I'm not talking about doctors Nigee, the majority of public-sector workers aren't doctors. They are low paid nurses, receptionists, call-centre employees etc.

"I'm not talking about doctors Nigee, the majority of public-sector workers aren't doctors. They are low paid nurses, receptionists, call-centre employees etc."

So are private sector workers.... sorry I'm missing your point. It might be that in general if people are lower paid they might be less inclined to be happy than higher paid workers regardless of who owns the organisation. You know what really pisses lower paid workers off, seeing the company bosses with their big cars and big bonuses sitting on their arse telling the workers they're not doing their job properly.

I know I'd rather be a BUPA nurse than an NHS nurse any day of the week.

Yeah Nigee. God forbid somebody ever take charge of anything. And God forbid somebody making more money than you.

"I know I'd rather be a BUPA nurse than an NHS nurse any day of the week."
Of course you would because you wouldn't have to work as hard in BUPA and they pick and choose their clients.That wouldn't make you more efficient though....
Here is a great example of a govt organisation being managed by a non-professional that leads to workers being unhappy and dissatisfied. People like this should not be put in charge of such organisations, you need educated and qualified professionals.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21926896
Here is a whole privately run industry being run badly by 'so-called' professionals.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21916653

But you can vote with your feet right? Transfer your money to a cooperative bank for example. And do business with them.

@red - The discussion is about organisational efficiency in private and publicly owned/managed companies

I bank with the Co-Operative :)

@Nigee, not necessarily.
This is about privatization. Let's say it is less efficient to run the highways privately rather than publicly (public highways with no toll boots are obviously more efficient, because it saves you the toll booth). But let's say you don't use the highways at all. In that case, an extremely inefficient private company managing the highway is more beneficial to you than an extremely efficient publicly owned one...

@ red

I'd disagree with your toll booth reasoning. Technology has long been advanced enough to do away with the need for such things. Numberplate recognition built into managed motorway systems or congestion monitoring cameras could easily do the job of charging for road use. We have entered an age where private highways is a far more intriguing prospect. And they could compete with the railways... Imagine it... A truly competitive private transport system...

If anyone wants to see an example of private-sector ineffectiveness, take a look at the for-profit private colleges. There are public colleges, non-profit private colleges, and for-profit private colleges. The latter have been very successful in pumping up the number of students, getting them student loans, and graduating them with a degree. The problem is that their job placement rates are horrendous, so their loan defaults are much higher than any other type of higher education--all because their purpose is number one to make money. The federal government is having to crack down because on many occasions their recruiters have been taped giving a rosy employment picture to prospective students... which isn't true at all.

My dad worked for Caltrans for 40 years, during which time they went from designing and planning highways and freeways to contracting out more and more services... until someone had the bright idea of forcing them to contract out not only the building of the freeways as had always been the case, but also the inspections. That's a recipe for disaster.

Farm subsidies aren't about stocking up on products we buy... Some of these products have uses outside the food chain and, even if they were just the food chain, their prices would go up making them outside the range of consumer affordable products for the general populace *or* making the farmer have to selel them so cheap he'd lose money and eventually go about of business causing them to disappear altogether.

Let's take corn (seeing as red used it for his example) - It is used in many products in the form of corn starch as well as used to make ethanol/E85. Corn steep liquor is used the manufacture of penicillin and corn starch is both the main ingredient in biodegradable plastics as well as being used in body powders as an alternative to talc.

So imagine a world where the corn farmers all close dup shop because they lost the family farm or where what corn was produced cost triple it's current cost such that fresh corn on the cob costs a dollar or more per ear and a can of corn was 6 bucks. Where your bottled water and pop cost 4 bucks per bottle because the biodegradable bottles cost so much to manufacture or where we suddenly went back to massive landfills that were toxic to the environment for an eternity because the bottles no longer were biodegradable.

Re: socialism being more "ethical"... By whose standards? Is it more ethical to steal from those who have? Or to ask them to voluntarily give knowing some will give more than their fair share and others less? Socialism is unethical by some points of view (mine included) as it takes without asking: it steals. As socially liberal as I am, I believe that government run organizations are neither more ethical nro more efficient. Private organizations run as not for profits are usually more efficient and often run because the people in charge care about their cause, not because they are either elected to the post and want to keep getting elected or just receive a paycheck form the government and don't give a shit what happens so long as they get their pay check.

Some things belong in the public domain (although not necessarily nationalized as the temr should better be coined "de-privatixed"). Police and emergency services should be government run. Essential healthcare should be government funded and there should be no such thing as for profit hostpitals. Personally, hospitals should be non-profit. If a doctor wishes to be for profit, he has a private practice he can enter into. But the hospital should not make a profit.

Primary and advanced education should always have a non-privatized version available to it, but there should be no restrictions preventing a private organization from having a school of it's own. But, in order to grant a diploma or degree, every school should be required to be accredited. Lose your accreditation and you must shut your doors, kind of like a restaurant who fails to serve the public in a healthy and safe manner. This would greatly reduce if not eliminate the issue of for-profit schools pumping out paper diplomas that mean nothing.

