Small Government – Moon of Alabama

October 7, 2006

Small Government

There is much reference in every conservative agenda to "small government". The fact of life is this: If you need a service, someone will have to pay for it.

The question is thereby not about "small government".

If the agreed upon needed service is to move 6 tons of whatever from a A to B, someone has to pay to move 6 tons from A to B. The kilowatts to do that are a physical constant.

There is NO inherent reason why a government could not move the 6 tons from A to B at the same price, or even cheaper, than a non-government organization. Bad public management? – ask Enron.

Unlike a commercial company, a government does not have to make a profit margin. It does not have have to pay a "rent". It can thereby calculate and deliver a service at a lower price than any commercial enterprise.

The whole "privatization" stuff is thereby just a way to enrich the well connected (and bribing) folks who already "have". It is never about the people who need.

When will this be understood?

Posted by b on October 7, 2006 at 19:57 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Ah, but Bernard you have left out all the jobs, jobs, jobs that are created when private industry moves whatever from Point A to point B.
Mostly because private industry will immediately consumerize the service or product, so that there is more consumer choice — why, some people may want their whatever moved in paper, and others in plastic. Some may want baskets, some boxes.
Some want rush service, and some want it delivered cold. Every morning on their doorstep.
Our consumer culture is built almost entirely on catering to these little personal preferences. We have a society where everyone’s job is to cater to everyone else.
If times get a bit pinched in coming decades, people might opt for the simpler method of just moving whatever from point A to point B and calling it “good enough for government work!”
Right now, we seem to want Ronald McDonald to supersize it whenever we say so.
–

Posted by: Antifa | Oct 7 2006 20:48 utc | 1

my my, you’ve really stuck your foot in the water b. i hadn’t realized you were a pinko communist.
:0 i’m shocked

Posted by: annie | Oct 7 2006 20:51 utc | 2

Nowhere is this more true than in the various insurance industries.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Oct 7 2006 21:03 utc | 3

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty as an example of this form.
The socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems.

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 7 2006 21:15 utc | 4

In a previous life I worked on the privatisation of numerous utilities in East Africa.
I remember one particular difficult one, which was a container port, that had a huge $$$$$ deposit with Citibank. The World Bank decided it was a utility worth keeping in Govt hands.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 7 2006 21:31 utc | 5

Papa Marx mercilessly wielding his switch-blade. Remains sharp as hell after 158 years.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Oct 7 2006 21:34 utc | 6

When will this be understood?
It is well understood by those who understand, and profit.
Nowhere is this more true than in the various insurance industries.
Some years back, all “3rd party motor accident injury” in New South Wales was covered by the Government Insurance Office (GIO) run along normal insurance practices and procedures. Except that this insurance was compulsory.
With a lot of hoopla, this little pie was divvied up amongst a dozen insurance companies. Everyone was assured that competition would drive down the cost of insurance.
Sure enough, for the first year, insurance costs were dropped dramatically as each insurance company battled for market share.
Then it was time for profit taking. Insurance costs rebounded. I’d estimate to about 3 times that of when it was the GIO alone. (Well, it now takes 12 organizations to do a job that was done by one).
Insurance is not the worst case. What possible benefits are there to private companies “competing” when there is a monopoly. Think there is a lot of savings to be made having your water bill sent by a private company?
Don’t confuse “capitalism” with “private enterprise” and “competition”. Capital doesn’t want to compete. To compete is a risk. Better to just build another toll road. Make sure though, that the government paid planners are on-side.

Posted by: DM | Oct 7 2006 21:57 utc | 7

GB – at this stage of my life, I can’t understand what’s so bad about “all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom” aside from the implausability. And Marx’s revolution doesn’t seem so damn plausible either at this juncture: maybe after the whole world is reduced to a labor camp in a waste dump. In either case, a lot of the frustration here can be attributed to way that a machine designed to turn blood into money is uncreceptive to smart technical and organizational ideas – like an insurance system that would reduce risk of individuals at minimal cost.

