The State of Affairs in Russia

[garbon]

I do not agree with you and your fellow travellers that private actor solutions are inherently more efficient or competent than government ones.

I don't think either route will be efficient or competent.

[DGuller]

We can privatize the government and get the best of both worlds. 

[Savonarola]

My wife did some research on cities that hosted the Olympics in her graduate studies.  She found that there's a great deal of hardship to the residents of the city with the renovation that the preparation brings, and the crowds and traffic during the games; that the new buildings are almost never successfully repurposed (at least not up to their capacity); but also that the Olympics give the residents an increased and lasting feeling of civic pride and sense of community.  The boost in the latter is even greater among minorities and recent immigrants.  The Caucus region of Russia could certainly use a boost in sense of community, especially among ethnic minorities.

[DontSayBanana]

My wife did some research on cities that hosted the Olympics in her graduate studies.  She found that there's a great deal of hardship to the residents of the city with the renovation that the preparation brings, and the crowds and traffic during the games; that the new buildings are almost never successfully repurposed (at least not up to their capacity); but also that the Olympics give the residents an increased and lasting feeling of civic pride and sense of community.  The boost in the latter is even greater among minorities and recent immigrants.  The Caucus region of Russia could certainly use a boost in sense of community, especially among ethnic minorities.

TL;DR: Things suck more for the poors in an Olympics host city, but the poors feel better about the city even though it sucks.  Right?

[garbon]

What the hell, DSB?

[DGuller]

What the hell, DSB?

I guess he's definitely not an expert at speed reading.  There is a first for everything after all.

[Tamas]

  Sounds to me like you're fetishizing big government, Comrade Yakov.

Not at all.

I simply hold that there are a bunch of situations where issues like the problem of the commons, non-monetary priorities, the public interest, etc mean that they are best addressed through action accountable directly to the public rather than to shareholders.

Also, having spent my entire career in private industry - and having experienced competent government bureaucracies - I do not agree with you and your fellow travellers that private actor solutions are inherently more efficient or competent than government ones.

I am coming from a big corporation that was at least as bloated and ineffective as any government. The point is not that private enterprise is incapable of being as fucked up as a public one, but a private enterprise can be fucked up only so long before it fails, and even while being fucked up can only damage itself and it`s members, maybe business partners. A public enterprise, however, has an infinite source of survival called the government budget, and thus there is no incentive, or even interest, from it`s members, to turn an ineffective situation around, and their inefficiency damages all tax paying citizens.

Also, public enterprises offering services (or even privately offered services whose prices are determined by the government) are directly linked with the democratic processes, meaning all of their aspects are tools, or threats, in the political class` fight for votes, eg. the price of the services offered, or maintaining efficiency by laying off unnecessary employees.

Even with those, I am giving you that having relatively efficient public enterprises is possible, if all the ingredients are there, namely, abundant state resources, social cohesion, well developed political culture, and all levels of responsible leadership, as well as responsible and accountable workforce.

But is "if everything is ideal, then it works" a sufficient reason to mark something as the best solution? Hardly. In history we remember kings/emperors who -while being autocrats- had the wisdom and knowledge to let their countries/empires develop in a very efficient manner. Yet, we do not declare dictatorship to be an efficient way of handling a country. Why? Because we are aware that these examples are merely exceptions for a rule which sees hugely inefficient, tyranic, degrading, generally quite bad dictatorships.

Same is exactly true to heavy state involvement. Yes, it has been working seemingly efficiently for some Western countries (although lets wait 40-50 years more to give historic verdict), who instituted it after their private enterprises flourished and gave them a never before seen advantage over the rest of the world. But all the other states fail to show similar efficiency by trying to copy their methods

[Berkut]

My starting point is basically: what is likely to provide the best outcome? In some cases it's competent government services and action; in others it's purely private unregulated actors; in others yet it's private actors operating in a well regulated environment; and many times it's some sort of combination.

To reject any given mode of action and to vilify a specific actor or set of actors on purely ideological grounds is foolish.

+1.

I almost certainly disagree with you in many particulars about which choice is optimal in any given situation, but the basic foundation of what you are saying is accurate, especially the last sentence.

[Berkut]

  Sounds to me like you're fetishizing big government, Comrade Yakov.

Not at all.

I simply hold that there are a bunch of situations where issues like the problem of the commons, non-monetary priorities, the public interest, etc mean that they are best addressed through action accountable directly to the public rather than to shareholders.

Also, having spent my entire career in private industry - and having experienced competent government bureaucracies - I do not agree with you and your fellow travellers that private actor solutions are inherently more efficient or competent than government ones.

I am coming from a big corporation that was at least as bloated and ineffective as any government. The point is not that private enterprise is incapable of being as fucked up as a public one, but a private enterprise can be fucked up only so long before it fails, and even while being fucked up can only damage itself and it`s members, maybe business partners. A public enterprise, however, has an infinite source of survival called the government budget, and thus there is no incentive, or even interest, from it`s members, to turn an ineffective situation around, and their inefficiency damages all tax paying citizens.

What you are saying CAN be true, but is not necessarily. It is a mark of BAD government when government bureaucracies lack incentive to meet the needs of the public. This certainly does happen, just like corporations often do not meet the needs of their customers or stakeholders.

I don't really agree that there is no consequence though - of course there is, or ought to be. The government is the creation of the electorate, and it can and must be changed when it is not working. If it cannot be changed, then you have a poor system and THAT needs to be changed.

Note that the same thing happens in the private sector all the time - you end up with poorly managed/regulated/setup systems where private actors are not held to the consequences of their actions, for any number of reasons, until the damage caused extends far beyond the actual stakeholders. I don't need to remind you that human society has experienced basically constant cycles of economic pain at the systemic level as the result of misguided or actively hostile private economic actors. And of course public as well, and a combination of the two.

