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Why libertarianism FAILS.
Posted on: October 29, 2009 - 5:30am
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Why libertarianism FAILS.
Quite simply, it ignores that everyone is part of a society and that they are responsible to eachother to make the society work.
The only libertarian utopia in the world right now is Somalia.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
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Well, no, not always. There are few to no viable privately maintained municipal water systems. Enron tried managing water systems and dropped them because they couldn't make a profit. The city of Atlanta tried it, and as near as I can tell, they went back to government management. Why? Because everyone needs potable drinking water at an affordable rate. The general rule of thumb is to plan on replacing your entire drinking water system every 20 years. Not easy or inexpensive no matter what size the system.
I used to work for a county health district. One of the services we provided was testing water samples for coli and e. coli. I remember one guy having kinniptions about paying for his water to be tested. It was $14 for the test. He thought it should be free. He paid taxes, after all. We had just completed the county budget for next year. I was able to inform him that our water testing lab was 100% fee supported, including wages and benefits for two workers and the state licensing fee. (No, county agencies are not exempt from state or federal fees, they have to pay, too.) Not one penny of his taxes went to support the water lab at the health district. If he wanted, I could give him the name, address, and phone number of the private lab in town that would test his sample for $16. Or, if he wanted to pay for overnight shipping, he could send his sample to the state lab or to an out of town private lab. He was pissed, his partner laughed, and he paid the $14.
It is vastly oversimplified to say that the government has made it illegal for private companies to do all those services. What the government usually does is provide services at the request of the taxpayers. The FDA was set up by the federal government at the request of people who had read The Jungle, then insisted congress investigate the allegations (they found everything to be true except they could not verify a person winding up in the sausage), and then once congress released its report, the taxpayers insisted on the regulations. And it was thought federal oversight was better than state oversight, because people didn't want to feel safe in their own state, but then have to research regulations in each state they may subsequently visit. Okay, it is safe to eat in Nevada, is it safe to eat in California? What about Florida? What about foods processed in Nevada, or Florida, or where ever? Do they have decent food processing regulations there?
I agree that the FDA is not doing a fantastic job, but that is largely the fault of reducing staff, not of inherent problems with the idea of regulating food and drugs. Coca-Cola really did use to have cocaine in it. There really used to be added arsenic in canned peas to make them greener in color. Corporations will not do what is right, they will do what they can get away with to sell more product for lower costs. This is not bad, until the line of health and safety is crossed. Lawsuits will fix that you say? Fine, before or after how many people have died? And for many industries, lawsuits are now prohibited by law. Thanks to the lobbyists.
Lawsuits haven't stopped this fraudulent practice, neither have Chinese laws. What makes you think it would not be practiced in the US except for the FDA?
I can go on with each agency mentioned. But this is probably enough for you to tell me you don't believe me. Fine.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Investments in the community are a bad thing because it isn't making someone rich! Like how health care is 1/6th of the nation's GDP. It doesn't matter if a significant portion of society cannot get access to it. You have insurance? We will deny your claims. It has happened to me, my mother, and my father. You don't get treatment, too bad! We don't think you need it. Sure your doctor says you do, but we decided you don't.
Think of the profits!
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
The real problem with Libertarianism... is that I simply don't fucking want ANY government telling me what to do............. So it's either... anarcho-syndicalism (I don't care for helping complete strangers, whose motives in life could be malicious towards me or those I actually care about) or free market libertarianism (at least I know what to expect from others in a "dog-eat-dog" world)
I refuse to uphold a 'society' that:
So I'm left with two extremes... participate in socializing a world economy without ANY government, or... "act to your own benefit without government getting in the way"
Both systems of politics/economics have their own glaring faults, in theory... a mix of the two, however... might work. (however unstable or combustible such a combination would be)
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Clockcat and cj, the argument isn't that everything private companies is great or everything the government does is bad.
The point is monopolies are bad and competition is good. Seeing as government programs are by definition monopolies this is bad.
Such as if that company is the ONLY company to provide Clockcat with water that's bad, if they another company offered water, they would have to compete and that's how you would get superiour quality.
If your cell phone service is so shitty why not switch cell phone companies to a better one?
It's not like the windmill company is going to build it in the middle of school so the blades shred the children, it's in the open field the point is phobia of private companies is preventing progress.
