Forum Post: Private Industry is Evil?
Posted 11 years ago on March 12, 2013, 3:56 p.m. EST by john32
(-272)
from Pittsburgh, PA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Awaiting the backlash on this one....do me a favor though...watch the video before chewing me out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f8qFvo2qJOU
This isn't a post to argue that private business is more noble than public....greedy evil people live on both sides.
It's not evil, but it's a lot less desirable than worker owned businesses.
How so?
Hierarchy of power is bad for societies as it leads to individuals overpowering others. This does not promote community, which in turns leaves some individuals out in the cold. Only communism distributes wealth by the needs, but communism is only possible with an abundance of wealth. From capitalism to socialism until we have enough wealth to move to communism. Socialism distributes wealth by the deeds, but the wealth is not so unequal as in capitalism.
Could you further explain the issues behind the privatization in this particular instance?
Read Karl Marx. It's all about private vs public owned businesses. There will always be greedy evil people, but the political and economic frameworks are the most important elements of a society. Content is derived from form. The medium is the message.
I have. I'm more interested in this particular case. Do you have any issues or see any potential problems with this particular case?
It should be obvious, but I'll explain.
This particular case is a fallacy of composition, i.e. assuming that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of a part of the whole. What we have is flawed inductive reasoning.
To properly understand the worth of an economic framework it must at least be taken nationally, and ideally taken globally. Here we judge the worth of capitalism (private ownership) by the success of one city. However, in capitalism, the success of one is the failure of another. This fact is why capitalism always leads to increases in wealth inequality.
Sandy Springs is not economically isolated, it is one part of a larger framework. The fact that it outsourced everything makes this clear. Companies from outside the city were able to offer great prices because their employees were paid less. Those employees live outside of Sandy Springs.
Using the riches of US to show that capitalism works would be the same fallacy of composition because the economy of US is not self-reliant, but is instead global and relies on sweatshops all around the world.
Using the city Sandy Springs to show that capitalism works is equivalent to using a single rich man for the same task. In the case of the rich man, we forget all the poor folks. In the case of Sandy Springs, we forget all the poor cities.
If all the cities in US tried to be successful by using the ways of Sandy Springs it would not work, just like it would be impossible for every computer company to be as big as Apple or Microsoft. In capitalism, there are many losers behind every winner.
In socialism and/or communism this is not the case. The richness of one doesn't depend on the poorness of others.
I suggest you read up on logical fallacies and various theories on how to perform proper political and economic analysis. Using a small sample to explain the whole never works.
This is more complex than just outsourcing government tasks. I’m a retired State government worker. I’ve personally seen some very successful privatization of government work. I’ve also seen some catastrophic and expensive failures.
I don’t think it wise to make a blanket policy that outsources almost everything. It must be selective.
The biggest failure I know about was in my State they contracted a major information systems company to update, consolidate and move all computer systems to a common platform. It was a dismal failure, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars over several years. There were extensive computer outages, unstable systems, lawsuits and eventually the contract was ended in the court. The State computer systems were a mess and State employess were left to clean up the mess.
My point is be careful when considering outsourcing. Having having someone mow the grass is not the same as having a private company manage the waste water system.
How do you feel about Core Government Functions being Outsourced? I guess in the last 20 years there was a lot of money predicted to flow toward automation and automation contracts ... perhaps under what is called modernisation. So probably there were a lot of unsophisticated people unfamiliar with automation systems and with little experience trying to start companies to automate systems.
We are probably better off today than 20 years ago in that many younger people have more time with computers, programing, and more stable industry ideas or technology.
But I think there is a lot of risk with automating and turning over government functions to private corporations. The Industry is more mature today and the Work Force is more mature. However there is probably a tendancy to outsource overseas to people with different culture and language and that is a higher risk also.
1) Retain Core Government Functions for government employees.
2) Modernization of automated systems is normal and predictable and can be managed in a logical way probably.
3) Privatization should be kept to a minimum unless the local workforce is not really up to recruitment for automation maintenance and automation projects.
4) Only privatize the conversion or moderization efforts as a short term task ... or only bring on Project leaders that are private for government projects ... while retaining and retraining Public employees to keep a core skill level within the government.
5) Moderization Projects and Automation Projects should be managed to keep public authority and skills in the new technology unless there is little budget and small population in the municipal area. The point is that turning over your power to a corporation leads to Moral Hazzard and possible negligence of duty on the part of the government leaders.
6) Easy said, hard to do when government or public office has lttle expertise in Technology. Probably want retension bonuses and Technology classes for managers to help them manage change.
It's unfortunately very complex indeed. The state that I live in and that I must deal with for my business has a very dismally incompetent bureaucracy that I've come to loathe over the years. I wish they would fire all of them. But I've worked with other states that have pretty good ones that did their job just fine; and some tasks just really aren't suitable for private enterprise. What works in a particular situation is very dependent on the facts of that situation.
Private industry in the way to go. For a multitude of reasons. first of which is that evil word of Satan.....aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! Money.