There's no reason the government can't do this either, except (and I'll speak for my city) they don't want to do any of the hard work to actually make this happen. We need better leaders.
> 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.
>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.
> Doable. But I think you put too much faith in the government. The government is a natural monopoly itself. If they're doing a shitty job you don't get any other options.
Disagree. A government can be held accountable. Some asshole ex-hedge fund manager attempting to corner the market on a drug can't be.
> Problem is, that rarely happened because govs are generally bad (not skilled / trained) at running businesses
These are businesses that have been run so poorly they're begging the government to force citizens to donate them money. I don't think there's any reason to believe the private sector has any particular genius here.
> This is a clear case of the value that governments can provide with your tax money, and something that almost certainly would not be provided (free of charge!) by the free market.
Pretty sure an HOA could fairly easily collect this data (I have a setup for various chemicals in my back yard). I have shared said data with my HOA to change the treatment plan for common areas. If an HOA did that they can sue a plant for any issues and alter emissions.
Government (big g) is nothing but an organized group of citizens agreeing to certain rules. There’s no reason any random organization can’t gather information, sue, etc. exactly the same as government.
We’re raised to think government is necessary, but I’m apart of many organizations that effectively function as self-governance and collective bargaining. At the same time they don’t need forced taxes paying for bombs in other countries either…
All it takes is a minor amount of organization. A great example of this is the HAM radio community, farming co-ops, churches, etc.
Like many things in America, the government is lobbied to create an unnecessary problem by private companies who aim to profit off of solving that problem.
> Yeah mostly agree, why do government programs always result in so much misuse and fraud?
* Inefficiency from steps 3, 4.
* Money going to advocacy groups who are really good at advocacy, but not actually good at execution.
* Impossible to build execution-focused groups when funds appear one year, and go poof the next year.
* Lack of economies of scale. One group can manage 800 housing/shelter units for vastly less money than 80 different groups managing 10 housing/shelter units each.
Most of these problems are actually solved by having the government provide these services in-house, instead of subcontracting to 80 different non-profits, with each of them having a ton of overhead, waste, lack of continuity of mission, etc.
You also have direct democratic control of this, because council has direct influence, and can be held accountable for how the city's departments run.
>Cities have different problems from the federal government, usually funding being the big one. Even a Democratic city that overall favors good government will have problems being effective without sufficient funds to pull it off.
We've got 25 million to build a bridge to a sports stadium. Think we could find $100 a week to pay someone to pick up trash for 4 hours.
>I do wonder why your city government is in charge of yard waste, though? I've lived a lot of places, mostly very liberal, and it's always been a private company hauling away trash/recycle/yard debris.
You can do that with education, healthcare, transportation, security... You can have a private version of that.
Probably you can't have your own military, even that in the USA is not so clear.
Most people just can't afford the private version. The government version of that services is way cheaper, so you are stuck with it even if the government does not want to invest to have a good service.
> I find it hard to believe that a government run system could be less efficient than one that has to pay off insurance companies, recruiters, and mass marketers, all with what seems like little oversight.
What makes you think that the government wouldn't also have to work through those hurdles?
Government is notoriously inefficient, especially at scale. If government demands a process be done in the public sector, then there is zero competition and little innovation in the process.
> It should make it remarkably cheap to run, comparatively.
You're assuming that it would be possible to simply eliminate government and state services and institutions, both politically and practically.
Instead, everyone working within an organization works to serve their own personal interests. This means that it's practically impossible for an elected official to eliminate all this state cruft, as every single person within the organization would fight tooth and nail to sabotage the project.
There's no reason the government can't do this either, except (and I'll speak for my city) they don't want to do any of the hard work to actually make this happen. We need better leaders.
reply