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 7 2006 22:17 utc | 8

Because people buy the theory that the private sector is more efficient, because it has to compete. Competition makes the most efficient, cheapest private company rise to the top, instead of the inefficient, corrupt government.
It’s economics in a vaccuum, but people, even smart people, really believe that this is true.

Posted by: Rowan | Oct 7 2006 22:59 utc | 9

Its probably safe to make these two (contradictory) assertions about innate human nature 1) people are competitive (as individuals with their own interests), and 2) people are social(ist)animals. At a glance, political history is the story of how people have sought mediate this contradiction through larger historical narratives in the quest for survival, culminating in the recent left/right dialectic , or as in this case — personified through communistic and libertarian polar ideals. Both of which by the way, are idealistic and have never reached anything close to actual stable and operating political institutions. Plausably, neither ideal have reached a state of actual reality is because both seek to rid the reality of one of either innate human characteristics from the equation — the libratarian ideal denying the social, or the communistic denying the competitive (individualist). What has occured, at least in modern “social” democrarcies, is a form of mediation between the poles, called “the modern welfare state”, of which the U.S. is certainly, if not reluctantly, a member of. And in the heart of that reluctance, lies the monad of exceptionalism, and that exceptionalism is nothing more than the denial of the social in the above equation — that we should believethere is, somehow, a latent libertarian innate characteristic discovered by it, that it will make the social necessity dissappear as if by magic, or as in this case — having it “drowned in a bathtub”. But then as anyone can see, even they dont believe in their ideals of individualism, or exceptionalism, or even the drowning of the social instinct, no, for a crowd as fanatical about loyality, they know full well the importance of the social, its just that they want their social club to be exclusive, or as we should experience it, small government. Boy, talk about a big lie.

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 7 2006 23:34 utc | 10

k,
I hear you. The way one globalisation winner hears another. What has always attracted me to Marx is the sharpness of his early analysis, rather than his later futile efforts at systemisation. I will say this though: I have felt I am missing out on something ever since I didn’t follow through on an announcement I made to my parents at age 8: that I was going to leave and start a commune with a bunch of other children. You know, as in the Peggy Lee song: “… is that all there is?”

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 7 2006 23:59 utc | 11

Typepad is weird. In #11 it anonymized me.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Oct 8 2006 0:29 utc | 12

do not worry guthman. i have message that says that i must appear before the central committeee first thing monday to talk with a certain vyshinsky & to have all my baggage ready

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 8 2006 0:41 utc | 13

is a form of mediation between the poles,
Who in their right mind mediates between poles?

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 8 2006 0:51 utc | 14

I’m not sure I’m a globalization winner, but since I’m not panning for gold in Brazil or trying to work in the “informal economy” so beloved of tenured economists in Chicago, I’m not losing too badly, yet. But surely many of us know what you mean about the commune – in Billmon’s sharpness is an anger at having to spend so much of a short lifetime feeding moloch.
RG: A rapid departure is order. Mad dogs need to evade the law.
Marx is right if Proudhon is proposing the impossible. I’m not convinced of that.

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 8 2006 0:59 utc | 15

who in their right mind mediates between poles?
maybe like this.

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 8 2006 1:31 utc | 16

There is much reference in every conservative agenda to “small government”.
Take a look at the present gargantuan “compassionate and conservative government” and you will see that “small government” is something sold to the rubes.
The whole “privatization” stuff is thereby just a way to enrich the well connected (and bribing) folks who already “have”. It is never about the people who need.
When will this be understood?
Don’t know.
The spinners of fables of how it ought to be, on the left or the right, merely provide the curtain behind which the truly greedy wield the levers of power, directing the flow a community’s productive energy into their own private pools.
The thing is, according to me, to watch what they do. Forget what they say they’re doing. The actual perps, left or right, are all the same. The dogma is an appropriated amalgam of eye wash to play on the human love of hierarchy and authority based on revelation, scientific or divine, no different in kind really from what’s on offer from the Xtian or Muslim or other Talebans.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 8 2006 1:51 utc | 17

