true - insurance covering the cost of predictable expenses simply makes those things more expensive, because it adds a layer of bureacracy.

In some cases, government-run can actually be more efficient. I can tell you that the UK NHS has way less paperwork for the consumer than the American system, having experienced both. "Healthcare billing" isn't even a job in the UK, due to being completely redundant. When you go to the doctors in the USA you have to fill out a big form detailing your health insurance and conditions. This seems to need to be done every visit, with an even longer form the first time. As well as being annoying, this data has to be entered and processed by someone who needs to be paid, which increases costs. When you go to the doctors in the UK, you just turn up and give them your national insurance number the first visit, and with subsequent visits there is no paperwork at all. This has obvious efficiency savings.

Competition only promotes efficiency in business sectors where the consumer has free choice. Since most people in the USA have next-to-no choice about who their health insurance is with, they get the inefficiencies of a monopoly combined with the requirement to make a profit of a private business, which leads to high prices all round.

I disagree.

First of all, there are no services which the government provides which cannot be privatized. None. There is no reason, for example, why a private mercenary force cannot serve just as well for national security. It's simply that we prefer to not use mercenaries.

In theory, that's basically true, but the government does do things that are fairly bedrock for a free market to work, such as provide a framework by which contracts can be evaluated and disputed. That could still be privatized, but even most libertarians would agree that the difficulties involved mean that government is still the better choice there

Second, the fundamental difference that makes applying a business model to analyze government services inappropriate is the underlying motive. When we say that a business is more efficient than a government service, we are implying that turning a profit is more important than the other factors, for that's what concerns businesses and what makes a business "good." I'm happy to talk about how we can make the government services more efficient and more cost-effective, but I reject the framework in which we judge government services by the standards that we use to evaluate businesses.

Turning a profit isn't the standard, it's a consequence of the "good". Providing a product or service people want, that requires less than they are willing to give up to get it, is what makes a service provider good. Government distorts the ability to measure that, by essentially hiding the "what has to be given up", but that doesn't mean that it goes away, and business (outside of commiting fraud) only make a profit by providing somethign that people want.

[lupis42]

I believe you mentioned earlier how most businesses are closed within five years. Stuff like health insurance and retirement savings are extremely critical to the general welfare. If put in private hands, they might be run more efficiently--until they are lost as the company goes under. The government guarantees reliability at the cost of some efficiency. Because of the loss of efficiency government is not apt to run all aspects of the economy, but in some cases the trade off is worth it. And for instance, in terms of health care, if everyone has insurance they can get regular checkups and treat problems early, which saves money. If someone cannot afford insurance then they are apt to wait under a health problem becomes crippling, in which case they become unable to work while they recover and society pays the more expensive bill anyways. Which is better? That's why government has a role in some areas, even if it is less efficient. Because short-term profit is not always the best scenario.

You don't want to conflate business with industries - businesses fail in 5 years because other businesses do a better job providing the same service, or nobody wants the service badly enough to sustain a provider. So to use your health insurance example, if my current insurance company goes out of business, I just have to buy insurance elsewhere.

As for insurance being a requisite for regular checkups, that's simply not true - insurance covering the cost of predictable expenses simply makes those things more expensive, because it adds a layer of bureacracy. The reasons people wait to get treated are complicated, but one of the most basic is that people are risk-seeking when it comes to possible losses, so if they can't afford either prevention or cure, they'll take a chance that it will go away on it's own. We exacerbate that by requiring hospitals to treat them regardless of their ability to pay, which makes it easier for them to visit the ER than a doctor.

[Ser Greguh]

1. Is government subject to diminishing returns to scope? In the business world, it is usually considered a better strategy to stick to one purpose rather than to constantly get into new lines of business. The thinking is that if you try to combine too many businesses, you end up being ineffective. Does this consideration apply to government? If not, why not?

No. Government is not a business.

2. Are government monopolies efficient? In theory, in the business world monopoly is efficient, because it eliminates duplicate overhead. (Monopoly is inefficient in theory because the monopolist charges a price that is too high, but we might suppose that government will not do that.) In practice, however, monopoly is inefficient because without the pressure of competition, business practices tend to stagnate. Is government immune from this stagnation problem, and if so, how?

Irrelevant. Government is not a business.

