Private Sector more Efficient than Public?

[grumbler]

Excellent Grumbler.  The fact that you are now a teacher tells me you were not that profitable.

The fact that you believe this tells me that you "tell" poorly. 

[DGuller]

Is teaching is just a cover for grumbler? 

[Josquius]

Very little in this world is black and white. Generally however if you want to follow a career in altruistic fields then you go through the proper government channels. If you just need to make some money then you sign on for a private company.

A more reasonable position, IMO, is that certain fields attract people motivated to help others regardless of whose name is on the pay check. 

I don't think so.
I know several people who have gotten into caring for the elderly, teaching, etc... purely because it was a job on offer and they needed money. If somebody truly cared about a career doing that then they would go to university or at least college and get some qualifications in the field and then go through the proper channels to get a real public sector job.

With English teaching in Japan you see this kind of thing all the time. There are basically three ways to get a job teaching in schools in Japan; There's the old traditional one of Jet, which is not so much about teaching as it is just an international exchange programme with some teaching on the side, nonetheless it is pretty thoroughly vetted and the people doing it (are supposed to) get a lot of support so the 'quality' of person on the programme tends to be pretty high and even if they don't intend on following a career in teaching they certanly want to do that for a few years at least.
The without a doubt best way of employing teachers, for practically everyone involved, is direct hire. Experienced and qualified teachers who know what they're doing are hired directly by the city in the same sort of fashion as Japanese teachers. Doing this ensures they get a good teacher who intends on sticking around for some time to come. Of course since this is a skilled, experienced person it tends to cost a bit more looking purely at the surface costs, which leads to...
Private contracts. The lowest of the low. The companies competing for these range from somewhat reputable to utter scum. They undercut the cost of Jet somewhat to the city and pay a massively lessened salary to the people they employ; as such many of them will take anyone with a degree and a pulse. Or not even a degree on occasion if you can get a visa another way. These are people who generally have no interest in teaching, no competance for living in a foreign country or dealing with kids. Generally just people who want money or want to get into Japan by any means. Also the way many companies operate is they promise people they have to put in some time working in a crappy small town and then they can move to a desirable city- which really screws over the small towns and ensures the kids get a different inexperienced fresh off the boat and starting from scratch teacher every few months.
This isn't to say everyone on a private contract is an incompetant dick. Due to private companies undercutting costs so much they are taking a lot of the contracts which means they are actually forcing some of the competant people who would otherwise go down other paths to go with them. Certainly however you've much less of a guarantee of the quality of work you will get when dealing with a private company. It's no surprise that all the really good schools who actually give a crap about the quality of education they offer do direct hire.

[grumbler]

Is teaching is just a cover for grumbler? 

Or, maybe, "teaching is what grumbler did after he made enough money in the private sector that he could afford to leave the rat race and become a private school teacher." 

[CountDeMoney]

For a guy that always gets goofed on for being so old, people seem to think you're not old enough to have done everything you've done.

The guy's already knocked out 2 careers while most of you are still trying to get your 1st off the ground, fellas.  He's earned the right to sleep in and ogle MILF's on PTA night.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've always thought grumbler was terrible like the crazed 80 year old great uncle with a pedophile's gleam in his eye from my childhood, but I've also always respected his service to our country in the Spanish-American War.

[grumbler]

Tyr's post made me think about the parallel situation in the real world, and I realized that the real world was the reverse of the situation for English-speaking temporary foreign teachers in Japan.   

In the real world, the biggest problem that the public sector has is the difficulty of getting rid of the dross.  Because of byzantine rules for censuring and firing public-sector workers (rules adopted because of political interference in the hiring/firing process, for sure), public-sector bosses find it easier to transfer their bad eggs than fire them.  This means, of course, that many people who are competent don't stick with the public sector, because they have to work with the turds.  Worse, it is hard for the government to reward its top-performing public sector workers, because of the rules about equal pay.  So the top people are hired away by private-sector companies that can, and do, reward top performance, while the lowest people cling to their public-sector jobs because they know they cannot get another.  That makes it hard to keep the average schmoe.  I've worked in the two "government service" areas in both the public and private sector, and there is no question that, where the private sector business CAN do the job and "get out" (so to speak), it does the job more efficiently.

