[ClHans]

"Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient" [citation needed]

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Oh, it was all opinion.

That's fine.

In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector (ever seen the waste and mismanagement going on in these huge megacorps? it's insane!), and by definition can be _more_ cost-effective than the private sector because there is no need to turn a profit. Private businesses have, built in, a bit of skimming off the top for the owners (and there's nothing wrong with that, of course--that's part of why people start businesses), and government-run services by definition do not. They're not profit-seeking services. They're public services.

(You may disagree on what ought to be a public service, but once we're all on the same page that the government ought to do some things, it's just a matter of hashing out what those ought to be...)

Also...wait... NASA has grown into an organization that works for the glory of its leadership? what? sorry...again...what?

[randallsquared]

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Citation provided: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#American_exa...

[snowwrestler]

During the 20th century there were many attempts at government-directed economies, some very large. In every instance they underperformed free market economies.

We tried it. It doesn't work as well.

[ClHans]

I didn't say anything about a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy, either.

... Hey, I discovered a great site the other day:

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

[snowwrestler]

You said "In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector." Directly refuting you is not a strawman.

[ClHans]

I'm sorry, maybe you can explain it like I'm five.

What does the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the public or private sector have to do with a centrally-planned economy?

Or, let me be charitable (because I think I know what you were getting at...) and instead put it to you this way:

Let's say government-financed or government-run health care is more efficient or more cost-effective than privately-run health care, because there's no privately-run insurance company that exists to extract a bit of dosh from every doctor-patient transaction.

(And safe money's on government-financed/run health care buying better health care for its citizens, dollar for dollar and measuring on a variety of health outcomes. I've seen a lot of arguments from theory that "more free markets, less regulation" would do as good a job, or better, but I haven't seen evidence of that, just arguments from theory.)

Does this mean that a country that adopts a single-payer or government-run health care system for its citizens has _also_ adopted a centrally planned--or in your words, "government-directed"--economy?

[snowwrestler]

I think we are getting hung up on different usages of the word "efficient."

Government can be efficient at delivering a well-defined service, or meeting a well-defined goal. For example Medicare is a pretty efficient program, and we did make it to the Moon with NASA.

Efficiency can also refer to the allocation of capital toward innovations with the greatest expected payoff or outcome. This is where freely operating private markets outperformed government planning by a large margin during the 20th century.

I thought we were discussing this usage of "efficient" since cturner referred to "picking winners".