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On July 10 2013 05:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 04:58 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 04:50 DeepElemBlues wrote:Only an argument for more democracy and socialization! Changing more bureaucracy jobs into elected positions to prevent corruption and waste is like throwing gasoline on a fire. How so? Presumably, there exists a code of conduct and job description regardless of whether a job is elected or bureaucratic. The only difference (should) be that a potential employee needs to impress the employer whereas a candidate for election needs to impress a larger group. If someone does something wasteful, then they'll retain their position in a bureaucratic system if their waste is beneficial to the bottom line of the corporation in question, since the corporation regulates itself. If someone does something wasteful in a democratic system, then the same thing as the bureaucratic situation will occur (if the waste turns out to really help out the corporation, nobody is going to lambaste it) except that, come election time, the employee will need to actually demonstrate to a large group that what they did was worth doing. Yes, elected candidates are vulnerable to lobbying, but the corporate hierarchy is unforgiving in equally problematic ways (insularity, nepotism etc.). No, people would just elect whoever would promote their political agenda. I can't think of any public elections where voters were highly focused on internal metrics...
Then isn't that just a case of people valuing [something candidate X does] over the waste that candidate X has caused? I mean, it's not like we ever get a perfect choice whether we're operating in a bureaucracy or a democracy. Every candidate has good qualities and bad qualities; you need to weigh them to see which one is overall best for the job. You could get a super efficient guy, who, for example, wants (efficiently) to create a program which (efficiently) evangelizes people to oppose same-sex marriage. For the person who cares about efficiency and social equality, it seems like this candidate would be impossible to support, wouldn't it?
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On July 10 2013 04:58 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 04:50 DeepElemBlues wrote:Only an argument for more democracy and socialization! Changing more bureaucracy jobs into elected positions to prevent corruption and waste is like throwing gasoline on a fire. How so? Presumably, there exists a code of conduct and job description regardless of whether a job is elected or bureaucratic. The only difference (should) be that a potential employee needs to impress the employer whereas a candidate for election needs to impress a larger group. If someone does something wasteful, then they'll retain their position in a bureaucratic system if their waste is beneficial to the bottom line of the corporation in question, since the corporation regulates itself. If someone does something wasteful in a democratic system, then the same thing as the bureaucratic situation will occur (if the waste turns out to really help out the corporation, nobody is going to lambaste it) except that, come election time, the employee will need to actually demonstrate to a large group that what they did was worth doing. Yes, elected candidates are vulnerable to lobbying, but the corporate hierarchy is unforgiving in equally problematic ways (insularity, nepotism etc.).
The biggest problem is that people who write the laws can find ways to cheat that private sector employees can't. When you can literally legislate your own salary and profitability, corruption is much much easier.
And IMO impressing the majority of a big group is much easier than impressing an individual. You can dupe the group and rely on rhetoric that crowds don't pick up on. And you can rely on the extremely short attention of crowds as well as manipulate what available information there is about you. You can't do anything like that with employers, or at least not on the scale that politicians can do it.
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I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores.
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On July 10 2013 05:26 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 04:58 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 04:50 DeepElemBlues wrote:Only an argument for more democracy and socialization! Changing more bureaucracy jobs into elected positions to prevent corruption and waste is like throwing gasoline on a fire. How so? Presumably, there exists a code of conduct and job description regardless of whether a job is elected or bureaucratic. The only difference (should) be that a potential employee needs to impress the employer whereas a candidate for election needs to impress a larger group. If someone does something wasteful, then they'll retain their position in a bureaucratic system if their waste is beneficial to the bottom line of the corporation in question, since the corporation regulates itself. If someone does something wasteful in a democratic system, then the same thing as the bureaucratic situation will occur (if the waste turns out to really help out the corporation, nobody is going to lambaste it) except that, come election time, the employee will need to actually demonstrate to a large group that what they did was worth doing. Yes, elected candidates are vulnerable to lobbying, but the corporate hierarchy is unforgiving in equally problematic ways (insularity, nepotism etc.). The biggest problem is that people who write the laws can find ways to cheat that private sector employees can't. When you can literally legislate your own salary and profitability, corruption is much much easier. And IMO impressing the majority of a big group is much easier than impressing an individual. You can dupe the group and rely on rhetoric that crowds don't pick up on. And you can rely on the extremely short attention of crowds as well as manipulate what available information there is about you. You can't do anything like that with employers, or at least not on the scale that politicians can do it.