3. Most new businesses disappear within a few years. Most government programs persist. Does this persistence indicate that government is more effective than the private sector at choosing carefully which initiatives to undertake, less effective at choosing which initiatives to terminate, or both?

Irrelevant. Government is not a business.

4. Because of the profit and loss system, businesses are accountable to some extent for keeping their promises. (There are weaknesses in accountability mechanisms, to be sure. Most notably, an executive with a short-term focus can gain personally while making decisions with adverse long-term consequences.) In government, the main accountability mechanism is an election. But most government workers are not subject to elections, and elections are very crude expressions of voter preferences. Overall, is the accountability mechanism in government nearly as effective as that in business?

No in some ways, yes in others. Generally speaking high level executives in particular have horrible track records of being held meaningfully accountable for their failures, and low level employees are often judged on many different metrics than productivity. But it is irrelevant because government is not a business.

You may notice a common thread in my responses, which speaks to the primary deficiency in libertarian fiscal philosophy: the pervasive and horribly misguided notion that a business and a government must necessarily be graded on the same metrics as a business and thus be subject to the same considerations and judgments. This is asinine. It's like judging a football team on the same metrics with which you judge the referees. Worse, the sort of thinking can result in situations where you have one football team's coach acting as referee ... not exactly a recipe for a clean contest, and certainly not in the public's greater good.

Government is by its very nature inefficient. This is the nature of a bureaucracy. It is a dampener, a filter that impedes the benefit of genius but also impedes the catastrophes resultant from incompetence. If efficiency is your only guiding star than you are likely to see bureaucracy as a bad thing, but in so doing you miss the forest for the trees. The reason for this requires you to see beyond the Almighty Free Market, so I'm not holding my breath that you'll be capable, but the reality is very simple: not everything that is for the public good is profitable, or should be. Case in point is the US military: without a doubt the single most bloated, inefficient, bureaucracy-laden organization in the history of human civilization. And yet it is certainly necessary in some form, because without some form of defense there's nothing to stop a foreign country from invading us and plundering our resources. That's what's known as a higher purpose.

That concept, a higher purpose, is why we, in this country, have done things that were purposely inefficient to businesses. Consider the abolition of slavery. Imagine the inefficiency of doing that! How stupid could we possibly be? How inefficient is our current labor model in comparison? How that must have horrified the contemporary equivalents of libertarian free thinkiners?

The same principle applies, in different quantities, all the way down to the provision of public water fountains. How inefficient! We don't even charge money for people to use them!

You don't need to lecture me, or many of the other people here, on the nature of efficiency. But I contend that there is something that I, and others here, understand that you do not: there is no meaningful correlation between what is good for a business and what is good for the public at large.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Government is not by nature inefficient. Sometimes it is more difficult for government inefficiencies to be corrected, due to the massive size of the organisation. But inefficiency is not in the very nature of government.

Governments are inefficient in the same way as IBM is inefficient compared to your local one-shop PC builder, or vice-versa. It is a matter of scale. Your local shop can change the designs of its PCs much faster than IBM, to take advantage of consumer desires, but IBM has efficiencies of scale because it is cheaper per piece to order 100,000 of an item than 100.

Likewise, a medium-sized health insurer can implement new, better computer systems faster than the NHS, but it cannot use its vast bulk to lean on healthcare suppliers to give it cheap deals on prescriptions ordered by the million like the NHS can.

[lupis42]

In some cases, government-run can actually be more efficient. I can tell you that the UK NHS has way less paperwork for the consumer than the American system, having experienced both. "Healthcare billing" isn't even a job in the UK, due to being completely redundant. When you go to the doctors in the USA you have to fill out a big form detailing your health insurance and conditions. This seems to need to be done every visit, with an even longer form the first time. As well as being annoying, this data has to be entered and processed by someone who needs to be paid, which increases costs. When you go to the doctors in the UK, you just turn up and give them your national insurance number the first visit, and with subsequent visits there is no paperwork at all. This has obvious efficiency savings.

Most imaginable systems would be more efficient than the current US disaster.

Competition only promotes efficiency in business sectors where the consumer has free choice. Since most people in the USA have next-to-no choice about who their health insurance is with, they get the inefficiencies of a monopoly combined with the requirement to make a profit of a private business, which leads to high prices all round.