I don't think either "system" (and of course I use the term very loosely since in reality there has almost never been any truly "private" or truly "public" system, it is always a mix of both) is inherently "right". The trick is finding the appropriate system for specific tasks. And the biggest enemy of finding the appropriate answer is, IMO, to decide as a matter of faith that one type is inherently superior to the other without considering the specifics of the situation in question.

[Tamas]

I fully agree Berkut, but in case of the state, the consideration is made by the state itself, so of course the conclusion will be: give more power to the state.

That is one of the reasons why, in my opinion, eyes should be set on "how best we can solve XY situation with as little government involvement as necessary for effectiveness" and not "how the government could solve this?"
This is not vilifying state intervention, nor it emphasizes private solution as the only valid one, but rather it (would) emphasize a society where individual liberty and initiative reigns as the supreme value.

[Valmy]

I fully agree Berkut, but in case of the state, the consideration is made by the state itself, so of course the conclusion will be: give more power to the state.

That is one of the reasons why, in my opinion, eyes should be set on "how best we can solve XY situation with as little government involvement as necessary for effectiveness" and not "how the government could solve this?"
This is not vilifying state intervention, nor it emphasizes private solution as the only valid one, but rather it (would) emphasize a society where individual liberty and initiative reigns as the supreme value.

Wow you are more American than most Americans.  Maybe you immigrated to the wrong Anglophone country.

[Ed Anger]

No beets allowed!

[Berkut]

I fully agree Berkut, but in case of the state, the consideration is made by the state itself, so of course the conclusion will be: give more power to the state.

That is one of the reasons why, in my opinion, eyes should be set on "how best we can solve XY situation with as little government involvement as necessary for effectiveness" and not "how the government could solve this?"
This is not vilifying state intervention, nor it emphasizes private solution as the only valid one, but rather it (would) emphasize a society where individual liberty and initiative reigns as the supreme value.

But that is a different (albeit related) issue - it is the issue of the danger that a public solution may be more likely to allow the state to use its power to restrict individual liberty int he name of the public good. It is a real and very significant problem, and I absolutely agree that when it comes to the practical implementation of public solutions, their impact on individual liberty is a critical variable in how they are and should be measured.

Health care is an excellent example of this, and how a public solution will inevitably involve some very serious impact on individual liberty. And certainly you get a lot of the proponents of the public solution who simply won't even acknowledge that it is an issue worthy of consideration.

However, that being said, the private sector has it's own set of practical restrictions on private liberty as well. We often don't think about them as much, because in the abstract it shouldn't even happen - Ayn assures us that any impingement on private liberty by a private sector entity ought and will be addressed via the market. Yeah, that sounds great, but the reality is that it doesn't actually happen quite as reliably as we might hope.

In reality, we see private sector companies making choices that have very serious impacts on individual liberty in a practical sense, both directly (see companies working hard to establish monopoly or near-monopoly positions in markets) and even more so indirectly (what impact on individual liberty is there from Kodak and Xeror so polluting Lake Ontario that for a long time you couldn't eat fish caught there, as an example?).

I am a pretty piss poor Libertarian these days, because I look around and realize two things:

1. The theory behind it sounds good, but in reality it doesn't actually work. The market doesn't actually correct at all in some cases, and in others does so slowly enough that those who benefit do so anyway, and those who are harmed end up still being harmed, even if it "corrects" at some point. The lake is still polluted, the resources are still consumed, the wealthy who made their money exploiting a "short term" market situation (that may last for a decade) or still rich even after the market "corrects". So the banks (as an example) are just going to look for the next loophole that they can make a few trillion off of before the market corrects, assuming of course it corrects at all.

2. The common response to #1 is that all that is a function of a not Libertarian ENOUGH free market - that in fact if only we had less interference, then the market would correct faster. To that, I say
2a. Bullshit. That is like a Communist saying that the reason Communist nations failed is that they weren't Communist enough. There are ample examples in human hustory of under regulated free markets becoming extremely exploitative and damaging to the societies that encompass them, and

2b. If in fact the requirement for Libertarian theory to work is some nearly anarchist, never before ever seen level of incredibly free market, then it is a irrelevant pipe dream that is not implementable in actual human society. Outside of some pulp fiction, every society has some controls over how its members conduct business, and if the pay off for the Libertarian ideal is only achievable when you have a level of free market that has never been seen in human history, then it is outside the bounds of actual practical discussion, so who cares? Again, it is like saying Communism could work great if human nature isn't what it is - sure, that *might* be true, but human nature IS what it is, so who cares?


I've gone well beyond your point of course, so please don't take my position as being necessarily an attempt to refute your own, per se.

[Razgovory]

Tamas, you have a real blind spot for problems with private actors.  They can be far danger to more people then just themselves.  Just ask the people of Bhopal.

[Tamas]

 

Regarding 2b, yes in a "pure" form it is a pipedream and will never happen unless humans reach a level of maturity which seems impossible at this stage.

But it could still be the "guiding point" to aim toward and try and get as close to as possible. Again, as opposed to the seemingly prevailing set of values which seem to end at "the government should fix it".

Point 2 in general: any kind of state control over the markets WILL be used to the benefits of the private interests which manage to exalt influence over the decision maker (or for the decision makers themselves). So I think the threshold at which rules and regulations stop being beneficial and start just replicating the effects they nominally try to eliminate, is very thin. So again, effort should be to establish the state as a kind of mediator, or "referee" if you will. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less. Getting to that point must be extremely challenging, maybe impossible, but that does not mean that we would not benefit from efforts being made in that direction.