On 27/06/06 17:20 +0100, Ashish Gulhati wrote: > On 27-Jun-06, at 4:45 PM, Devdas Bhagat wrote: > > >Counter evidence: The US and Canadian health systems. > > The US health system is still largely private. The socialized Canadian > health system SUCKS. People wait years for critical surgeries and > transplants. They give labor-stopping injections to pregnant women > so they can keep them waiting while the clogged system tries to > deal, ineffectively, with the demand for health services. Many people > die waiting in line for medical services in Canada. > Funny. The Canadians I correspond with say otherwise.
> >Mass transit in > >Mumbai against private transport in Delhi, or Bangalore. > > Mass transit is only a state monopoly (in some countries, not all) > because the state outlaws private competitors or controls them out of > existence. I believe Delhi had private bus service (which didn't work very well). Any Delhi-ites care to correct me? Mumbai transport isn't exactly controlled out of existence. It just happens to be very well served by the government owned and run bus and train services. > > >The public > >Internet (Remember X.25?). > > The Internet is mostly privately run and operated. True the protocols > were originally designed with DARPA funding, but they were still > envisioned, designed and implemented by private parties, not by the > state. The Internet's development could just as well have been privately > funded. The first WAN was created with almost zero funding by a single > individual. > So why didn't individuals actually create it in the first place? It took government funding for quite some time (and funding from the monopolistic Bell telephone company which had a limit on the profit it could make and the industries it could participate in) before the Internet took off. > See http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml for the details. > > >Pollution control (yay! for the gas guzzler > >selling automobile industry.). > > Which was subsidized in huge part by the state's highway-building, and > the active co-operation of the state in crushing the much more fuel- > efficient tram industry that preceded it. But how does this conflict with my statement that pollution control is not a priority for private industry? > > None of your counter-examples really hold up under detailed scrutiny. > Your arguments are orthogonal to my claims (except in the case of the health industry). > >Whenever you need to sink in really large volumes of money with risky, > >very long terms returns, a government works better than private > >enterprise (which tends to inflate the value of short term results > >over > >long term gains). > > Private enterprise has produced all the goods you use every day, from > the computer you use to type your messages, to the satellites that carry > your message over the 'Net, to the food you eat, the clothes you wear > and > the medicines you depend on for protection against disease. Private > enterprise is more than adequate to deal with all real needs people are > willing to pay to have satisfied. > Oh good. I want to have global warming growth stopped, and reduced to the levels of a century ago. Care to show me _how_ that would be achieved by private industry (at least the first part). Keep in mind that reducing the effects of global warming is _not_ profitable for large sections of industry. And these sections are amongst the worst polluters. I am not arguing that the government should do everything. But for a lot of things, the government is actually better than the short term profit driven private industry. As Eugen said, this is particularly true when unpopular but necessary things have to be done. At this point in time, it is irrelevant how much you are willing to pay to revert the damage done by global warming. We can, at best, control that damage. That damage hurts poorer countries more than the richer ones. How do you propose that fair compensation be provided? Private enterprises offer solutions which look very good at the small scale, but have far larger costs to society on a larger scale. And for these benefits to be realised, government controlled large systems which have scaled well need to be destroyed. Your argument fails to make the point that private enterprises do not engage in non-profitable operations. Even if the cost to society is higher than the cost of engaging in such practices. Drugs to control diseases are more profitable than cures. Drugs to control obesity are more valuable than drugs to cure malaria. Viarga is even more valuable :). > Governments specialize in throwing huge sums of money down the > toilet to pursue such damaging (and unachievable) goals as the war > against > (some) drugs, or posturing and overly expensive ventures of dubious > worth, > such as NASA space programs. > The government does R&D very well. NASA is more of a R&D organisation than a commercial one. Would you have invested in going to the moon 40 years ago? How many private organisations would have borne the risk alone, or as a consortium? Devdas Bhagat