TO KARL MARX,1846
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON (From Correspondence, 1874-5)
Lyon, 17 May 1846
My dear Monsieur Marx,
I gladly agree to become one of the recipients of your correspondence, whose aims and organization seem to me most useful. Yet I cannot promise to write often or at great length: my varied occupations, combined with a natural idleness, do not favour such epistolary efforts. I must also take the liberty of making certain qualifications which are suggested by various passages of your letter.
First, although my ideas in the matter of organization and realization are at this moment more or less settled, at least as regards principles, I believe it is my duty, as it is the duty of all socialists, to maintain for some time yet the critical or dubitive form; in short, I make profession in public of an almost absolute economic anti-dogmatism.
Let us seek together, if you wish, the laws of society, the manner in which these laws are realized, the process by which we shall succeed in discovering them; but, for God’s sake, after having demolished all the a priori dogmatisms, do not let us in our turn dream of indoctrinating the people; do not let us fall into the contradiction of your compatriot Martin Luther, who, having overthrown Catholic theology, at once set about, with excommunication and anathema, the foundation of a Protestant theology. For the last three centuries Germany has been mainly occupied in undoing Luther’s shoddy work; do not let us leave humanity with a similar mess to clear up as a result of our efforts. I applaud with all my heart your thought of bringing all opinions to light; let us carry on a good and loyal polemic; let us give the world an example of learned and far-sighted tolerance, but let us not, merely because we are at the head of a movement, make ourselves the leaders of a new intolerance, let us not pose as the apostles of a new religion, even if it be the religion of logic, the religion of reason. Let us gather together and encourage all protests, let us brand all exclusiveness, all mysticism; let us never regard a question as exhausted, and when we have used our last argument, let us begin again, if need be, with eloquence and irony. On that condition, I will gladly enter your association. Otherwise – no!
I have also some observations to make on this phrase of your letter: at the moment of action. Perhaps you still retain the opinion that no reform is at present possible without a coup de main, without what was formerly called a revolution and is really nothing but a shock. That opinion, which I understand, which I excuse, and would willingly discuss, having myself shared it for a long time, my most recent studies have made me abandon completely. I believe we have no need of it in order to succeed; and that consequently we should not put forward revolutionary action as a means of social reform, because that pretended means would simply be an appeal to force, to arbitrariness, in brief, a contradiction. I myself put the problem in this way: to bring about the return to society, by an economic combination, of the wealth which was withdrawn from society by another economic combination. In other words, through Political Economy to turn the theory of Property against Property in such a way as to engender what you German socialists call community and what I will limit myself for the moment to calling liberty or equality. But I believe that I know the means of solving this problem with only a short delay; I would therefore prefer to burn Property by a slow fire, rather than give it new strength by making a St Bartholomew’s night of the proprietors …
Your very devoted
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Delay has been not so short.

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 8 2006 1:54 utc | 18

Concise and to the point. Bernard, you have said it.

Posted by: Gaianne | Oct 8 2006 2:15 utc | 19

a few lessons about methos, using the methodless proudhon:

First Observation
“We are not giving a history according to the order in time, but according to the sequence of ideas. Economic phases or categories are in their manifestation sometimes contemporary, sometimes inverted…. Economic theories have nonetheless their logical sequence and their serial relation in the understanding: it is this order that we flatter our- selves to have discovered.”
(Proudhon, Vol.I, p.146)
…
Up to now we have expounded only the dialectics of Hegel. We shall see later how M. Proudhon has succeeded in reducing it to the meanest proportions. Thus, for Hegel, all that has happened and is still happening is only just what is happening in his own mind. Thus the philosophy of history is nothing but the history of philosophy, of his own philosophy. There is no longer a “history according to the order in time”, there is only “the sequence of ideas in the understanding”. He thinks he is constructing the world by the movement of thought, whereas he is merely reconstructing systematically and classifying by the absolute method of thoughts which are in the minds of all.
…
Second Observation
Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production, M. Proudhon, holding this upside down like a true philosopher, sees in actual relations nothing but the incarnation of the principles, of these categories, which were slumbering — so M. Proudhon the philosopher tells us — in the bosom of the “impersonal reason of humanity”.
M. Proudhon the economists understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.
The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.
…
Fourth Observation
Let us see now to what modifications M. Proudhon subjects Hegel’s dialectics when he applies it to political economy.
For him, M. Proudhon, every economic category has two sides — one good, the other bad. He looks upon these categories as the petty bourgeois looks upon the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did a lot of good; he also did a lot of harm.
…
Fifth Observation
“In the absolute reason all these ideas… are equally simple, and general…. In fact, we attain knowledge only by a sort of scaffolding of our ideas. But truth in itself is independent of these dialectical symbols and freed from the combinations of our minds.”
(Proudhon, Vol.II, p.97)
…
What then does M. Proudhon give us? Real history, which is, according to M. Proudhon’s understanding, the sequence in which the categories have manifested themselves in order of time? No! History as it take place in the idea itself? Still less! That is, neither the profane history of categories, nor their sacred history! What history does he give us then? The history of his own contradictions. Let us see how they go, and how they drag M. Proudhon in their train.
…
Sixth Observation
…
“It is not correct then,” says M. Proudhon, the philosopher, “to say that something appears, that something is produced: in civilization as in the universe, everything has existed, has acted, from eternity. This applies to the whole of social economy.”
(Vol.II, p.102)
So great is the productive force of the contradictions which function and which made M. Proudhon function, that, in trying to explain history, he is forced to deny it; in trying to explain the successive appearance of social relations, he denies that anything can appear: in trying to explain production, with all its phases, he questions whether anything can be produced!
…
Seventh and Last Observation
Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. When the economists say that present-day relations — the relations of bourgeois production — are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society, which the economists try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal.
…
Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, ch. on “Method”

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 2:25 utc | 20

please note: 7th observation.
about method. a long time ago. fini.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 2:27 utc | 21

without method, one can make any reading one wishes. why this happened?’ answer: antitheory gives cultural studies professors something to publish, forever.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 2:31 utc | 22

proudhon wanted ricardo capitalism to work better much like I think b intends to suggest here the big capitalist state can efficiently deliver goods and services as weell as any market. marx’s response to this was that proudhon didn’t understand how capitalism worked as “a living contradiction” to undermine any reformist socialized capitalism. the state is only “big” or “small” when it suits capitalist accumulation and legitimation.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 2:43 utc | 23

check that. i don’t insist b claims bigass capitalist state can deliver utopia. i’m just saying whether a state can depends qualitatively on what kind of state does so, and has nothing to do w/ its size.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 2:51 utc | 24

@rgiap,
Have a seat, comrade.
Comrade Vyshinski will interrogate you once he is has finished reading the report on comrade Althusser’s brain autopsy.

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 8 2006 3:28 utc | 25

Hail thee, loquacious one who speaks in riddles.

Posted by: Delphic Oracle | Oct 8 2006 3:29 utc | 26

Sloth: What’s the upshot of all that ponderous germanic sarcasm? Why should we care?