I suspect that the reason that English-speaking temporary foreign teachers in Japan are in a different boat than those in the real world is because they are so few, and are by definition temporary (though I suppose that some do, eventually, stay).

[OttoVonBismarck]

As for the thread topic, the private market isn't a guarantee of maximum efficiency. I don't know whence it came that such a thing was believed. Having competition for your product is a very strong motivator to either try and position your product as being superior quality to your competitor or superior in value to your competitor. This means it is an incentive to make products better and cheaper, respectively. But in many areas where government does a pretty good job with efficiency it's an area where they have monopoly or near monopoly purchasing power or similar.

Take Medicare, yes it's often touted that its administrative overhead is vastly smaller than private insurance (this isn't true, just based on faulty calculation, it is true that unlike insurance middlemen who have to profit for themselves Medicare just pays Medicare administrative employees, but the total administrative costs are not that much lower), and that Medicare is much better ran than private insurance. It may or may not be better ran, but Medicare is able to keep costs down because of extreme purchasing power. There is basically no hospital in the country that refuses Medicare, and because Medicare has so many customers it basically gives the health care providers marching orders. Medicare bases its reimbursement rate on the actual average cost of a given procedure nation wide. So when hospitals try to charge these hilariously fictitious chargemaster charges Medicare just smiles and slashes it down to the national reimbursement rate.

In the past some of the largest private insurers had enough customers to be able to similarly reduce charges, but by and large hospitals now have so much virtual monopoly power, especially good hospitals in special treatment areas, that the insurance companies are now very weak relative to the hospitals. They are often maligned because who really likes dealing with insurance company claims agents and etc, but the truth is these days hospitals hold most of the cards unless they're dealing with Medicare in which the government does. So Medicare saves costs primarily because of purchasing power, not anything innate about it being government-ran.

And of course many areas of government service we as a society ask for and demand universal coverage, which simply is not comparable to the private market which would never provide it.

[Razgovory]

Is teaching is just a cover for grumbler? 

Or, maybe, "teaching is what grumbler did after he made enough money in the private sector that he could afford to leave the rat race and become a private school teacher." 

You were in a private navy?

[DGuller]

Is teaching is just a cover for grumbler? 

Or, maybe, "teaching is what grumbler did after he made enough money in the private sector that he could afford to leave the rat race and become a private school teacher." 

Your theory makes more sense than my theory.

[crazy canuck]

It may or may not be better ran, but Medicare is able to keep costs down because of extreme purchasing power. There is basically no hospital in the country that refuses Medicare, and because Medicare has so many customers it basically gives the health care providers marching orders.

Agreed, that is one of the reasons why the single payor system we have is superior to private medical insurance.

[derspiess]

Is teaching is just a cover for grumbler? 

Or, maybe, "teaching is what grumbler did after he made enough money in the private sector that he could afford to leave the rat race and become a private school teacher." 

You were in a private navy?

McHale's Navy

[The Brain]

I'm considering making my private sector a public sector.

I'd wander those woods.

They are densely grown and rich in scent.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't think so.
I know several people who have gotten into caring for the elderly, teaching, etc... purely because it was a job on offer and they needed money. If somebody truly cared about a career doing that then they would go to university or at least college and get some qualifications in the field and then go through the proper channels to get a real public sector job.

With English teaching in Japan you see this kind of thing all the time.<snip>

I'm not sure how much of the conditions of the labor market for teaching English in Japan is transferrable to the broader issue of public vs. private sector efficiency.

[Ed Anger]

I'm considering making my private sector a public sector.

I'd wander those woods.

They are densely grown and rich in scent.