This is one reason why we have a state, which collect taxes and can provide those services.
If past governments or cultural environments messed up demographics, states might end up with a significant fraction (Germany already has 22% aged 65+) of the population in need of that care, which requires another significant share of the population to just do that instead of producing actual stuff.
This will either get ugly in one way or another or we will need scalable tech solutions.
Except you can't force foreign workers to do shit jobs the locals don't want. They're not slaves.
lol, nice joke, how many illegals has Germany for example deported? Deporting people in the EU is a huge hassle and the source countries often don't want to cooperate in taking back people. You'll have to murder someone to actually get the authorities in the EU go through the hassle of deporting you, but refusing to work shit jobs isn't enough to get you deported, just have your welfare access cut off.
Plus they can also claim asylum once they get here to escape their slave drivers and not get deported.
>especially in EU countries with more... lax standards than Germany
Germany already has lax standards on that regard. Many there are raking in huge profits by bringing in these vulnerable workers and having them work in terrible conditions.
> Plus they can also claim asylum once they get here to escape their slave employers and not get deported.
You are confusing two groups of people. One group consists of illegal migrants, usually from MENA countries that claim asylum and are a hassle to deport back.
Migrant workers usually come from southeast Asia (India, Nepal, Philippines..) and there is no problem sending them back because those countries are considered safe. Also they got families back home, their motivation is not really to stay here long term but to earn a decent amount of money (from their perspective). And despite sometimes poor treatment and shitty jobs, EU is a much better place to work than gulf countries.
> They come here willing to do those jobs.
Someone willing to do a job means you don't need to force them to do it. After all, they aren't slaves.
Foreign workers are improving their lot (and that of their families back home). In a world where they don't have the same economic opportunities in their home countries, and the locals don't want to do those "shit jobs", it's a win win.
Even talking about shit jobs is pejorative. Foreign workers don't just pick fruit, they're also essential talent in healthcare and other critical areas.
Why is that? Do you think shit jobs don't exist? You think wiping other old people's asses is NOT a shit job? Are you lining up for these kinds of jobs yourself or did you work and study hard to not have to do them because you knew those jobs are shit and are usually given to the lowest underclass class of people who don't have better options due to various factors?
> Foreign workers don't just pick fruit
I never said such thing. The thread I replied was about importing workers for elderly care.
You're trying to project some things I didn't say onto me.
They're promised path to citizenship and an ok money. Then they discover that they work for an agency that takes away big chunk of their money. They can not change the employer since they'll be deported etc. etc. And the worst part is that at the end they still have to leave the country.
So yeah maybe not technically but they're slaves.
I'm not sure this comes as a surprise to anyone except for those who have had no interaction with state-provided social services. I'd also say that a level of care that does not reach to that 1:1 standard is still appreciably better than no care, which may be what one might otherwise receive.
The open question is can we work out better, decentralized ways of providing support that take advantage of the new social technologies that we've developed since the construction of the modern state and its welfare services in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Do you really think infirmity is something that can be avoided with the right grindset?
And the week in which private companies will be able to provide this, is the same week which has two Tuesdays.
The state is ideally suited to manufacture public goods, more efficiently than private enterprise.
That means armies, judiciaries, policing municipalities, governance amongst others.
They address issues like management of the commons.
This does not translate into scaled care - care for orphans (from the article) still needs large numbers of skilled manpower, which is in short supply across the world.
These services are also often underfunded, since they are not really a first class citizen for voters.
Voters today, are also deeply targeted by emotional campaigns and identity campaigns, since that is the current political state of the art.
The state can be efficient, but some things don’t scale unless they are also resourced correctly.
Such services will also be amongst the first to cut, since “X will render it obsolete”, is a promise as old as time, and aren’t directly tied to overall societal survival.
Compared to something like defense / emergency funding
The government does not provide a more efficient military or education. It compels individuals to pay for something which is in the collective good, but not their personal interest.
This is news to me, or a novel use of economic terminology.
Source?
Economists argue markets are efficient because of the incentive structure they place on actors. There is a plethora of writing about government inefficiencies due to not having these. It the most distilled form: they are insulated from both positive and negative consequences of behaving efficiently.
Due to this, government entities have a unique set of traits, but efficiency tends to not be one of them. But who cares? Efficiency isn't always the goal. When it comes to making laws, efficiency isn't the goal, long term values are more important.
The post office was created with full knowledge that it would be a net loss, but it was felt to be institutionally important to have universal access to communication across the nation. Now that this is an antiquated method of communication, and there is a market for the remaining services, it is mostly an inefficient make-work program for a well organized voting block.
Now you I can imagine all the distopian problems of a private military, but I'm going to guess efficiency is not one of those (The US Gov believe Blackwater saves them money, btw).