I feel like this is a succinct argument against the idea to privitize everything — there’s no accountability nor notion of “fairness” baked in whatsoever.
So, yes, you can call that a succinct argument against privatizing everything, but very few people actually advocate for that (and those that do generally have ideas about revolutionizing the entire social and/or economic system, not just "eh, just turn off all the public services overnight."). It's easy to pick and choose certain services where private businesses seem to provide better access, and other services where the government seems to provide better access.
I agree that, as you point out, some government services are terrible for certain groups of people (poor and minorities), but I don't think that's an argument for privatization because at least we try to pretend we hold the government to those standards. Nobody pretends that we do or even can hold corporations to any sort of standards. Sometimes there's regulation to help with that, but it's fought kicking and screaming the whole way from the regulated industry and is followed by constant lobbying to repeal or relax said regulation.
We're still losing the distinction between privatizing more things and privatizing everything. I'm not aware of any federal-level US politicians who want to privatize, say, the military.
> but I don't think that's an argument for privatization because at least we try to pretend we hold the government to those standards.
Personally, I'm not interested in the standards we pretend to hold the government accountable to. I'm interested in actual outcomes. If privatizing some service can vastly improve outcomes, then great, if government can do it, then great. Sure, there's the high school social studies explanation that governments are accountable to the people while corporations aren't, but in reality I think that varies vastly from one sector of society to another. Sometimes government accountability to the voting population seems to work, but sometimes it fails miserably. Sometimes corporate accountability from the market seems to work, but sometimes it fails miserably.
That's because we've already privatized the profitable bits of the military in the Defense Industry. There's a phrase I've heard that goes something like "Privatize the profits and socialize the losses". Human life loss is extremely expensive, especially for a private industry, so it doesn't surprise me one bit we haven't privatized that aspect of it.
>Personally, I'm not interested in the standards we pretend to hold the government accountable to. I'm interested in actual outcomes. If privatizing some service can vastly improve outcomes, then great, if government can do it, then great.
I agree with this somewhat, but the reason I mentioned it is because corporate accountability is only effective at keeping leadership accountable to profits not to morals and profits don't care one bit about whats right or wrong. When a company does something wrong most people say "they are a company, only idiots expect them to do the right thing, they did this because it is profitable", at least with a government we haven't given up all hope that that organization can do the right thing because it is the right thing. The fallback on profits serves as an excuse to not even need to pretend to do the right thing that at least the government is held to. Though you are correct that the accountability there varies and is dependent on the population, but I still argue it's better than hoping profits will suddenly start doing the moral thing.
Absolutely, and political accountability is only effective at keeping elected officials accountable to elections, not to morals. And that's only the aspects of government that are even supposedly accountable to the electorate (a huge amount of government is not).
My point in all of this is that the government is far from perfect, but I prefer it to corporations when profit and citizen's interests diverge (healthcare is a prime example).
Look at the most expensive issues that affect America and you will find the government interfering at all stages of that industry, whether it is health care, higher education, lower education, and more. How bad has the VA been and for how long. Do you think a privately run system would not have been fined to death over that?
One reason to privatize some of these services is because we can hold them accountable where we get the brush off by government sectors. Corporations are fined all the time and made to adhere to regulations the government excepts itself from.
The simple fact is, we can find fault in every implementation however government is the least likely to be changed. It doesn't actually report to anyone while at the same time supposedly reporting to everyone.
Yes. We have a big problem with accountability in this country, especially when profits are involved. The issue is not private vs. public. The issue is we sacrifice everything in order to make a buck.
Is that argument coming from the poor and the minorities, or from you?
The quickest study I could find from a Google search:
https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/CI_Summer2...
I've done some volunteer work at the Cambridge, MA public schools where my kids attend. The vast majority of any achievement gap that exists is not under the control of the school for any practical purposes, IMO.
Identify children without such parents and provide them and their parents with additional support; it's expensive, but it's the obvious and likely only way to narrow the gap more than trivially, and probably better than many things that schools are fruitlessly expending resources on.
How many words of in-person adult conversation does the child hear each week?
How many minutes of 1-to-1 direct, focused time does the child receive from an adult each day?
How secure does the child feel? What is their nourishment like? What is their sleep situation like? Are they taught age-appropriate amounts of patience? Do they believe that if they are patient that they'll still get whatever it is they're waiting for?
I'm doubtful of a government program being able to close those gaps in the 0.25 to 5 year old range and I'm doubtful that those early developmental deficits (especially around nourishment, sleep, and security) can be fully closed during the schooling years.
(Disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not a child development expert nor even a dabbler in it.)
I do think thibk you can cure it immediately, but I think you can narrow the gap a bit each generation; it's a long term project that's doable because the outcomes of one generation are the starting conditions for the next.
And ideally it takes improved non-schooling intervention in the before school years. But if you don't intervene to do what you can in the school years now, you've got a worse starting point than you could have for the next generation.
If one percent of people call up customer service to complain about 50% of their transactions they are clogging up the system. I only call if something is breaking and I've exhausted all troubleshooting and automated methods.
Edit: and makes our call takers feel dumb with low resolution rates
It could be that fringe group of customers who use international credit card numbers (but also happen to spend well).
It could be elderly consumers who consistently get bitten by a rough edge in the UX.
It could be users who don't use English as their primary language and don't understand a colloquialism in the interface.
Or the elderly customers who call just because they want someone to talk to. I used to do some PCI compliance work and occasionally had to listen in on customer calls to call centers (to verify procedures were being followed). They don't want service. They want to chat. They may have some small issue with the UI, but then they want to add something to the order. Does it come in red? Will it match the one I ordered last week? Will the delivery people set it up? Can I make sure it doesn't arrive on monday because I'm going to the doctor?
(But I didn't listen to the phone calls, so what do I know?)
But the danger of - "I don't complain excessively so it's OK to whoever complains most" is that by gradually pealing off "excess" complainers, you'll get to a point where no can complain to any degree, people fear to complain about even wholly inadequate products for fear of getting on lists, etc.
Treating everyone with some base level of respect and fairness is the only way to ensure you, or anyone, isn’t subjected to awful outcomes from time to time.
it might not sound nice to phrase it that way, but don't the most loyal or high-value customers deserve better support? If you spend $100k a year on office supplies at staples, you're going to get more attention than a guy who goes in to buy a ream of paper. what's unfair about that?
"Some companies use LTV to determine how long you wait on hold."
"This is why we shouldn't have private prison."
When we look at topics like transport, education, and communications, we're in an era where those things are tilting private, often due to companies discussed here and that employ people who participate on HN.
As an example, the US Postal Service, which has a universal service obligation, has made a huge difference in how the country developed. Everybody was in an important sense equal. The Internet started out with that spirit, but its implementation on mostly for-profit infrastructure means that isn't guaranteed. With the loss of net neutrality, we've taken a further step away from fair infrastructure. Is that a good idea? This article is an example of why it might not be: because companies tend to optimize for short-term revenue gains and to wildly favor rich people.
I needed to go to the CA DMV to renew my drivers license and appointments are booked 3 months in advance and if I go to visit them, some people are waiting 3-4 hours. Because of my flexible schedule I managed to estimate and go at a less peak time and reduce it to half this time. There is certainly no accountability in the DMV either.
Also, the GOP is completely fine with the military industrial complex, big budget deficit spending, tariffs, and other anti-free market policies.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20180904/commentary-republica...
https://www.thenation.com/article/this-is-how-the-republican...
Go to a different company next time?
If the government denies your paperwork, you get to keep working with the same government.
That's an absurd exaggeration.