Re: Healthcare at a national/de-privatized entirely - I can't speak to the current situation as I live in the US. Anything I have info wise is fed to me by the media and inhernetly biased no matter how you divide it. Either it is "OMG It sucks!" or it is "OMG We must have it!" There is no honesty in the media with regards to this issue. I can say that I actually think the US Healthcare system isn't that broken (beyond for-profit hospitals which should go away), it is the health *insurance* industry that is broken along with the litigious nature of our society driving up costs by forcing halthcare providers at all tiers to have malpractice insurance. *That* is what is broiken and hasn't properly been addressed. Address it and costs come down such that we can afford to provide essential care to all citizens while still havign a private system that allow people to can pick and choose their family doctor and specialists.

Socialism doesn't steal unless you're some kind of Randian militant-individualist fuckwit.

At a very basic level, people believe that:

Socialism takes from the hard-working profited individuals and give their money to slobs and bums.

However socialism doesn't go towards government profit, it goes back to people. Your mom's melanoma operation, your uncle's welfare when he was caught between jobs, your sister's friend's food stamps. Unless you're a complete sociopath you should feel empathy towards these people.

Capitalism is far more akin to stealing because even though the system appears 'voluntary', in reality you don't reap the seeds that you sow, instead someone else reaps your crop. So you spend money instead of paying taxes, but instead of getting back a fair service, you get back whichever product they could convince you to buy at the highest price for the lowest value.

Ending farm subsidies and import restrictions on livestock and agricultural products in the West/North would do more good for the Third World than the sum of humanitarian aid budgets combined. It would also make for a genuine liberalization of world trade instead of a bastardized "let's liberalize only the trade in items we export" pushed by the developed countries.

@SY - Pleas enote my qualified statement. I never said we shouldn't care for the needy. I said I think it is better done by *not* taking from others *involuntarily*. There is plenty of charity to go around if the government stops trying to forcibly take it. If my taxes, for instance, wer eonly 10 or 15% of my gross income, I'd give the other 15% or so (I pay about 25% in my federal tax bracket, not counting state and local) then I would give even more than I already give to charities I support like Matthew 25 Ministries, Shared Harvest, Lutheran World Relief, Habitat for Humanity, and the Marine Corps' Semper Fi Fund & Fisher House (my top 5/6 favorite charities).

ON Privitization: The very nature of the question - "What can we privatize?" - is backwards. The fact is that prior to Government - wherever the government exists - there were people/individual/groups/companies performing whatever the task in question, up to an including local militia's. I.e. Wherever you find a government doing something, it once was private. In very few cases, if any, can an argument be made that the thing being done was ineffective, and thus the government took it over; generally speaking it is exactly *because* a thing was effective that the government decided to get involved, take control, and then *try* to ensure the equal distribution/access to said thing to the society at large.

But - the basic concept - what shoul dbe privatized - is backwards. The question should be "What used to be an effective private enterprise, and has ceased to be as effective or efficient once it back a Federal enterprise".

The answer will be little not nothing works better through government.

Take Charity: Charities seeking to feed and house the poor have extremely low expense to benefit ratios as compared to the government bureaucracy, which tends to be highly inefficient compared to a well-run charity, and yet the charities - which are far better at the task - now must compete for dollars with a Federal government that can *command* their income, instead of earning it by good and effective works.

I'm not saying the government has no place -- but I believe the question and the premise of the question are fundamentally flawed. Your starting from a broken system and the concept that *right now* is the starting point for privatization. My premise starts from the beginning of the nation and government and says what worked then, and what was created and worked well, and stopped working as well once it became a government function.

US Foreign Policy should be privatised, surely it could not be any worse in the hands of the multinationals than it ...... oh, sorry. It already is in the hands of big business.
Of course, they just pay the politicians and call it democracy

OK Nigee. We get it. You and SYnapse hate the US. That's OK cause we collectively hate you two fuckwits as well.

"Marine Corps' Semper Fi Fund" does not contribute to humanity however

@Draug - "hate the US" far from it. Every time I come to the U.S. I get laid because apparently they love my English accent. No mate, love the people (especially the women), detest the politics.

@SY - ""Marine Corps' Semper Fi Fund" does not contribute to humanity however "

Bullshit. If you actually knew what it did, you wouldn't pen that stupidity and stink up the forum with the putrid smell of your asshole.

http://www.semperfifund.org/

The Semper Fi fund is about helping injured Marines try to gain some semblance of normallity in their life. These brave men and women lost limbs fightinf to keep the world safe from tyranny and are part of humanity. So serving them after they have served us *is* helping humanity. I hope to never meet you cause I will plant my Marine Corps booted foot up your smelly fucking ass.

@Nigee - Foreign policy isn't politics. It is government. Related but not the same thing. You may like the women, but you hate the government of the country therefore you hate the country. And it hates you too.

@Draug - you seem to speak for a lot of people there Mr America when you say it hates me, hate consumes the vessel that contains it, you should know that.

OK, how about it feels the same way towards you as you do towards it?

Stop trolling this thread it was going well before you come along :-)

Want some cheese with that whine?