Let's Say We Have a Small Governement...

There is a company in Austin called "Dog Duty". For a few dollars an hour, they'll come to your house and clean up all of the piles Rover leaves in the yard.

Moral of the story: if there is a profit to be made, capitalism will generate a business to perform any task-- no matter how unpleasant it might seem.

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Is it ironic to say you've sworn off swearing?

 

Hey Kagy,

are there any companies called "Mother-in-law Duty". I just might have to move to Austin.

 

True, somebody would pop into the field if profitable, but that doesn't always equate to good service. Social value is something entirely different than economic value. It is driven by different factors. Talk to an economist that knows a little about Public Administration and you'll find there is a whole new world of curves and theories to discover.

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humble, but hungry.

 

Why pay someone? I'll bet your fiance knows someone who will perform mother-in-law duties for free!!

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Stay Cool...

 

Jeff -- I rant here too much as it is so I won't touch all these issues...but....

Social Security...any one of us can do better on our money than 2%!!

Welfare..the best welfare out there is getting a job. Right now unemployment is running at about 4%. Factor in that about 2% of that are people in between jobs, and you'll see our economy is running pretty smoothly. We have an unemployed, homeless person who is a member of our church. She is a single mother. Members of our church and her own friends from elsewhere have pitched in to see that she has a place to live, food to eat, transportation to job interviews, etc. She's not an anomaly, in that there are lots of people who receive this sort of "private aid" from those who can afford to give it. There are tons of food pantries around town and shelters for the homeless. Someone once said that America is the only nation in the world where the poor people are fat. Sort of a tasteless remark, but there's a hint of truth to it. Much needed welfare reform helped out...but I do agree that there must be at least some minimal programs to help those in need. However, oftentimes I feel the numbers given of those in need are greatly exaggerated to perpetuate more federal spending.

As for general thoughts on govt (see, i'm rambling again!!), I'm for limited govt, especially on the federal level. One reason is because that's what the Constitution calls for. Another is that I'm a localist. I believe local govts can be empowered to do more because they're efforts are seen more clearly in their communities. The federal govt tries to impose one-size-fits-all regulations on communities, even though more individual tailoring may be necessary. For example..federal gun laws which make the laws of carrying a gun in a small rural town in Montana the same as carrying a gun down the street in New York City are overreaching to me. That's why, ultimately, I feel gun control should be a state issue. Let's don't debate gun control..it's just an illustration.

The fact is there are some jobs that need to be done by the govt because the profit motive is low...building roads, sewers, mass transit, etc. These not only have exceptionally low profit margins, they also have extremely high costs to get done...more than the private sector is usually willing to burden. Government is a necessary evil..but necessary to a degree, nonetheless. Having said that, I do put a lot of faith in the private sector. If there's a buck to be made, the private sector will do it and it will be done much more effectively and efficiently than the govt would do it. This sort of thinking is the exact opposite of socialism, where even the industries are controlled by the government.

Ultimately I believe in limited government because I respect human liberty and I think the Framers came as close to "getting it right" as any group of government philosophers have ever come.

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I don't think there are many (even conservative) folks who would say that there should be no government or that there aren't some things that the government should do.

Of course, one could argue that one reason why health care is as messed up as it is comes from Government itself. Having so much red-tape and so many hoops to jump through merely to get any medicare or medicaid payments is not an efficient use of the system. There are many doctors who simply won't treat medicare or medicaid patients because it is too much of a hassle to deal with those agencies and all too often, they simply decide to not pay. (My family owns a medical billing service and my father is a physician, so I've seen a good bit of this first hand).

But going back to government programs that could work: I will note that the insurance problem we have in the U.S. would be far less of a problem if families simply used the programs that are already available or simply made the choice to purchase health insurance. (There was a stat on one of those news magazine shows that said something like 70% of uninsured kids would be covered by current programs but the parents simply aren't aware or don't want to mess with enrolling in the program. Now adding more people adds more cost to the program, but I think we've noted that the overall cost of care may be significantly reduced if these kids get their treatment early on rather than waiting for an emergency.) There is also the human factor that some people just don't want to make the choice of buying insurance because they'd rather spend money on something else. That same news magazine program talked about a family who didn't have insurance (even though it was offered at significantly reduced price through the husband's work) because they said they couldn't afford it on his salary. I say hogwash, it is simply a choice (and one I've had to make myself back when I was first married and had a very young son but very little income. We made a good deal less than this family did and had to make rent payments on top of that rather than living with the in-laws, but we still made sure we paid the insurance first so we didn't have a situation where we needed medical care but couldn't pay for it.)