I agree. That said, there are also things that are easier to do when it's a small group of individuals in an employer-employee relationship (e.g. keeping secrets, preventing watering down of ideology by selective hiring etc. etc.). I think there are advantages to both systems in terms of efficiency. My preference for democracy is completely a result of my belief that it, by way of not existing for the express aim of generating profit, might have less tendency to be immoral, since, systematically, a government doesn't really have to exploit citizens (even though it usually does) whereas a corporation
could be thought of of having an incentive to maximize profit at all costs, morality aside (hence why many characterize corps as "amoral" and yet do not extend the same courtesy to gov'ts).
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores.
But there are other variables at play. Furthermore, it's not even really true that charter schools out-perform public schools. The question is a matter of substantial debate with studies arraying themselves on both sides of the fence.
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On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores.
From the wiki on Charter Schools
In 2009, the most authoritative study of charter schools was conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. The report is the first detailed national assessment of charter schools. It analyzed 70% of the nation's students attending charter schools and compared the academic progress of those students with that of demographically matched students in nearby public schools and scaled performance gains so that they had the same starting point. The report found that 17% of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than their theoretical traditional public school virtual twins; 46% showed no difference; and 37% were significantly worse than their traditional public school virtual twin. The authors of the report consider this a "sobering" finding about the quality of charter schools in the U.S. Charter schools showed a significantly greater variation in quality as compared with the more standardized public schools with many falling below public school performances and a few exceeding them significantly. Results vary for various demographics with Black and Hispanic children not doing as well as they would in public schools, but with children from poverty backgrounds, students learning English, and brighter students doing better; average students do poorer. While the obvious solution to the widely varying quality of charter schools would be to close those that perform below the level of public schools, this is hard to accomplish in practice as even a poor school has its supporters.[54]
So no, charter schools are by no means definitively better than public schools.
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On July 10 2013 05:19 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 10 2013 04:58 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 04:50 DeepElemBlues wrote:Only an argument for more democracy and socialization! Changing more bureaucracy jobs into elected positions to prevent corruption and waste is like throwing gasoline on a fire. How so? Presumably, there exists a code of conduct and job description regardless of whether a job is elected or bureaucratic. The only difference (should) be that a potential employee needs to impress the employer whereas a candidate for election needs to impress a larger group. If someone does something wasteful, then they'll retain their position in a bureaucratic system if their waste is beneficial to the bottom line of the corporation in question, since the corporation regulates itself. If someone does something wasteful in a democratic system, then the same thing as the bureaucratic situation will occur (if the waste turns out to really help out the corporation, nobody is going to lambaste it) except that, come election time, the employee will need to actually demonstrate to a large group that what they did was worth doing. Yes, elected candidates are vulnerable to lobbying, but the corporate hierarchy is unforgiving in equally problematic ways (insularity, nepotism etc.). No, people would just elect whoever would promote their political agenda. I can't think of any public elections where voters were highly focused on internal metrics... Then isn't that just a case of people valuing [something candidate X does] over the waste that candidate X has caused? I mean, it's not like we ever get a perfect choice whether we're operating in a bureaucracy or a democracy. Every candidate has good qualities and bad qualities; you need to weigh them to see which one is overall best for the job. You could get a super efficient guy, who, for example, wants (efficiently) to create a program which (efficiently) evangelizes people to oppose same-sex marriage. For the person who cares about efficiency and social equality, it seems like this candidate would be impossible to support, wouldn't it?
You're combining issues. Currently we elect people to represent our views on what the government should or should not do. We don't really elect people on their management prowess, which is much more relevant to the efficiency issue.
