"No public money going into private profits"

[PseuTonym]

“No public money going into private profits” doesn’t make any sense to me, because I see no reason that a government should manufacture combat boots, chalkboards, etc, rather than buying them from private sector manufacturers.

By definition, profit is return on investment. Without anticipation of a return, there is no motivation to risk money on a venture. However, if the products are of good quality and people want it to be possible to purchase the same brands in future, then why should the prices be so low that the people who risked their money to make the venture possible receive no return on their investment? Why shouldn’t the prices be high enough to provide some return for the investors?

Perhaps in the ideal world there would be lots and lots of businesses going bankrupt and not merely reorganizing, but liquidating. Then governments could procure supplies from the private sector firms that are liquidating their inventory as part of the process of going out of business. I cannot think of any other way to both avoid spending money that contributes to profit, and also avoid having governments themselves producing all supplies used by governments.

Some golf courses are owned by (or structured as) non-profit organizations. If governments stopped buying combat boots and chalkboards from the private sector and started donating that money to non-profit organizations that own and manage golf courses, then not only would there be political rhetoric about the wonderful investment of tax revenues into non-profit (i.e. worthy?) endeavors (such as golf courses), but politicians might personally benefit by doing their golfing in plusher, more luxurious surroundings.

Being a member of a golf course can be compared to sharing a Rolls-Royce automobile. Obviously a single individual who buys a Rolls-Royce automobile for personal use isn’t profiting from the transaction in terms of money. It is the seller who may profit in money terms. The buyer is consuming. If some people share the costs and the benefits, then they have a private club that they are members of, and it is luxury consumption for them, not a profitable venture for them.

What more needs to be said to go beyond knee-jerk reactions and actually understand the meaning of the word “non-profit” and the meaning of the word “profit”?

In an ideal world, what would the people who manage pension funds for government employees do with the premiums that are paid? Normally, they invest the premiums. The pensions will fail unless there is return on investment. So if government employees believe that no public money should go into private profits, then not only do they need to protest against government purchase of supplies from private sector companies, but they also need to figure out how they are going to retire. Somehow, governments will need to generate public profits to pay for pensions.

On the other hand, a pension fund for government employees isn’t actually public money, is it? It is reserved for the people who receive the pensions, and not everybody is a government employee. When public money is used to buy soup and feed the hungry, a spoonful of soup goes into one private mouth. A private mouth isn’t a problem. A private bank account that you can use to buy your own soup isn’t a problem.

If we take the words literally, “no public money going into private profits” doesn’t seem to identify an ideal. However, perhaps there is a kind of code being used, and people who speak of “no public money going into private profits” as if it were a high ideal actually have something in mind. Maybe it would be possible to change the wording. Can you edit it to create new wording so that it makes sense?

 

[ahs]

“No public money going into private profits” doesn’t make any sense to me…

What exactly are you talking about? Where is that quote from, and what was the context?
You seem to be under the impression that the government doesn’t purchase materials from businesses that make a profit, and instead just manufactures what it needs?
I work for a department of a government agency, and we buy ALL of our supplies from the private sector…from vehicles to paper clips.

 

[LethalMouse]

I think you are misinterpreting the intention of that idea.

It is an overarching term to the level of my awareness that covers corruption and insanity.

To give a business money just cause.

The fact that the wives of bailout companies made new companies that on paper qualified for the bailout.

The fact that we handed tax money to banks instead of say helping make mortgage payments until both bamks and people whos money was given were on footing.

The fact that the bailout happened instead of letting the economy self correct and be built on a solid foundation. Our economy is a giant tower built from the top up with no cement poured beneath.

The fact that gov grants for science are often limited to multi million dollar companies who could easily afford to develope new profit making products on their own but through legislative trickery got the gov to pay for R&D at little to no risk to the entrepreneur.

Public money for private profit isn’t buying a combat boot, it is giving the company the money to start up and then buying the boots from them… letting them mismanage the company and run it into the ground and then giving them more moneyand buying more boots…

 

[LethalMouse]

If we take the words literally, “no public money going into private profits” doesn’t seem to identify an ideal. However, perhaps there is a kind of code being used, and people who speak of “no public money going into private profits” as if it were a high ideal actually have something in mind. Maybe it would be possible to change the wording. Can you edit it to create new wording so that it makes sense?

90% of all speech taken “literally sounds insane”

“No blood for oil” so if someone gets a paper cut working in an oil companies office we need to shut it down!

“Government transparency” all gov buildings must be made of glass and and all papers on overhead projector material

“Change” well we must change everything, so now red lights mean go and green mean stop!

“Universal Healthcare” we must send a space ship with medical supplies out into the universe!

“Gun control” we must attach a video game controller to guns!

“Click it or ticket” if you have one of those auto seatbelts that you dont click, you shall be ticketed!

“Don’t drink and drive” Water bottle = jail buddy!

 

[PseuTonym]

I think you are misinterpreting the intention of that idea.

All that we have here are sequences of words. Of course, we hope to deal with ideas, but we have to make specific choices in order to communicate. I am aware that a person has an intention at a given time, but I have never heard of an idea having an intention. There are tactics that people apply in an effort to achieve some goal. And I suppose that a tactic is a kind of idea.

You could say that somebody is misusing a tactic that you recognize as being a familiar tactic. Perhaps your basis for using the label “misuse” is that you do not believe that the plan is feasible. Perhaps the goal itself is, in your opinion, not good. Of course, the goal is unknown to you unless you ask. Even if you ask, the answer that you receive will depend on how self-aware the agent is, and on whether or not the agent intends to truthfully disclose the goal.

It is an overarching term to the level of my awareness that covers corruption and insanity.

