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Comment by synetic | Hacker News Reader

Desegregation occurring when the push to dismantle government run services was gaining traction caused the loss of public pools. Americans acquired an irrational fear of government in the 70s and 80s. We lost public pools, publicly run ambulance service, publicly run garbage collection. Police departments no longer service their own vehicles.

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I think it's important to remember how linked these are. In many places the response to desegregation was to dismantle as much public infrastructure as possible and replace it with private infrastructure that was legally integrated but functionalaly segregated.

Why should police departments do automobile maintenance?

Other than to add more sinecures for the politically connected…

What is the benefit of outsourcing that to a private company that pays its workers much less in salary and a benefits? The money spent on maintenance is roughy the same but now the jobs for the workers are less desirable less well paid. The money now goes to the business owner. All the business owner is doing to squeezing money out of the workers to enrich themselves. There is no benefit to society in doing this. Indeed it is a loss for the community.

Are you under the impression that government contracts for vehicle maintenance are immune to becoming sinecures for the politically connected? Only mechanics are subject to this possibility?

Should they sew their own uniforms? Build their own laptops?

No. The larger departments should service their own vehicles though.

Some outsourcing (aka buying goods and services on the market) is good but some other outsourcing is bad?

Obviously some outsourcing is good and some bad. You seem not to understand that this could be true. Only a fool thinks all instances of outsourcing are good (or bad).

Typically people don’t live in a world of extreme positions whereby one occurrence of outsourcing being good (or bad) means all of them are. It is obvious the position that I have. Government has outsourced too many jobs to the private sector and the effect has been to enrich the business class at the expense of the working class.

Obviously yes? Why wouldn’t it be? Outsourcing isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s just a means to an end that may have good or bad side effects.

Do you only perceive the world through a dichotomies lense?

That's foolish beyond measure.

I question whether these positions would be better paying if they were filled by government employees. In every case I can think of, government employees earn less than their private sector counterparts.

Can you name a few people positions as an example? Particularly in lifetime earnings and total comp government work in teaching, chemistry, and administrative work is 1.5x or more that of theprivate sector median with much stronger protections. In particular pensiins, health care, and early retirement make up for a lot in terms of starting hourly wage.

Compare the POTUS or a military general to a private sector CEO.

For anyone who works in the military industrial complex, the income difference is stark.

I think you may be right as it stands now but I don’t think this was right in 1980. When factoring in benefits, pension, working conditions, and employment stability I think even today it may not be clear who is better off.

> Why should police departments do automobile maintenance?

Because, as we have seen, outsourcing these kinds of services is rarely cheaper and never actually better.

By keeping it in house, you can hire people correctly for the volume of maintenance you do. Your people become very good at the specific needs and faults of your system (see: Why SF firefighters make and repair their own ladders). And when you genuinely need something, you can redeploy your labor.

All outsourcing does is create an extra middleman whose mouth you must feed and whose workers you have no control over.

Executives, of course, loved outsourcing as it let them crack up the unions.

Government agencies that serviced their own vehicles just ended up with a fleet of non-working vehicles. At least that was true for those for which the vehicle fleet was of secondary concern.

And for something like a police department, the efficiencies disappear with modern vehicles which need less maintenance.

>irrational

Yes it was irrational of Americans to fear government run ambulance services and whatnot. All governments are capable of doing bad things. The reaction to this fact ought not be the dismantling of those government services that worked and provided tangible benefits to the people. Certain politicians decried government inefficiency and said that government can’t work. Once elected they did everything they could to prove themselves correct.

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