From Krugman's latest:
Conservatives look at the virtues of market competition and leap to the conclusion that private ownership, in itself, is some kind of magic elixir. But there’s no reason to assume that a private company hired to perform a public service will do better than people employed directly by the government
I have been trying to open my fellow conservatives eyes to this for years. Competition not private ownership makes the market go around. There is no particular reason to expect crony capitalism to do any better than socialism.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Hallelujah
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3 comments:
What about the profit motive? If you do things more efficiently, you make more money, which is not the case with socialism.
good point, Karl! This is something that needs to be said more often. "Privatization" that consists of merely crony political allies getting no-bid contracts does nothing to raise efficiency, it just raises costs.
@ the emperor:
The problem is that profit motive can lead to a lower quality job, and can turn into criminal incentive, as when a road construction firms makes deals to pave roads with a thinner than legally required layer of asphalt.
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