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 8 2006 3:45 utc | 27

it was proudhon who found in capitalism a “nature”–not marx. why important? because of method of analysis, because marx had a method to understand capitalism, he could dispatch proudhon’s idealism. and what was centrally crucial confusion for proudhon? well, it was proudhomn’s confusion of quality/quantity of the prevailing mode of production. what a shitty hegelian. proudhon said: “too much!” and marx responded: “no. the mode of production cannot be assessed by the magnitude of its effects, but the quality of its organization.” what has this got to do w/’ b’s post? you can hand it to me to connect, ck, your abstract proudhon ref. because of the value of method, we can understand that the size of government (quantity) matters less than the way government is used to sustain the exploitation of capital (quality).
some gratitude ck. i know it’s easy to react w/ bewilderment when anyone adds to or completes the substance of the arguments you attempt.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 4:23 utc | 28

and amazing, isn’t it, the contemporary salience of an arg ocurring 150 years ago. as far as the eyes can see: cheap mothodless whores of the postmodern hawking misanthropy.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 4:33 utc | 29

The cleanup of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast provides a good case study: company A (possibly Halliburton, just to pick a name at random) gets a no-bid contract to do the cleanup for $30 a cubic yard; A subcontracts to B for $20 a cy; B subcontracts to C for $10 a cy, which then subcontracts to the Mexicans who actually do the work for $5 a cy — and then tries to stiff the workers. So, a $30 million contract for work ends up actually costing $5 million and provides $25 million of pure profit to the well-connected, or $30 million if the actual workers do in fact get screwed.
Meanwhile, the government is spending huge sums tracking down the poor schmucks who tried to swindle FEMA out of $2000 in false evacuation claims.

Posted by: Brian Boru | Oct 8 2006 4:35 utc | 30

B notes how the “privatizing” every service often increases costs and reduces benefits – others chime in with examples. The manifesto passage appears to cut to the heart of why B’s observations and others are so frustrating: to reform or ameliorate the effects of a fundamentally determined economic system is, it is claimed, the province of dunderhead economists and well meaning cranks who want a middle class world even though the existence of the middle class is inextricably tied to the the stuff that the cranks want to reform. The observation that Proudhon and B and soft-headed liberals like me are asking for the middle class without the proletarians is exquisitely sharp and potentially devastating. Of course, M&E might say, chicanery is intrinsic to capitalism – poor naive B, only proletarian revolution can cure this case. But 150 years later, in the absence of the “revolution”, the failure of communism as a political movement, the obvious success of FDR, Bismark, and scandanavian socialists, M&E’s clockwork model (“The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.”) is hard to sell and Proudhon’s “almost absolute economic anti-dogmatism” and un-macho reformism seems worth revisiting

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 8 2006 4:39 utc | 31

As I chastised the “alternative” media* in my last post, I’m still curious as to what, if anything, does any bar patrons think of North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan’s new book: Take this Job and ship it : How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America He talks the talk, however, I have no faith , -zero, nota, none- in 109th(?) Congress Senate politicians.
Sen. Dorgan on The Colbert Report
Kudos to you b, for presenting this excellent post.
*as I have sd, It seems like even the seemingly reliable progressive media discourse has something to sell. It makes me question is capitalism a virus? Is this healthy capitalism? Is there such a thing as healthy/balanced capitalism?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 8 2006 6:32 utc | 32

“It is never about the people who need.”
Statistically, 12.5% of the US population lives below the poverty line. 37,500,000 people.
That sounds like huddled masses to me.

Posted by: pb | Oct 8 2006 6:33 utc | 33

Why do the champions of “small government” and “free markets” so often seem to come from industries like defense, transportation, energy or pharmaceuticals, all of which are entirely dependent on government intervention and regulation?
We decided a long time ago that certain matters are best not left to the mechanisms of the market, especially when they involve national resources, a concept which includes not only natural resources, but our infrastructure and our workforce.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Oct 8 2006 7:42 utc | 34

it is too late for me to make a substantive comment, but stepping away from the marxist perspective, i listened earlier tonight to a clip of susan george, chair of the planning board of the transnational institute in amsterdam, an informal association of academics and civil society activists working towards improving social justice. she talks about the imf and the wto within the frame of small government and looks at the effect of privatisation on what she terms the global “south”. she emphasizes the positive effects of countries like venezuela and brazil paying off imf debt earlier and the socio-cultural benefits of imf debt forgiveness to both the north and south and finally how critical it is that activism against the wto, imf, and g8 prevails.