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On July 10 2013 05:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:19 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 10 2013 04:58 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 04:50 DeepElemBlues wrote:Only an argument for more democracy and socialization! Changing more bureaucracy jobs into elected positions to prevent corruption and waste is like throwing gasoline on a fire. How so? Presumably, there exists a code of conduct and job description regardless of whether a job is elected or bureaucratic. The only difference (should) be that a potential employee needs to impress the employer whereas a candidate for election needs to impress a larger group. If someone does something wasteful, then they'll retain their position in a bureaucratic system if their waste is beneficial to the bottom line of the corporation in question, since the corporation regulates itself. If someone does something wasteful in a democratic system, then the same thing as the bureaucratic situation will occur (if the waste turns out to really help out the corporation, nobody is going to lambaste it) except that, come election time, the employee will need to actually demonstrate to a large group that what they did was worth doing. Yes, elected candidates are vulnerable to lobbying, but the corporate hierarchy is unforgiving in equally problematic ways (insularity, nepotism etc.). No, people would just elect whoever would promote their political agenda. I can't think of any public elections where voters were highly focused on internal metrics... Then isn't that just a case of people valuing [something candidate X does] over the waste that candidate X has caused? I mean, it's not like we ever get a perfect choice whether we're operating in a bureaucracy or a democracy. Every candidate has good qualities and bad qualities; you need to weigh them to see which one is overall best for the job. You could get a super efficient guy, who, for example, wants (efficiently) to create a program which (efficiently) evangelizes people to oppose same-sex marriage. For the person who cares about efficiency and social equality, it seems like this candidate would be impossible to support, wouldn't it? You're combining issues. Currently we elect people to represent our views on what the government should or should not do. We don't really elect people on their management prowess, which is much more relevant to the efficiency issue.
May we should start a system where it's like you vote for the party, then the party produces like 3 candidates for major positions, then we vote on those with respect to who might manage the department the best~
I dunno. Seems like a hard problem to solve.
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On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores.
Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation.
An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick).
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On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick).
It's just like insurance companies! You know, I wonder if there's a game-theoretic way to prove whether or not any optimally profit-seeking corporation would inevitably employ actuary science in order to calculate precisely how much they can cheat consumers (in a way that garners profit) without the resulting fallout being enough to negate that profit. I have no idea if such a thing is mathematically feasible, though.
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On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick).
Wut? Profit = Revenue - Costs. Raising costs directly reduces profits. A profit maximizing firm has every incentive to reduce costs.
And your sentence about lawyers...wtf are you on about? Do you have any idea how health insurance works?
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On July 10 2013 05:54 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). It's just like insurance companies! You know, I wonder if there's a game-theoretic way to prove whether or not any optimally profit-seeking corporation would inevitably employ actuary science in order to calculate precisely how much they can cheat consumers (in a way that garners profit) without the resulting fallout being enough to negate that profit. I have no idea if such a thing is mathematically feasible, though.
If you didn't use such blowhard language I might be able to explain that to you. Do you mean how much companies will try to deceive consumers in order to trick them into paying more for less product? Umm...yeah we can absolutely measure that but it's pointless because the answer is as much as they possibly can. But it doesn't matter because as long as a consumer actually gets a product, they can immediately evaluate how much they've gotten vs how much they've paid. The cost of bitching about that ratio is incredibly low so many consumers will bitch endlessly that they've been cheated. But in reality they'll keep buying the products because they're actually ok with the ratio.
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On July 10 2013 05:57 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). Wut? Profit = Revenue - Costs. Raising costs directly reduces profits. A profit maximizing firm has every incentive to reduce costs. And your sentence about lawyers...wtf are you on about? Do you have any idea how health insurance works?
If cost(lawyers) < cost(changing policy in question) then the ideal decision depends entirely on the likelihood of those lawyers succeeding versus the likelihood of a judgment against the corporation being greater than what it would have cost to begin with/force them to change their policy regardless.
If you didn't use such blowhard language I might be able to explain that to you. Do you mean how much companies will try to deceive consumers in order to trick them into paying more for less product? Umm...yeah we can absolutely measure that but it's pointless because the answer is as much as they possibly can. But it doesn't matter because as long as a consumer actually gets a product, they can immediately evaluate how much they've gotten vs how much they've paid. The cost of bitching about that ratio is incredibly low so many consumers will bitch endlessly that they've been cheated. But in reality they'll keep buying the products because they're actually ok with the ratio.
Blowhard language? You know, ordinarily I wouldn't mind, but it seems like every time I see you in a discussion, you slip in random critiques which have no relevance to the topic after two or three replies. Also, the ability to evaluate what one has gotten vs how much one has paid is dependent on how much information one has access to and to some arbitrary or relativistic value metric.
I think the reason most people keep buying products is because they (reasonably) believe that, while being cheated causes them some problems, not having any products at all would be even more problematic. This doesn't mean that they're just whiny bitches. It means that they value their own well-being more than whatever money they're being cheated out of...