Now you have lost me. What is the “it” that is an overarching term? To establish any enterprise that is to make things such as chalkboards and combat boots, some financing is required. People are unlikely to pay for chalkboards and combat boots on the understanding that the organization that has received the money has not yet produced a single chalkboard or pair of combat boots. Thus, financing has to be obtained from a source other than the eventual purchaser.

A creditor may accept a promise of interest payments and return of principal, but the principal is not protected unless there is enough valuable collateral that can be liquidated to recover the principal. If such collateral is not available, then the only known alternative is a share of the business, and the hope of sharing in profits anticipated to be usually larger than interest payments received by a creditor.

The fact that the bailout happened instead of letting the economy self correct and be built on a solid foundation.

That is what the Republican Hoover administration tried after the 1929 stock market crash. I think that a referendum in the USA would show that people do not want a repeat of the Great Depression. Self-correction can take longer than people are willing to wait, just as overvalued stock prices can remain overvalued for a long time, so that attempting to sell short is almost as dangerous as buying into a bubble in the hope of selling to a so-called “greater fool” who one hopes will buy before the bubble bursts.

Our economy is a giant tower built from the top up with no cement poured beneath.

Perhaps you are right, but that seems to be another way of saying that credit plays an important role in the economy.

If we are hoping to eat during the winter, and we have not planted any crops before the winter, then we are hoping that others have handled the financing problems involved in securing land for agriculture, money to pay farm workers before the harvest, etc.

People borrow money to go to school, hoping that they will have jobs. People pay premiums for pensions, hoping that they will eventually be able to receive monthly checks after they retire from regular, paid employment. People deposit money in the bank, hoping that they will be able to withdraw the money.

 

[kdbueno]

The integrity of divine law is *maximally *on its way.

 

[PseuTonym]

What exactly are you talking about? Where is that quote from, and what was the context?

I doubt that it is a trademarked slogan. I heard it from Natalie Bennett, but it seems likely that she heard something similar and edited it a bit to create her own version.

If you use the following link …
youtube.com/watch?v=7Sv2AOQBd_s
Leaders Debate Live | UK Election 2015
YouTube Channel: Sky News

… then you can watch from 6:09 to hear her from the beginning of her speech. If you watch from approximately 6:44, then you should be able to hear the exact words “no public money going into private profits.”

It actually seems that the title of this thread is part of a larger sentence: “We’re committed to returning the NHS to its founding principles … no public money going into private profits.”

However, it seems odd that such a general principle would be applied to management of only one particular government agency. In any case, people who are inspired by the rhetoric can easily forget, or fail from the beginning to observe, that it was invoked in her speech in connection specifically with the NHS in the UK.

Here is a link for info from the NHS about the NHS:
nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Pages/NHSEngland.aspx

Here is a headline from 16 May 2016 news about Natalie Bennett:
Natalie Bennett to step down as Green Party leader
Link:
bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36299465

You seem to be under the impression that the government doesn’t purchase materials from businesses that make a profit, and instead just manufactures what it needs?

That seems to be somebody’s ideal, but I doubt that it is easy for a government to manufacture everything for itself. However, it is easy for some of them to make illegal copies of copyrighted software, and both the government of Cuba and the government of Israel took land without compensating the owners of the land.

For example, a man who managed to become a medical doctor despite growing up in a refugee camp says, in his book “I Shall Not Hate”, that his father had been a farmer and owned a farm, but that the government took the farm and never compensated the family.

In that book, he also mentions that when he was a boy he saw a Palestinian girl, and when he wrote the book he was quite confident that she didn’t live in a refugee camp. That information seems to be a helpful bit of reality to contrast with political rhetoric that classifies all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as being in a refugee camp, or prison, or concentration camp. To him, she seemed very wealthy to be able to eat a whole bunch of bananas because, as a boy, he had never had the experience of eating a whole banana.

On the topic of bananas, fruit, and sweet things that grow, such as sugar cane, historical records indicate that the government of Cuba took productive agricultural land, without paying compensation to the creditors and shareholders who owned companies that owned the land. For example, land owned by the United Fruit Company was taken without compensation.

I work for a department of a government agency, and we buy ALL of our supplies from the private sector … from vehicles to paper clips.

That is not surprising.

 

[PseuTonym]

The integrity of divine law is *maximally *on its way.

I note that the member kdbueno, as of the posting of this message, has been banned. However, the message remains, and perhaps the message itself does deserve a reply.

I don’t doubt the integrity of divine law. There are ideas similar to the idea of maximum. There is optimization.

Nowadays it is understood without question that light bulbs should provide maximum luminosity for the given rate of consumption of the energy associated with electron flow (often called electrical “current”). However, packaging needs large print explanations of luminosity of an LED or compact fluorescent bulb in terms of the wattage for the old style incandescent bulbs that emit more heat than people want, especially if they are already using electricity to cool the inside air via so-called “air conditioning.”

There are solar panels designed for satellites, and they might get close to the maximum efficiency that today’s technology can provide. They aren’t considered commercially feasible for placing on the roof of an ordinary office building, because the initial cost is too high, and there is a risk of damage or loss from extreme weather events and other hazards. So that is an example of maximum efficiency not being desired. Here the efficiency in question is measured in terms of the device itself without regard to money cost. The attempt to achieve optimization takes into consideration the money cost.

Perhaps that particular attempt to optimize involves a false economy. Gold in bank vaults does people little good. The expensive materials should be used for something like solar panels. While they are still being made somewhere where there are basic protections such as the First Amendment of the Constitution of the USA, it might be a good idea to buy them and install them, and get insurance to protect the investment.

 

[ndsolt]

When I hear this I thinking of situations where taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for private ventures. For example, pro sports stadiums. Usually they are money pits.