[tn13]

> A lot of public utilities were created specifically to enforce a level of quality and compliance and protect the citizen

Calling others ignorant does not help an argument. I think he had a point that when you let government control something it is the worst kind of monopoly and the quality is bound go down the drain. Whether it VA affairs, public education or IRS.

[josephg]

> I think he had a point that when you let government control something it is the worst kind of monopoly and the quality is bound go down the drain. Whether it VA affairs, public education or IRS.

Thats not necessarily true. Certainly outside the US there are many, many public institutions which do fantastic work. The ABC here in Australia and the BBC in the UK produce great television. The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) are highly regarded here, as was CSIRO before the government gutted their funding (CSIRO is an Australian government research group which invented parts of wifi).

I don't know if the reputation US government agencies have for incompetence is real or due to media spin, but the problem is obviously not inevitable. To quote Bill Clinton: "The problem with ideology is that it gives you the answer before you've asked the question".

[tn13]

>"The problem with ideology is that it gives you the answer before you've asked the question".

Yupp. Looking at checks signed by other helps make the decision lot quicker.

> BBC in the UK produce great television.

What for ? At what cost to public taxpayer ? Is it even needed to be run using taxpayer money ?

[shard972]

> The ABC here in Australia

As an Australian, aside from their news which last I checked doesn't get the same kind of views as the private companies I would disagree.

Maybe the parents enjoy ABC1 or whatever plays kids shows all day but I find the quality of their original shows to be quite poor and their flagships like QANDA have really gone off the rails in the last few years.

[8note]

in Canada, the CBC was pretty great until the conservatives annihilated their budget. In that time, they lost the license to the theme of their flagship show, Hockey Nightnin Canada, and after that, the show itself. Also, they lost the rights to report the olympics, and the news is much lower quality.

its almost like public services dont work well when you defund them.

[ACow_Adonis]

Do you have any data points of the private sector managing those things?

I only ask because I moved from government to private sector. In government we were all so frustrated that we were so inefficient and had to work with such backward technology and systems. So I left to get paid more and do things better for private industry...

I get paid more, but by god, we're about 10 years behind some of the practices we were bitching about in government, but we call everything a grand success and put out so much advertising and never admit failure and we don't really care about measuring or performance objectively.

I think there's so little cross over most people don't really know whether what they're doing it's objectively efficient...most of us in government had swallowed the line we were behind because that's what we were always told and things were objectively frustrating: so we bought that private is better. And this was despite the general observation that our private competitors generally put things out of lower quality and then arguing that we should be abolished because of our inefficiency/lack of need for us any more.

I'm not saying government is inherently more efficient than private sector, just that government involvement isn't necessarily more inefficient/desirable than private sector or deregulation.

Also, I think a part of this also has to do with the general cultural values systems a society has. Have government or private industry set up to deal with things the society genuinely doesn't value that much, and you're going to find its generally poorly done no matter who it's running the show...

[kalleboo]

> when you let government control something it is the worst kind of monopoly and the quality is bound go down the drain

[citation needed]

I think the US political climate seems uniquely poorly suited to having well-functioning government because it seems half the country is hell-bent on proving that government doesn't work.

I don't live in the US and I've only had great experiences at the driver licensing center and tax authority. My garbage gets picked up on time, the water is clean and safe to drink. Meanwhile at private services I've waited in massive lines at banks, and had poor service from telecom companies.

[8note]

In america, im sure most people would prefer leaded water if its half the price of unleaded stuff, too.

[ptaipale]

I doubt that. But there seems to be a very high level of distrust of government, on all levels.

[grandalf]

For a first world country, the US has tremendous corruption in government.

[roywiggins]

Water pipes are a natural monopoly anyway. It doesn't make any sense for FooWater and BarWater to build out two completely separate sets of water mains which all have to be maintained.

Whichever entity is running the water for a particular area, it's either going to be run by the state or contracted out by it. I don't know anywhere that isn't true, other than places where the water supply is so abysmal that people pay private firms to truck water around.