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On July 10 2013 06:00 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:54 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). It's just like insurance companies! You know, I wonder if there's a game-theoretic way to prove whether or not any optimally profit-seeking corporation would inevitably employ actuary science in order to calculate precisely how much they can cheat consumers (in a way that garners profit) without the resulting fallout being enough to negate that profit. I have no idea if such a thing is mathematically feasible, though. If you didn't use such blowhard language I might be able to explain that to you. Do you mean how much companies will try to deceive consumers in order to trick them into paying more for less product? Umm...yeah we can absolutely measure that but it's pointless because the answer is as much as they possibly can. But it doesn't matter because as long as a consumer actually gets a product, they can immediately evaluate how much they've gotten vs how much they've paid. The cost of bitching about that ratio is incredibly low so many consumers will bitch endlessly that they've been cheated. But in reality they'll keep buying the products because they're actually ok with the ratio.
This assumes perfect choice opportunity, and we all know that there are many services/products that do not allow for that, most notably healthcare and education.
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On July 10 2013 06:00 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:57 Klondikebar wrote:On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). Wut? Profit = Revenue - Costs. Raising costs directly reduces profits. A profit maximizing firm has every incentive to reduce costs. And your sentence about lawyers...wtf are you on about? Do you have any idea how health insurance works? If cost(lawyers) < cost(changing policy in question) then the ideal decision depends entirely on the likelihood of those lawyers succeeding versus the likelihood of a judgment against the corporation being greater than what it would have cost to begin with/force them to change their policy regardless.
Umm...yeah but that's still a cost minimizing decision.
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On July 10 2013 06:01 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 06:00 Klondikebar wrote:On July 10 2013 05:54 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). It's just like insurance companies! You know, I wonder if there's a game-theoretic way to prove whether or not any optimally profit-seeking corporation would inevitably employ actuary science in order to calculate precisely how much they can cheat consumers (in a way that garners profit) without the resulting fallout being enough to negate that profit. I have no idea if such a thing is mathematically feasible, though. If you didn't use such blowhard language I might be able to explain that to you. Do you mean how much companies will try to deceive consumers in order to trick them into paying more for less product? Umm...yeah we can absolutely measure that but it's pointless because the answer is as much as they possibly can. But it doesn't matter because as long as a consumer actually gets a product, they can immediately evaluate how much they've gotten vs how much they've paid. The cost of bitching about that ratio is incredibly low so many consumers will bitch endlessly that they've been cheated. But in reality they'll keep buying the products because they're actually ok with the ratio. This assumes perfect choice opportunity, and we all know that there are many services/products that do not allow for that, most notably healthcare and education.
You don't need perfect choice to still discriminate products. Healthcare is a little trickier because prices are so hidden that it's really difficult to shop around (economists do not like that), but it's absolutely easy to choose your higher education. And education through highschool is INCREDIBLY easy to choose because you have anywhere from the 0 price public school to the $30k a year private school. You can pick your ideal $$/diploma ratio fairly easily.
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On July 10 2013 06:04 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 06:00 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:57 Klondikebar wrote:On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). Wut? Profit = Revenue - Costs. Raising costs directly reduces profits. A profit maximizing firm has every incentive to reduce costs. And your sentence about lawyers...wtf are you on about? Do you have any idea how health insurance works? If cost(lawyers) < cost(changing policy in question) then the ideal decision depends entirely on the likelihood of those lawyers succeeding versus the likelihood of a judgment against the corporation being greater than what it would have cost to begin with/force them to change their policy regardless. Umm...yeah but that's still a cost minimizing decision.
It's more of a cost relative to revenue decision. If raising costs by x makes revenue go up by x^2 then it's a profit-maximizing as well as cost-raising decision.