And yes, Clock, America has government run education and one of the worst in the world. So being government run does not guarentee quality
Except government programs, in a government ran by the people, is controlled by the public. Why is that bad? You have failed to make a case for it. You simply throw assumptions out for your ideology.
And how pray tell, do you propose another company would bother to lay down infrastructure that the first company wouldn't even lay down? If it isn't profitable private industry won't bother with it. Public goods are not profitable-unless they take advantage of the public and hold them at ransom for basic societal needs.
There is no better one. The few options are all shitty. There will be no competition to their shittiness, because investment and risk are too high. They know that they are safe. It has become a necessity in society, and they hold the public at ransom for basic communications. This is what happened with AT&T before and the government intervened to break it up into the bells. Which ate eachother, and became at&t in 20 years. So back where it started.
Do you know that? Do you just trust them with no regulation or safety oversight? You are aware companies will look to maximize profits at the expense of everything else, right?
Did I say it guaranteed quality automatically by being publicly offered? I don't remember that. I remember saying I wouldn't want to live in a society where a base level of education wasn't offered. That would be terrible.
Being publicly owned means the failure of public schools in this country is- and here is the shocker- the public's fault for not making education a priority. Which it isn't in many public school districts.
I know of many of them in this country that consider school to be about football, rather than intellectual advancement. Many of them do not prepare students for higher education.
Not to mention the failures of people that do not even complete their basic education and graduate.
Privatizing public goods damages them. I have, and continually see this on a day to day basis. Look at Arizona. They have even gone as far as to sell their capital building and rent it from someone else. Even their government buildings are privately owned now. They continue to cut taxes and privatize, and now they are closing down all their state parks. The ones that bring in revenue.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/03/18/20100318arizona-state-park-system.html
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
That is a good start. I have worked for a privately owned manufacturer, a defense contractor manufacturer, a community college, a county health district, a privately owned telephone survey company, and a privately owned engineering and architecture firm and when I was much younger, an assortment of restaurants. And you know, there isn't a nickle difference between any of them.
Generally, I agree that monopolies are bad. But for government services? Let's take restaurant inspections. The sanitarian inspecting a restaurant may not always catch every problem, but how would you introduce competition? Restaurant A was inspected by inspection companies 1, 2, and 3. Restaurant A had to pay all three companies for the privilege of being declared "safe eat there". Customers 37Z have a subscription with inspection company 2, and so receive their newsletter as to Restaurant A being safe. How does this save anyone any money? The restaurant pays extra for extra inspections, the customers pay extra for their food and for a subscription to an inspection company. Seems like the only ones who benefit are the inspection companies.
Please research "natural monopolies", a common economic term. Water systems are a natural monopoly because there is only one delivery system and one waste system. How do you compete when you only have one set of water pipes to any one home? Install multiple sets of water pipes? "Company XYZ is just costing too much, let's add water pipes that will deliver Company ABC water." And what about water sources? Shall we have people just drilling wells in their back yards? That is fine if you are living on 10 or more acres, it would be silly for any town of any size. I strongly recommend that book on Dr. John Snow and the last cholera epidemic in London. One of the points is that every block of houses just about had a shallow well servicing those houses. In the late 1800s, in a city the size of London. Think about it.
Fine, that works for cell phones.
Windmills - as I see it, it isn't phobia of private companies, it is phobia of new technology. People don't understand the technology and so they are needlessly afraid of it. There are some lovely wind farms on the ridges next to the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington. You get some great views along I-84.
Nope, it doesn't. But for many children, public education is their only option. Maybe it isn't right for people to have children if they can't afford private school, but that doesn't stop them from having children. And I feel we should take a stab at educating those children. Some of them, like me and my husband and sons, will rise above the lousy education we had in public schools and turn out to be pretty intelligent, decent, hard working, tax paying neighbors of all the private school people.
Please also note, the corollary is also true, just because it is privately run does not guarantee quality. None of these conditions predetermine lousiness either.
Please note, yes, I am unemployed currently. Yes, I am also paying taxes - income taxes on the unemployment benefits, property taxes on my house, registration and air quality testing fees on my vehicles, and various other taxes as well. It may be different in other parts of the world, but here, I pay taxes.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.