No disagreement here, but the reasons for that lack of choice come from bad government regulation - going back quite a ways. If we stopped treating health insurance as something employers should provide, and allowed people to buy insurance across state lines, that problem would start clearing up really quickly.

[lupis42]

No. Government is not a business.

Irrelevant. Government is not a business.

Irrelevant. Government is not a business.

No in some ways, yes in others. Generally speaking high level executives in particular have horrible track records of being held meaningfully accountable for their failures, and low level employees are often judged on many different metrics than productivity. But it is irrelevant because government is not a business.

You may notice a common thread in my responses, which speaks to the primary deficiency in libertarian fiscal philosophy: the pervasive and horribly misguided notion that a business and a government must necessarily be graded on the same metrics as a business and thus be subject to the same considerations and judgments. This is asinine. It's like judging a football team on the same metrics with which you judge the referees. Worse, the sort of thinking can result in situations where you have one football team's coach acting as referee ... not exactly a recipe for a clean contest, and certainly not in the public's greater good.

The fact that Government is not a business does not in any way make these questions irrelevant. It is the reason to ask these questions. It is not unreasonable to suppose that government occasionally makes errors, provides services that shouldn't be provided, etc. So the question is, does the absence of market forces typically lead the government to be better at providing the things that could also be provided by a market, or worse? If the answer is worse, than shouldn't we start from the proposition that something should be provided by the market, unless there is a complelling reason not to?

Government is by its very nature inefficient. This is the nature of a bureaucracy. It is a dampener, a filter that impedes the benefit of genius but also impedes the catastrophes resultant from incompetence. If efficiency is your only guiding star than you are likely to see bureaucracy as a bad thing, but in so doing you miss the forest for the trees. The reason for this requires you to see beyond the Almighty Free Market, so I'm not holding my breath that you'll be capable, but the reality is very simple: not everything that is for the public good is profitable, or should be. Case in point is the US military: without a doubt the single most bloated, inefficient, bureaucracy-laden organization in the history of human civilization. And yet it is certainly necessary in some form, because without some form of defense there's nothing to stop a foreign country from invading us and plundering our resources. That's what's known as a higher purpose.

That concept, a higher purpose, is why we, in this country, have done things that were purposely inefficient to businesses. Consider the abolition of slavery. Imagine the inefficiency of doing that! How stupid could we possibly be? How inefficient is our current labor model in comparison? How that must have horrified the contemporary equivalents of libertarian free thinkiners?

The same principle applies, in different quantities, all the way down to the provision of public water fountains. How inefficient! We don't even charge money for people to use them!

You don't need to lecture me, or many of the other people here, on the nature of efficiency. But I contend that there is something that I, and others here, understand that you do not: there is no meaningful correlation between what is good for a business and what is good for the public at large.

I'm not claiming that Government cannot deliver anything better than a free market. Defense is a perfect example, and the economic argument in question is referred to as the 'free-rider problem'. I'm suggesting that our current government delivers many things that a free market could deliver better, and that returning those things to the market would be generally beneficial, both for the majority of individuals and overall.

As to your point of slavery, I can't help but notice that one of the more libertarian of the founders, Jefferson, wanted to eliminate the institution and was overruled by the representatives of the rest of the southern states. Slavery, in general, has never been acceptable to either rights-oriented or consequentialist libertarians, so it's a very odd example.

[TrackerNeil]

No disagreement here, but the reasons for that lack of choice come from bad government regulation - going back quite a ways. If we stopped treating health insurance as something employers should provide, and allowed people to buy insurance across state lines, that problem would start clearing up really quickly.

Not entirely, no. Government did not force insurers to discriminate based on preexisting conditions. Government did not force insurers to employ rescission to abandon their costliest customers. The profit motive took care of that, thank you very much.

As to buying insurance across state lines...just what problem is that supposed to "clear up"?

[Shryke]

Most imaginable systems would be more efficient than the current US disaster.

Which US disaster?

Cause if we're talking about health care, the health care/insurance the US government provides is still more efficient then US private health care/insurance. Even if both are, compared to the rest of the world, pretty terrible.

No disagreement here, but the reasons for that lack of choice come from bad government regulation - going back quite a ways. If we stopped treating health insurance as something employers should provide, and allowed people to buy insurance across state lines, that problem would start clearing up really quickly.