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On July 10 2013 06:05 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 06:01 farvacola wrote:On July 10 2013 06:00 Klondikebar wrote:On July 10 2013 05:54 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). It's just like insurance companies! You know, I wonder if there's a game-theoretic way to prove whether or not any optimally profit-seeking corporation would inevitably employ actuary science in order to calculate precisely how much they can cheat consumers (in a way that garners profit) without the resulting fallout being enough to negate that profit. I have no idea if such a thing is mathematically feasible, though. If you didn't use such blowhard language I might be able to explain that to you. Do you mean how much companies will try to deceive consumers in order to trick them into paying more for less product? Umm...yeah we can absolutely measure that but it's pointless because the answer is as much as they possibly can. But it doesn't matter because as long as a consumer actually gets a product, they can immediately evaluate how much they've gotten vs how much they've paid. The cost of bitching about that ratio is incredibly low so many consumers will bitch endlessly that they've been cheated. But in reality they'll keep buying the products because they're actually ok with the ratio. This assumes perfect choice opportunity, and we all know that there are many services/products that do not allow for that, most notably healthcare and education. You don't need perfect choice to still discriminate products. Healthcare is a little trickier because prices are so hidden that it's really difficult to shop around (economists do not like that), but it's absolutely easy to choose your higher education.
Not only are prices mostly hidden with healthcare, the nature of deleterious health conditions totally discounts a consumers ability to consider their options; when you have a 103 fever, vomiting, and extreme fatigue, good luck making an informed choice as to your healthcare provider.
And in regards to education, I was mostly referring to K-12. You seem to be assuming that every child/family has access to transportation. This could not be further from the truth. You are right though to indicate that the public school option is incredibly beneficial.
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On July 10 2013 05:42 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 10 2013 05:19 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 10 2013 04:58 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 04:50 DeepElemBlues wrote:Only an argument for more democracy and socialization! Changing more bureaucracy jobs into elected positions to prevent corruption and waste is like throwing gasoline on a fire. How so? Presumably, there exists a code of conduct and job description regardless of whether a job is elected or bureaucratic. The only difference (should) be that a potential employee needs to impress the employer whereas a candidate for election needs to impress a larger group. If someone does something wasteful, then they'll retain their position in a bureaucratic system if their waste is beneficial to the bottom line of the corporation in question, since the corporation regulates itself. If someone does something wasteful in a democratic system, then the same thing as the bureaucratic situation will occur (if the waste turns out to really help out the corporation, nobody is going to lambaste it) except that, come election time, the employee will need to actually demonstrate to a large group that what they did was worth doing. Yes, elected candidates are vulnerable to lobbying, but the corporate hierarchy is unforgiving in equally problematic ways (insularity, nepotism etc.). No, people would just elect whoever would promote their political agenda. I can't think of any public elections where voters were highly focused on internal metrics... Then isn't that just a case of people valuing [something candidate X does] over the waste that candidate X has caused? I mean, it's not like we ever get a perfect choice whether we're operating in a bureaucracy or a democracy. Every candidate has good qualities and bad qualities; you need to weigh them to see which one is overall best for the job. You could get a super efficient guy, who, for example, wants (efficiently) to create a program which (efficiently) evangelizes people to oppose same-sex marriage. For the person who cares about efficiency and social equality, it seems like this candidate would be impossible to support, wouldn't it? You're combining issues. Currently we elect people to represent our views on what the government should or should not do. We don't really elect people on their management prowess, which is much more relevant to the efficiency issue. May we should start a system where it's like you vote for the party, then the party produces like 3 candidates for major positions, then we vote on those with respect to who might manage the department the best~ I dunno. Seems like a hard problem to solve.
Well, if you compare to the British/Canadian parliamentary system, you get a lot less direct representation, but the parties are much more like a few figureheads with supporting management staff.
It's definitely a tradeoff, and you'll find that the more management oriented the government is, the less actual say you have in individual proceedings.
