I agree from my experience. People may or may not be aware that Bush's head of OMB, Mitchell Daniels, is aggressively promoting increased levels of contracting out, including substituting contracted out professionals to replace government career individuals.
-----Original Message----- From: Max Sawicky [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 3:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:20611] RE: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question Sorry if I misinterpreted. I agree that corporate influence is an eternal problem, but it is the least interesting one analytically. Even if without any such influence, there is an intrinsic problem of contracting in some areas simply because running a contract system has costs, both government and vendors are self-interested, and some public services are too complicated or too risky for contracting to be feasible. You could have the same sort of problems if a socialist Gov was dealing with an independent cooperative and nobody except the Gov owned capital. mbs Max, I never intended to implement contracting out would be easy. You gave a number of examples of government screw-ups. Won't they be almost inevitable so long as the government is permeated with corporate influence? "Max B. Sawicky" wrote: > MP suggested contracting was an easy alternative, tho > he didn't advocate it. I said it isn't easy. --- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901