>The buildings would be worthless without without publically funded roads.
That publicly funded road would be pointless and unfunded without the economic activity driven by those buildings. In fact if you offered the businesses the chance to fund the roads, police and other things provided by the state that they benefit from themselves without the governmental overhead they would likely jump at the chance as it would be far cheaper than paying taxes.
> At the end of the day, I would love for our governments to provide taxpayer funded facilities around the city and even on several of our major highways. We used to have a lot here but they closed almost all of them.
You are almost there. Now we should ask why this happened:
> but they closed almost all of them
There is no civic sense in large swathes of the population. Strict enforcement of basic rules will help us a lot here.
>Also, government operated facilities do not have a profit motive,
Great, so the shit-show we have now, except without any incentive to efficiently spend. Sure that will go over swimmingly. Everyone knows that government construction projects are known for coming on-time and on-budget, and for the best value.
> Why should the government be responsible for building out an incredible infrastructure project so that some businesses don't have to worry about handling cash?
Your post is pretty poor tone-wise, but I'll address this. It's the exact opposite of what you're saying. If the government wants something, it should pay for it. Business is not imposing anything on the government. Business pays the government money it earns, and the government decides how much, and how long to lock the owner in a box for if they don't pay enough. Why should businesses be financially responsible for things the government is paid to solve?
> What's wrong with private companies profiting from providing public services?
Simply: Tax money is wasted. Already rich investors end up enriching themselves further, tax money ends up in the taxes of the rich instead of improving the life of the poor.
Sometimes it makes sense (see economies of scale), but often it does not, because the private contractor has to design one system that works everywhere, and has to deal with a lot more complexity due to that than a local system. Often expenses also occur elsewhere that wouldn’t in a local system.
And paying out to investors is also a common example of additional expenses. Especially if the state has to provide a guarantee the company will be a specific amount of money in profit from the riders of the project.
That’s also why in Germany right now there’s lots of protest against privatizing the Autobahn.
> really useful ventures like large infrastructure projects
give me an example of large infrastructure projects like this. The only examples i can think of are things which gov't fund via tax payer money, and don't expect to be able to reap private profit off; things like roads, rail, electrification of the grid etc.
> Public projects should be works that benefit the public at large, why doe everything have to lead to profit?
The current model is equivalent to socializing the losses and privatizing the profits. Let's go all public or all private but not some horrible mishmash system like we did with healthcare.
The states have actually been raising gas taxes due to the inability of the federal government to do so (and provide more funding.) In fact the main issue these days is that the federal government hands out lots of money for new projects but not a lot for maintenance, which just encourages localities and states to spend a lot of money on infrastructure they don't really need because they don't need to think about the long term liabilities and the lifecycle replacement.
> But the point is they are not spending enough on infrastructure.
OP said the point-- referenced in the article-- was that they are Ponzi schemes. If that is true then user treis is correct: we should see at least one municipality that went bankrupt from this problem.
>> Its because public spending on infrastructure is "socialism" and it is better to give loans to private companies and let "the free market" fix the infrastructure; any day now.
nonsense. It's the governments job to do this maintenance. There are entire departments dedicated to it. The problem is that they are underfunded, in part because the money goes ummm somewhere else, and because for some reason taxing people or business enough to cover state expenses is considered bad practice.
> The whole point of governments is to pay for basic infrastructure like this.
That's a pretty steep oversimplification there. Governments usually exist to promote justice and rule-of-law, keep people safe from internal and external threats to their physical safety, and to protect individual freedoms and liberty.
Paying for infrastructure is only a small part of all of that.
> So we have the public funding a private airport, which is a part of the national infrastructure, which hires private companies to run the things, which are defended and secured by public tax payer dollars.
In an ideal world, this is because the Government decided it would be cheaper to subsidise a private company doing it, rather than doing it itself. Whether or not this is true -- or indeed was entered into in good faith -- is a case-by-case sorta thing.
>have you ever seen a construction project that didn't appear like a total racket?
Yes but none of them were funded or overseen at the state or national level. The source of the funds, the people doing the constructing and the people with the stake in the results was a fairly tight loop. The extra overhead of state/national projects seems to provide enough inefficiency/friction that just turns the whole thing into a money pit.
> meanwhile the state is funneling public funds into things like a concentrated solar plant which will probably never generate more revenue than expenditure.
Erm the state isn't a for-profit entity, in fact if it were to generate a profit for some reason and didn't use that money to improve infrastructure and the living conditions of the people it represents then it would've stopped serving its purpose.
It doesn't matter that their investment doesn't generate revenue, it will improve the lives of the people it represents.
> Prove to me that the public works contractors will produce more jobs than the private sector would have with the same capital.
You are absolutely correct.
Dams, Bridges, Interstate Freeways, Air Traffic Control and Nuclear Power Plants all work so much better when they are built entirely by private enterprise. In cases where they were built using public obligations, they provide very little benefit and do not enable other industries.
> You wouldn't ask the government to build their own roads or bridges
Bad analogy, because we're not talking about the building of bridges (software), we're talking about where they are built.
In your example, the government surely wouldn't pay to have a bridge built on private property where access could be rescinded immediately if the land owner was so inclined.
That publicly funded road would be pointless and unfunded without the economic activity driven by those buildings. In fact if you offered the businesses the chance to fund the roads, police and other things provided by the state that they benefit from themselves without the governmental overhead they would likely jump at the chance as it would be far cheaper than paying taxes.
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