It would solve some of the issues, but you would still be left with the horrible inefficiency of private health insurance.

Government-controlled health insurance is more efficient. Both experimentally (as in "let's look at how costs work in the real world") and theoretically (which is why you see even supposed anti-government notables like Hayek calling for government to provide it).

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

You don't need to lecture me, or many of the other people here, on the nature of efficiency. But I contend that there is something that I, and others here, understand that you do not: there is no meaningful correlation between what is good for a business and what is good for the public at large.

Sure there is. A business that isn't producing something of value for the public goes out of business. Granted, some of what that business is doing may not benefit other segments of the public. But at a minimum, there is a "check" in the sense that business must be doing something for which other people are willing to give it money, i.e., they find it of value. If it doesn't, it disappears. Government, no matter how poorly it does its job, doesn't disappear.

Government has another problem, and that is the problem of goals. Private businesses have an overarching goal of increasing their value for the people that own them. In general, that is a sufficiently concrete goal that you have some lodestone pulling people in the same direction.

But government is simply a process without any concrete goals. Private businesses can reach a point where they think they are humming along really well, and the goal becomes simply not screwing up and making minor modifications. But government policymakers, both regulators and legislators, need to act to justify their existence. They can never leave well-enough alone because that leaves them doing nothing. So, you end up with a ratchet effect of government always doing more, simply because it is the job of people in government to do more.

Regardless of whether anything needs doing or not.

[The GRRumbler]

Just reposting Artmail's comment in the other topic, we should read this with attention:

Job creators are that which take resources and create something of greater value to someone else. That's why jobs exist.

That is a fairly simplistic way of looking at the economy, and not entirely true.

People need to get over this notion that job creators will hire more people if they pay less taxes. That is blatantly not true. I own a construction business, i am only going to hire as many people as i can reasonably expect to keep employed over the course of the year. This year it looks to be about ten, but if you cut my taxes back, that number will not change. It will just mean i am personally taking home more, and while i can be generous with my employees, most owners feel no such compulsion to pass any of the profits down.

As for estate taxes, there is no reason that they should not be taxed. All of this libertarian bullshit is just helping to create a gilded class. The sad thing is that the people defending it the most loudly are the ones that are not a part of it. Those that are a part of it are using the loopholes all of the hoople-heads have allowed to pass to continue their multi-generational power grab, if they are not actively endorsing candidates that support them or giving money to lobby groups or superpacs that support their cause.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Regardless of whether anything needs doing or not.

Well-run governments do not do this. They already have plenty to do without taking on new work for themselves. They tend to take on roles where the private sector is badly failing.

For instance, governments do not elbow into the food supply chain, because supermarkets and food manufacturers have this under control. However in WW2 in Britain when the food supply chain broke down due to war, the government immediately muscled in to keep the supply chain going and people alive. When the war was over, the government willingly and quickly bowed out again - that's why you don't see British people with ration cards any more. By your way of thinking, the government would never have willingly given up its control of Britain's food supply, because that would mean relinquishing power.

The only reason the US government is trying to reform the US health care system is that the private system dropped the ball on that one. If the private system had provided consistent care at affordable prices (like the supermarket system does with food), the government would have had no reason or support for trying to reform it.

[Arthmail]

You don't want to conflate business with industries - businesses fail in 5 years because other businesses do a better job providing the same service, or nobody wants the service badly enough to sustain a provider. So to use your health insurance example, if my current insurance company goes out of business, I just have to buy insurance elsewhere.

That's as simplistic a view of business as one can get. There are other mitigating factors, including the health of the economy or available credit to pay for such things as materials. Business fail in the first five years because it is hard as hell to get a real fix on capital for most businesses, so you walk a much finer line. A bad month can cause irrevocable damage.

Government has another problem, and that is the problem of goals. Private businesses have an overarching goal of increasing their value for the people that own them. In general, that is a sufficiently concrete goal that you have some lodestone pulling people in the same direction.

But government is simply a process without any concrete goals. Private businesses can reach a point where they think they are humming along really well, and the goal becomes simply not screwing up and making minor modifications. But government policymakers, both regulators and legislators, need to act to justify their existence. They can never leave well-enough alone because that leaves them doing nothing. So, you end up with a ratchet effect of government always doing more, simply because it is the job of people in government to do more.

