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> Coming from a former communist country, I don't understand why smart, capable people want to give away their money to a corrupt, incompetent state to manage it for them. Coming from a former communist country, I can explain why. Because the alternative, capitalistic "free market" where companies eventually end up as oligopolies, is actually worse and gives you less control over the resources involved. For example, botched privatization of water utilities here in Czech Republic hiked prices up 100x. Yes, real democracy is quite a weak control, but at least it's some means of control. You don't get the same level of control over private corporation as you get as a citizen over public utility. And there are many examples of government run enterprises that prove this point, in Nordic countries and in Switzerland. So state is something I can at least marginally influence by voting or by being involved in local politics (I have for example information laws that give me some insight about what's going on); and yeah, to me, giving state less control over resources by minimizing it is a losing proposition. If I could vote about the companies, then perhaps we could talk (but then they would be more like customer cooperatives than private companies). Of course, you probably think competition is the solution, and I don't buy that. First, it doesn't exist in many places (as you're probably painfully aware), and I believe it actually tends to not exist. But the biggest point against the competition solution in my mind is that it's very "low information density" solution. People cannot come and to try to fix things (unless they make their own company, which is unrealistic to expect); they can only signal unhappiness by leaving. It promotes irresponsibility and fatalism. I think it's a kludge, frankly, compared to a possible system where you could really control citizen-owned companies via voting. |