So, a good bit of our health care problems could be solved by streamlining the government's end of the process (not cutting them out completely necessarily, just making it a situation where the system works better), and letting uninsured people who qualify for a current program know that they do qualify and getting them enrolled so they can get preventative care. We'd go a long way toward solving all the problems by simply doing that. And perhaps there would still be a small number of families who don't have insurance and legitimately cannot afford it that would have to be dealt with, but the majority of those left (after we get people who are current uninsured but have an available program) are simply deciding to not have insurance coverage because they'd rather spend the money on something else.

As for the curing diseases, that is not just the domain of government funding. Many private organizations are also heavily involved (without direct government grant) in searching for medical breakthroughs. But I don't think the government grants to fund research should be cut out, either.

Same with education. I really think that we could fix our public schools and make them run more efficiently and kick the crap out of any private initiative. It's just that, in some cases, we don't find what works and do it. And higher education run by the government has worked very, very well. I don't think anyone would say that a University of Texas education is inferior to a Rice education (well, no one who is impartial. Rice grads may not feel that UT is all that great.)

The only private, for-profit schools I have seen (and they use tax dollars to fund their operations, so it isn't completely private) aren't doing all that great a job of educating student. Edison has been pretty hit and miss with the emphasis on miss from what I've seen. Yet I've seen some great success in the public sector when administrators have not been afraid to redesign the system and find a way that truly educates kids.

Social Security would work fine as a private system IF Americans would ever save. The fact that we need a government program at all to get us to even save a little bit is a bit ridiculous and just shows that we, as a nation, aren't forward-thinking enough.

But I believe in the safety net because even if it wasn't there, a big group of people still wouldn't save for their retirement.

As for welfare, I think it should be there as a helping hand to give those people who really need it the ability to get back on their feet. The problem has come in that we often don't know how to get people off welfare once they are on it. But to me that just means that we need to design the program better. It doesn't mean we should destroy it. And I don't think that we could find a private organization that would run the welfare program like it is, but there are chartible organizations and churches and the like that can help take up some of the slack. But I don't think they could handle it all by themselves.

When I think of the term "limited government", I think of it in terms of limiting the red tape and limiting the control over things that work just fine without government help. But things like road building or welfare or national defense or even education and the environment are things that the government needs to have a hand in. (Sometimes not as big a hand as they have, but they need to be there). It's the balance between government and the private sector (or the balance between the U.S. government and the state and local governments. One of the big educational fights isn't between private and public education but between local control and federal control) that sometimes gets a bit off and we'd like the scales to maybe turn back toward the private sector (or local governments) a little more.

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As most of the above posters haver already alluded to, true capitalism would have all of the goods & services in our economy provided by private ownership. The driving force behind any market is profit, and this system works fine in most cases. However there exist numerous cases of "market failure" where the natural forces of supply and demand to not efficiently allocate resources. Some examples of market failures are the provision of national defence and public safety. By rights, in our society, the cost of providing defense and police should be paid equally by everyone, but if left for the free market, who would pay? How much of your pay check would you pay for these items if you weren't forced too? How much would you contribute for welfare?

Another good example is pollution control. ABC Chemical Co. will produce and sell as much product as it can, even if they are polluting a lake in the process. They will not pay the added the cost of preventing or remediating the pollution under free market conditions alone.

The Government is absolutely required to enable these issued to be addressed and regulated. They are not as efficient at providing goods and services as private enterprise, but it is unfair to compare the two. After all, private enterprise is providing goods that contribute to the economy, and most certainly are goods and services that people demand. The Government is supplying a lot of goods that a are necessary, but there by their very nature are "Public Goods" and not a saleable commodity.

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Current Rocket's Salary & Contract Info

 

I think sometimes we assume that corporations will always act in such a way that maximizes their benefits at the cost of the public. But keep in mind that this strategy doesn't work as well in a media-driven, market economy. Companies spend huge amounts of money on public relations and compliance with regulations (environmental and others) so as to appear to consumers as responsible organizations. Yes, the bottom line is all important...as it should be given the fact that the officers owe that duty to the shareholders...but the bottom line isn't necessarily maximized by acting in their own interest with no regard for others

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