Regardless of whether anything needs doing or not.

I would say the continuation of the shared collective is a goal. I would say healthy citizens, good education, and a stable democracy mixed with a decent economy is a goal. Business focuses on one single thing - money. The making of it, as much as possible. This is true from the smallest to the largest business, and is really only not true when it comes to non-profits, which are focused on something other than the acquisition of wealth. Confusing business and government is a fundamentally stupid idea, because they each aim in different directions. Sure, a government looks to make money, but that is only because it can then service and provide for its citizens better. A government is predicated around the idea that it is there to serve its citizens, a business is predicated around the idea that it is there to serve its owners. That is a fundamental difference.

[lupis42]

Government is not by nature inefficient. Sometimes it is more difficult for government inefficiencies to be corrected, due to the massive size of the organisation. But inefficiency is not in the very nature of government.

Why not? What consequences pressure a typical government agency to be more efficient? It's budget is determined by congress, which means that (within limits) the fewer people served by the agency reduce it's costs but don't affect it's budget. So there's no pressure on a government agency other than to deliver the bare minimum that will allow it's directors to get next years budget approved by congress.

Governments are inefficient in the same way as IBM is inefficient compared to your local one-shop PC builder, or vice-versa. It is a matter of scale. Your local shop can change the designs of its PCs much faster than IBM, to take advantage of consumer desires, but IBM has efficiencies of scale because it is cheaper per piece to order 100,000 of an item than 100.

Likewise, a medium-sized health insurer can implement new, better computer systems faster than the NHS, but it cannot use its vast bulk to lean on healthcare suppliers to give it cheap deals on prescriptions ordered by the million like the NHS can.

But there's a correlarly problem here: government agencies, by their nature, have less pressure to deliver efficiently on the services that they provide, meaning that we pay more for those services through taxes than we would if the market was providing those services and we were consuming them. If your position is that that's necessary because rich people should be subsidizing poor people, I can understand your perspective although I'm dubious.

Not entirely, no. Government did not force insurers to discriminate based on preexisting conditions. Government did not force insurers to employ rescission to abandon their costliest customers. The profit motive took care of that, thank you very much.

As to buying insurance across state lines...just what problem is that supposed to "clear up"?

Government effectively forced insurers to ditch their most expensive clients by requiring that they charge all customers the same rates - look up adverse selection. The insurance market could price to correct for the problem (it's far from insurmountable), but when they're legally prevented from doing that, they have to look to other options.

The lack of competition - which was the point I was replying to.

Which US disaster?

Cause if we're talking about health care, the health care/insurance the US government provides is still more efficient then US private health care/insurance. Even if both are, compared to the rest of the world, pretty terrible.

It would solve some of the issues, but you would still be left with the horrible inefficiency of private health insurance.

Government-controlled health insurance is more efficient. Both experimentally (as in "let's look at how costs work in the real world") and theoretically (which is why you see even supposed anti-government notables like Hayek calling for government to provide it).

The health insurance the US government provides looks very efficient if you completely ignore the cost of billing the consumer. The government can do that because the IRS is a different agency, but no private company could. Also, medicare doesn't have to employ a large number of expensive lawyers to make sure it's in regulatory compliance. If you factor those in, it won't look nearly so rosy for public insurers.

That's not to say that government health insurance couldn't be run well - Singapore is an excellent example - but it would require the government care advocates to accept that money should be allowed to buy better care, and it would require the privatization advocates to accept a role for government in the business.

What I would like to see is a massive reduction in the role of insurance in the first place - it would involve a role for the government, and possibly some regulation, but if hospitals/doctors/etc. were required to publish their prices, and charge everyone the same price, I doubt it would take very long before competition started forcing prices down - as it has in all the medical areas where treatment is voluntary, not covered by insurance, such as plastic surgery. In addition, if you stop tax subsizing health insurance, it becomes much more pratical for indibiduals to purchase "emergency only" coverage, and use a health savings account or similar for predictable routine costs.

[Ser Greguh]

So the question is, does the absence of market forces typically lead the government to be better at providing the things that could also be provided by a market, or worse?