Posted by: conchita | Oct 8 2006 8:01 utc | 35

You forgot the obvious advantage of public service of privatised services. There’s no competition, no need to waste money on fucking ads and marketing. So if you assuming the bureaucratic limbo and the administrative behemoth is just as massive and wasteful in private firms than in the state – something quite clear in my opinion -, it’s self-evident most services would cost less if they were public, at the end of the day.
I’ve always thought the left were just stupid in this debate. We should just frame the uber-capiatlist leaning rightist as a bunch of traitors that want to sell abroad the nation and want to weaken the state and the people to leave it defenseless. Which is exactly what they are doing every time any privatization occurs. Let’s fuck them with their own usual arguments, and show them for the anti-patriotic bastards they truly are.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Oct 8 2006 11:28 utc | 36

To fetch back to proudhon and marx to discuss this is like what Foley was doing to himself while IM-ing pages.

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 8 2006 14:20 utc | 37

the obvious success of FDR, Bismark, and scandanavian socialists,
the globalization of capital, as is obvious, requires a rejection of social “reforms” you mention. “success” of reform is owed to the immobility of capital and the national character of development. this is slowly coming to and end, but note the fantastic immiseration of the old “third world” needed to sustain the happy social democracies of the past century. incredible cruelty necessary to sustain the metropolitan middleclasses. now, with globalization, the middleclass, which was just a legitimation effect of the development of national capital, will suffer, and no “safety net” will save it. good riddance.
again, to speak of the value of “big gov” and it’s abilities to deliver services is true among the social democracies now fading away. neoliberal globalization makes such solutions impossible.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 16:08 utc | 38

Sloth: Tell me why this argument, which was made in exactly the same form during the 1920s is more valid now.
From my ignorant perspective it is plausible that we are entering a stage of mass immiseration in the “advanced countries”, but it’s just as plausible that there will be a reaction against the neo-cons and rechaining of capital. What crystal ball allows you to be so sure ?
Is this really the last throes?

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 8 2006 16:22 utc | 39

rechaining of capital.
Impossible to do under WTO rules.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Oct 8 2006 21:23 utc | 40

no “last throes” of a system exhausted by its own being. rather, the utility of state to capitalists has changed and the assault on middleclass has already been set in motion by downward pressure on incomes made possible by global exploitation. one can easily imagine the reindustrialization of the core after a long period of decline by capital–endless expansion and reexpansion of economies in a global market assured by state regulation. in this scenario, the state is never initself a resource of opposition or fair distribution and social justice. the state, big or small, always serves global capital accumulation.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 21:26 utc | 41

and marx, contra proudhon, recognized this function of globalization.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 8 2006 21:28 utc | 42

GB: Rules are rules, but guns are guns. When FDR militarized the auto industry, the “freedom of contract” judiciary didn’t make a peep. Wall Streeters tend to forget that they depend on the cops.
Sloth: The capitalists are not a singularity nor are they all powerful. When Mellon plotted to overthrow FDR and the UAW seized the auto plants, they changed the nature of the US state – and the world.

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 8 2006 21:43 utc | 43

capitalists are not a singularity nor are they all powerful
are you joking?

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 9 2006 0:45 utc | 44

#44. No.

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 9 2006 0:48 utc | 45

k,
Not unthinkable at all. But a long shot and certainly not on the horizon. Much more likely: the military and its surrounding contractor galaxies as eager enforcer of The Iron Heel. Someone has to pay for the good life on Okinawa.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Oct 9 2006 1:13 utc | 46

i’m not sure what you complain about. government has never grown bigger or more intrusive than under the Republican party. you should be thouroughly happy.
your idea that government ‘can do things cheaper because it doesn’t need a profit margin’ is of course utterly wrong. when private entities compete for work, they have an incentive to be as efficient as possible. this is not the case with government, which takes the money to pay for the services it renders by force, and has no competition whatsoever.
in short, you have fallen for an economic fallacy.

