steveandersen said:
"fakename
I don’t agree with you that a private consortium would be the most optimal (more optimal? optimaler?)… would be more efficient than a government at building roads but if for argument’s sake we say they were…
the consortium would need mechanisms in place to plan the route of the road; to acquire land and rights-of-way; to establish and enforce safety standards; to collect revenues; to resolve disputes over use and access; regulate connections to the roads of other consortia; etc, etc
so they would either have to have these powers within themselves, just like a government. OR they would have to be operating under and existing external legal framework… something sort of like a government.
AND (as an engineer it pains me to say this) efficiency is not always the best basis for government. (I recall some governments that were known for making the trains run on time that were… lacking in other areas) Governments are not businesses. One of their reasons for being is to preserve the Common Good not necessarily your personal individual good. So your perception that you are receiving low value for your dollar doesn’t really offer you an exemption. It may obligate you to work to change the system. "
Granted that all you said is true I would like to add something to it. It is true that a good government cannot limit itself to efficiency but you can never have a government (much less a good one) without efficiency
OK
I would modify that to state that governments must have the “perception” of efficiency… but I’m a cynic
-it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for governments (that’s why I like the idea of privatizing gov. services).
who contracts these private entities to perform the services?
who pays the invoices?
who checks that the scope of services was adequately carried out?
the way I see it you can’t get away from something very much like “government”
regardless of who is doing the work
But for states that lack efficiency things can be what we would call, a hell -see the USSR, post war germany, current day iraq, and even the middle ages europe where the church/nobility/kings were sometimes involved in anarchic battles for supremacy.
sometimes yes
but looking at places like Somalia, it seems to me that a lack of government can create a hellish situation just as easily as an over reaching government
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that a government that limits itself even to higher things like the common good or to improving man or to freedom or to the aryan race, etc. is not a government either without efficiency.
well…I don’t know how you could say an ineficeint government isn’t a government
it is a government… just maybe not a particularly efficient one
inefficient ones often crumble under serious pressure. but history is full of states that tottered on decade after decade in glorious inefficiency
I recall reading a SF novel as a boy. (Harry Harrison? maybe?
) the premise was that sometime in the future governments had become hyper efficient. Laws were written and money appropriated and spent within hours. it was exceeding the ability of humans to keep pace with it so a special office was created to sabotage government where possible to slow it down.
just a story but an interesting premise that people expect some inefficiency so that things don’t change too fast