Again, this provides on how one defines "better". To the business world, "better" translates to "whatever maximizes our profits". To the rest of the world, "better" translates to "what is in the best interests of the public at large". This is the crux of the argument and the biggest piece that libertarians miss: you like to pretend that there is this one great big equalizing factor (money) that is an objective scale on which to grade all forms of productivity.

Consider fire departments. The libertarian model is to have them handled with private businesses for which people buy contracts (or choose not to), and, in the case of a fire, they show up and put the fire up (anyone that didn't purchase a contract is SOL). You have competition, you have market efficiency, you have all the fabulous forces of the free market kicking into gear. It's a fantastic model for building a business and fantastically stupid for the public as a whole. Because firefighting companies in this model put as much effort into sabotaging and undermining their competition as they do to helping people out, because people in an economic crunch don't always make sound long-term decisions when it comes to risk, and because fires, y'know, have this annoying tendency to spread, so a single person that doesn't purchase insurance is a risk to their whole neighborhood.

As to your point of slavery, I can't help but notice that one of the more libertarian of the founders, Jefferson, wanted to eliminate the institution and was overruled by the representatives of the rest of the southern states. Slavery, in general, has never been acceptable to either rights-oriented or consequentialist libertarians, so it's a very odd example.

Jefferson was a strong confederalist in that he supported a federal model that existed as a bunch of very separate, very autonomous states that banded together for only the big issues such as defense, but just because he's a figure that modern libertarians like to cherry pick quotes from doesn't mean that he'd be at all ideologically aligned with them. On moral issues in particular (including slavery) he was quite authoritative, in stark contrast to modern libertarians. He would be horrified at the sweatshops that you guys all seem to love so much.

The point is that slavery, in some form or another, is the inevitable end result of an unrestrained market. Those with power and money, when allowed to act unrestrained, are good enough at leveraging that power and money so as to keep their boot on people's heads.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Why not? What consequences pressure a typical government agency to be more efficient? It's budget is determined by congress, which means that (within limits) the fewer people served by the agency reduce it's costs but don't affect it's budget. So there's no pressure on a government agency other than to deliver the bare minimum that will allow it's directors to get next years budget approved by congress.

A democratic government is always under pressure to both increase services and reduce costs. So I'm sure you'd get a hollow laugh from public sector employees if you suggested that they were over-funded and under no pressure to increase efficiency. Particularly, try telling a social worker that (but be sure to duck.)

Government effectively forced insurers to ditch their most expensive clients by requiring that they charge all customers the same rates - look up adverse selection. The insurance market could price to correct for the problem (it's far from insurmountable), but when they're legally prevented from doing that, they have to look to other options.

This was a correction to the fact that insurers were willing to insure the sick only at ludicrous fees that no-one could afford.. Trying to get health insurance when you have cancer is like trying to insure your house when it is on fire - profit is impossible for the insurers at this point.

[Ser Greguh]

Sure there is. A business that isn't producing something of value for the public goes out of business. Granted, some of what that business is doing may not benefit other segments of the public. But at a minimum, there is a "check" in the sense that business must be doing something for which other people are willing to give it money, i.e., they find it of value. If it doesn't, it disappears. Government, no matter how poorly it does its job, doesn't disappear.

Any correlation between what's good for a business and what's good for a populace is incidental. That was the point, and that was the reason for the phrasing. If businesses can make money by providing consumers with a product that they want, then they will. If they can make money by bending them over the kitchen table and having their way with them, they'll do that too.

The rest of your post is unsubstantiated sermonizing. There are many instances where government steps in, does what needs doing, and steps out.

[lupis42]

A democratic government is always under pressure to both increase services and reduce costs. So I'm sure you'd get a hollow laugh from public sector employees if you suggested that they were over-funded and under no pressure to increase efficiency. Particularly, try telling a social worker that (but be sure to duck.)

The social worker may feel underfunded and under a lot of pressure, but so do most people working for private business, and the social worker is less likely to be laid off - (caveat: which way the political wind is blowing has much more to do with whether said social worker actually gets laid off than the social working doing his job or not). The vast majority of people who have a boss are asked to do more than they want with less than they'd like. But a great deal of that pressure also comes from within, because the social worker probably does what they do out of a desire to help people.