Posted by: pater tenebrarum | Oct 11 2006 1:06 utc | 47

when private entities compete for work, they have an incentive to be as efficient as possible. this is not the case with government, which takes the money to pay for the services it renders by force, and has no competition whatsoever.
in short, you have fallen for an economic fallacy.
1. There is little to none competition between the relevant companies.
2. Their incentive is maximize profit, not efficiency.

Posted by: b | Oct 11 2006 1:33 utc | 48

Das ist ein Messer mit zwei Rändern, Bernhard. In principle, I see and agree with your basic point. I do not, however, distinguish between abuses committed by a private monopoly of business and corruption within a federal monopoly of that same business.
A myth of capitalism is that of the regulating effect of competition. We have seen that neither cost nor efficiency are streamlined by it. You do very well to discard that argument. I do not come down on the side of government monopoly of services, however, because as someone above mentioned, one thing large, centralised governments are not good at doing is creating jobs (“New Deal” busy work excluded).
If I look at the equation exclusively from the side of efficiency and cost, I can neither favour large nor small government. If I look at the equation in terms of human need (employment, et cetera), then I must conclude that a government that governs least, governs best.
Fortunately for us, we do not have to decide between the two. Since we live in what amounts to a corporatocracy, we can enjoy the worst of both approaches.

Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 11 2006 4:24 utc | 49

I don´t get the “government doesn´t create jobs” argument.
As I said in my post: “The kilowatts to do that are a physical constant.” The number of jobs to a task is the same, it being done by the government or a private company.

Posted by: b | Oct 11 2006 4:44 utc | 50

addendum:
It might be a good idea to approach this question by distinguishing between “profitable” services and “non-profitable” services. Both federal and private agencies are equally inefficient where there is work to be done, such as construction or emergency management (as B points out… kilowatt hours are a constant). Both federal and private agencies are equally keen to take on those kinds of jobs. In this case, federal governments function in ways that are indistinguishable from businesses.
I agree with Bernhard that “privatisation” is a game played merely to enrich well-connected players, but I disagree with Bernhard’s assertion that governments do not function in a way that is appreciably different from commercial enterprises. In neither case are unprofitable concerns like social welfare very high on the list of anyone’s priorities. The WHO, for example, has not demonstrated any particular efficiency at addressing concerns (no matter how pressing) that are determined by some accountant to be “cost prohibitive”.
I suppose this boils down to a question of perspective (“Would you prefer to be neglected or meddled with by a large government or a commercial enterprise?”), but it is very difficult for me to see how one has any particular advantage over the other. Quality of life concerns are not adequately addressed in either model.

Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 11 2006 5:09 utc | 51

@b:

It’s quite simple. When services are farmed out to private enterprise, it’s cheaper for the companies to split the actual work into twice as many part-time jobs, which have no benefits, than to have the same number of full-time hours. Whereas the government doesn’t actually employ any human beings; all governmental functions, from mail delivery to tax assessment to law enforcement, are performed by gnomes who wave magic wands.

I’m joking, of course. In actual fact, local governments are often under pressure to employ the same short-sighted cost-cutting methods as private enterprise. (And then people wonder why it takes so much longer to get things done at city hall…) The latest wrinkle? Changing the 2 twenty-hour-a-week positions, which replaced a forty-hour-a-week job with benefits, into 4 ten-hour-a-week positions, which don’t even have to have the mandatory 2% retirement fund donation on standard “part-time” jobs…

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Oct 11 2006 5:11 utc | 52

Sorry, b. You replied while I was still banging out my #51. And you’re right about the physical demands of a single job. I suppose I am thinking that a government agency has budget restrictions x, whereas, numerous private “competitors” have budgets y times n… and presuming that the sum of y is going to be greater than x. I have no reason to presume that.

Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 11 2006 5:15 utc | 53

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