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On July 10 2013 06:10 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 05:42 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 10 2013 05:19 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 10 2013 04:58 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 04:50 DeepElemBlues wrote:Only an argument for more democracy and socialization! Changing more bureaucracy jobs into elected positions to prevent corruption and waste is like throwing gasoline on a fire. How so? Presumably, there exists a code of conduct and job description regardless of whether a job is elected or bureaucratic. The only difference (should) be that a potential employee needs to impress the employer whereas a candidate for election needs to impress a larger group. If someone does something wasteful, then they'll retain their position in a bureaucratic system if their waste is beneficial to the bottom line of the corporation in question, since the corporation regulates itself. If someone does something wasteful in a democratic system, then the same thing as the bureaucratic situation will occur (if the waste turns out to really help out the corporation, nobody is going to lambaste it) except that, come election time, the employee will need to actually demonstrate to a large group that what they did was worth doing. Yes, elected candidates are vulnerable to lobbying, but the corporate hierarchy is unforgiving in equally problematic ways (insularity, nepotism etc.). No, people would just elect whoever would promote their political agenda. I can't think of any public elections where voters were highly focused on internal metrics... Then isn't that just a case of people valuing [something candidate X does] over the waste that candidate X has caused? I mean, it's not like we ever get a perfect choice whether we're operating in a bureaucracy or a democracy. Every candidate has good qualities and bad qualities; you need to weigh them to see which one is overall best for the job. You could get a super efficient guy, who, for example, wants (efficiently) to create a program which (efficiently) evangelizes people to oppose same-sex marriage. For the person who cares about efficiency and social equality, it seems like this candidate would be impossible to support, wouldn't it? You're combining issues. Currently we elect people to represent our views on what the government should or should not do. We don't really elect people on their management prowess, which is much more relevant to the efficiency issue. May we should start a system where it's like you vote for the party, then the party produces like 3 candidates for major positions, then we vote on those with respect to who might manage the department the best~ I dunno. Seems like a hard problem to solve. Well, if you compare to the British/Canadian parliamentary system, you get a lot less direct representation, but the parties are much more like a few figureheads with supporting management staff. It's definitely a tradeoff, and you'll find that the more management oriented the government is, the less actual say you have in individual proceedings.
As a Canadian I can say with relative confidence that a majority government is basically awful because the entire party is elected for four years despite, generally speaking, being required to vote with the party leader when the leader desires (effectively making the leader an un-vetoable executive power). So then we end up situations like now where the leader can have some heinously low approval rating but we can't do anything to affect his stranglehold on executive authority because his entire party is guaranteed (more or less) dominance until the next election. Since the Senate is appointed and (at least in Canada) filled with puppets of the appointing Prime Minister, the only real barrier to parties passing whatever the fuck they want is the Supreme Court.
It definitely is a tradeoff. I'm not even remotely sure what system I'd prefer, honestly.
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On July 10 2013 06:07 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2013 06:04 Klondikebar wrote:On July 10 2013 06:00 Shiori wrote:On July 10 2013 05:57 Klondikebar wrote:On July 10 2013 05:45 DoubleReed wrote:On July 10 2013 05:35 renoB wrote:
I think when people refer to inefficiency and waste in government they're referring to programs that can be replaced by the private sector. The private sector has to worry about being profitable in order to continue on, and thus requires efficiency and therefore requires cost-benefit analyses when deciding on things like buying new computers and so forth. The public sector doesn't have to worry about it because they're going to get the same budget next year and they are actually encouraged to waste in some circumstances when they operate under budget.
But like Shiori suggested, this is where the partisan bickering comes in for deciding what requires government programs and what doesn't.
I think a good comparison would be the amount of money spent on traditional public schools vs. charter schools and their testing results. Charter schools providing better results with less money, whereas traditional public schools have received increased funding with a stagnation of testing scores. Uhh... No there's plenty of waste in the private sector. Remember that private companies want profit which automatically raises their costs. Making things private can often end up making things less efficient because the incentives are different. Very dependent on the situation. An example I like is how private healthcare companies hire huge numbers of lawyers to defend themselves from doing their job (which is to give you money when you get sick). Wut? Profit = Revenue - Costs. Raising costs directly reduces profits. A profit maximizing firm has every incentive to reduce costs. And your sentence about lawyers...wtf are you on about? Do you have any idea how health insurance works? If cost(lawyers) < cost(changing policy in question) then the ideal decision depends entirely on the likelihood of those lawyers succeeding versus the likelihood of a judgment against the corporation being greater than what it would have cost to begin with/force them to change their policy regardless. Umm...yeah but that's still a cost minimizing decision. It's more of a cost relative to revenue decision. If raising costs by x makes revenue go up by x^2 then it's a profit-maximizing as well as cost-raising decision.
You're just splitting hairs and pretending to make a point. Obviously additional production has costs. More outputs require more inputs. But firms are still looking to reduce costs. They aren't just going to inflate costs without any additional revenue. I figured that was obvious in the spirit of what I wrote but apparently it needs to be said: Firms aren't paying more for inputs just for the hell of it.
And when you're presented with two possible costs, you're going to pick the one that negatively impacts your profits the least aka. a cost minimizing decision.
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EPT