Ask the people at the DMV whether they feel underfunded and overworked, and I'm sure they'll tell you yes, but they still work 9 hour days, they still have terrible customer service, and yet nobody's losing their job...

This was a correction to the fact that insurers were willing to insure the sick only at ludicrous fees that no-one could afford.. Trying to get health insurance when you have cancer is like trying to insure your house when it is on fire - profit is impossible for the insurers at this point.

The whole point of "insurance" is that you get it for things that might happen, not things that have already happened. Insurance is a way of spreading risk - once you already have cancer, it's no longer a risk, it's a predictable condition. The only way to lower the cost of treating you is to make the treatment itself less expensive, or take the money from someone else - either without their consent, i.e. through taxes, or with their consent, i.e. through charities. I'm sympathetic to the suggestion of the creation of a government safety net for such people, but I think that a market for health-care will do more in the long run to drive the cost of treatment down.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Any correlation between what's good for a business and what's good for a populace is incidental.

No, it's not. Business can only make money if someone is willing to give them that money, and someone is not going to do that unless they believe they are benefitting from that transaction. The voluntariness of such transactions, as imperfect as they may be, is contrasted with a government that does not survive on voluntary transactions, except on the limited issue of user fees.

The rest of your post is unsubstantiated sermonizing.

Doesn't seem to stop you.

There are many instances where government steps in, does what needs doing, and steps out.

And step in again the next day. When was the last time the CRF actually got shorter?

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Ask the people at the DMV whether they feel underfunded and overworked, and I'm sure they'll tell you yes, but they still work 9 hour days, they still have terrible customer service, and yet nobody's losing their job...

In my state, most of those are privatized. Not suprisingly, the ones that are privately owned tend to be run better because the owner make money based on how many transactions they can process.

[lupis42]

Again, this provides on how one defines "better". To the business world, "better" translates to "whatever maximizes our profits". To the rest of the world, "better" translates to "what is in the best interests of the public at large". This is the crux of the argument and the biggest piece that libertarians miss: you like to pretend that there is this one great big equalizing factor (money) that is an objective scale on which to grade all forms of productivity.

If you don't like cost/service, how would you grade government productivity? I assume you acknowledge that it is occasionally possible for the government to do a worse job than the market, so how would you check? How could we review a government service and determine whether it should be abandoned?

Consider fire departments. The libertarian model is to have them handled with private businesses for which people buy contracts (or choose not to), and, in the case of a fire, they show up and put the fire up (anyone that didn't purchase a contract is SOL). You have competition, you have market efficiency, you have all the fabulous forces of the free market kicking into gear. It's a fantastic model for building a business and fantastically stupid for the public as a whole. Because firefighting companies in this model put as much effort into sabotaging and undermining their competition as they do to helping people out, because people in an economic crunch don't always make sound long-term decisions when it comes to risk, and because fires, y'know, have this annoying tendency to spread, so a single person that doesn't purchase insurance is a risk to their whole neighborhood.

Since fire prevention is basically a non-excludable good, the free rider problem is in full effect. I'm not complaining about my town providing a fire-department, although I would complain if the state or the fed was doing the same thing - because it would be less efficient, and that still matters.

Jefferson was a strong confederalist in that he supported a federal model that existed as a bunch of very separate, very autonomous states that banded together for only the big issues such as defense, but just because he's a figure that modern libertarians like to cherry pick quotes from doesn't mean that he'd be at all ideologically aligned with them. On moral issues in particular (including slavery) he was quite authoritative, in stark contrast to modern libertarians. He would be horrified at the sweatshops that you guys all seem to love so much.

Most libertarians believe in some level of moral absolutes. As to sweatshops, Jefferson probably wouldn't be horrified by them, since they were all over the country at the time. Child labor too.

Most libertarians don't love sweatshops, but we do believe that, from an economic basis, sweatshops make the people who work in them better off, and that that causes cyclical improvement that leads to the end of sweatshops. It's happening in parts of China and India now - demand for labor causes wages and conditions to improve, because workers demand better conditions. Even Paul Krugman, hardly a libertarian, agrees:

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html

The point is that slavery, in some form or another, is the inevitable end result of an unrestrained market. Those with power and money, when allowed to act unrestrained, are good enough at leveraging that power and money so as to keep their boot on people's heads.

How does that become less true when those people are government officials or elected representatives?