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[Frumple]

My conceptual problem with allocating too much to private business is that they're profit motivated, not... well, I guess you could call it principle motivated. People motivated, anyway. Government is (at least ostensibly) about effective societal management and the betterment of its population. For-profit private business is, well. Not.

The axiom held forth by the whole invisible hand thing is that private business will somehow stumble its way toward the desired betterment. I'm fine with letting that go on with nonessential stuff (varying luxury goods) but, conceptually, I can't see how that's a good methodology (from a humanist perspective with an emphasis on reducing suffering, anyway) to let control essential services (food, shelter, healthcare, infrastructure, defense, education).

Primarily because the goal of the free market is profit, not the efficient and effective implementation of services necessary for a stable society, and I can't see how a system directly aiming for that wouldn't be more efficient and/or effective. The general concept behind laissez-faire and such is a little too... hopeful, I guess you can say, for my tastes. Especially when it's not exactly been producing the actually desired product lately, i.e. better necessity access, general societal improvement, etc., so forth. The system's being gamed pretty heavily by the folks up top right now, though, so it might not exactly be surprising it's not functioning as intended

[Sheb]

Well, sometimes it is more efficient, even if it need some corrections to be optimal. Look at food for example: while there are a lot of problem with the current system, it is arguably better than the Soviet way of doing stuff.

[Bauglir]

I've said it a thousand times, but while there's an argument to be made that natural selection results in efficient results, it's an inefficient method of getting there. More importantly, it's morally reprehensible in situations like essential services, or running a society in general.

[Sheb]

I don't get your morally reprehensible thing. I honestly don't care if the guy providing my food and healthcare is motivated by greed, desire to help or love of pandas, as long as my food is there.

The morally reprehensible thing is sticking with the system that let more people starve/go without access to healthcare/whatever.

[Josephus]

I honestly don't care if the guy providing my food and healthcare is motivated by greed, desire to help or love of pandas, as long as my food is there.

Except that there are people who go hungry and without healthcare due to the profit motive, is what I believe Bauglir is getting at.

I might be wrong.

[Lagslayer]

Government officials are just as motivated by greed as the business owners.

[GlyphGryph]

In a perfect free market of course, you can only profit by giving people what they want. The only way to accumulate money is to do the best you can at giving others what the want - it turns greed into a good thing.

We do not, obviously, live in a perfectly free market.

[Josephus]

Most people are just as motivated by greed as the business owners.

Fixed that for you. Greed (understood as the general desire for accumulation) is a human trait. To fault any individual or group for it is probably the wrong way of going about things.

[Lagslayer]

Most people are just as motivated by greed as the business owners.

Fixed that for you. Greed (understood as the general desire for accumulation) is a human trait. To fault any individual or group for it is probably the wrong way of going about things.

Was planning to steer it in that direction. But I've found that if I start 20 steps ahead, they call me crazy.

[Pnx]

This seems to be pure heresy to many Americans, but I kinda think people actually have a right to have food on the table, a roof over their heads, and some amount of medical care without having to go into huge amounts of debt.

...

I know, crazy talk, right?

[Leafsnail]

My conceptual problem with allocating too much to private business is that they're profit motivated, not... well, I guess you could call it principle motivated. People motivated, anyway. Government is (at least ostensibly) about effective societal management and the betterment of its population. For-profit private business is, well. Not.

Britain's had quite a few privatisation attempts.  I can't think of any that have gone well, although maybe there was some low profile one that did.  Privatising the railways was certainly a disaster in terms of reliability and ticket prices (partly because railways are virtually a monopoly).  The problems are a) that there's no noticable increase in efficiency and b) companies have this delightful habit of taking huge cuts for themselves in a way that government would never get away with.

[Lagslayer]

This seems to be pure heresy to many Americans, but I kinda think people actually have a right to have food on the table, a roof over their heads, and some amount of medical care without having to go into huge amounts of debt.

...

I know, crazy talk, right?

Not necessarily crazy, but we just don't have anyone we can trust right now. Without organization, there's chaos. Any form of organization that rises from the chaos keeps becoming corrupted. And what's worse, it perpetuates itself. As more resources become available, you need to gain more power to keep from being consumed yourself. To get the power, you have to resort to increasingly bad things. In short, it's gonna happen, unless human nature fundamentally changes.

[Frumple]

Most people are just as motivated by greed as the business owners.

Fixed that for you. Greed (understood as the general desire for accumulation) is a human trait. To fault any individual or group for it is probably the wrong way of going about things.

We've got a number of "human traits" we've been actively trying to suppress and find ways to prevent from manifesting for... um. Millennium, I guess. Xenophobia (i.e. the root cause of a great deal of society-destabilizing bigotry) is a good example of that. Resource accumulation drive isn't nearly the worst of them (in the short term, anyway), but just because it's a natural aspect of the human animal doesn't mean trying to fix that is the wrong direction to take.

Desire for excessive accumulation is more of the problem, though, and a certain amount of greed (in the sense you're using) is generally healthy because it's necessary for self-preservation. It's figuring out how to curtail the former that's more of the problem and a system more or less specifically designed to exaggerate that feature, well... it's understandable how it can cause issues and how some folks can be a little leery about it.

This seems to be pure heresy to many Americans, but I kinda think people actually have a right to have food on the table, a roof over their heads, and some amount of medical care without having to go into huge amounts of debt.

...

I know, crazy talk, right?

Honestly, a lot of that derision for the unprivileged (i.e. poor, ripped off, etc., so forth, so on) seems to come more from a sort of "somebody else's problem" thing any actual belief in that sort of hardline position. Lot of people harping those lines are really loud about it right up to the point it hits them, and then there's suddenly an issue.

I've heard someone relate it to a sort of societal level self-entitlement issue, iirc. "Obviously it's not a problem, because it could never happen to me (/my in-group). If someone else is in trouble, it's just because they did negative-thing!X, not because the system screwed them. They brought it upon themselves." Which is a position that helps dehumanize someone outside their in-group (and remember that bit about the human trait of xenophobia up above ), makes them feel better, reaffirms group bonds... there's a lot going on there, really.

[Bauglir]

I honestly don't care if the guy providing my food and healthcare is motivated by greed, desire to help or love of pandas, as long as my food is there.

Except that there are people who go hungry and without healthcare due to the profit motive, is what I believe Bauglir is getting at.

I might be wrong.

That was exactly what I was getting at, yeah. You wind up with people who suffer, not because it's impossible to help, but because it's unprofitable. Capitalism is far from the only system in which this problem occurs! A command economy is often worse - don't mistake me for somebody arguing for "anything but capitalism". My post was not to suggest an alternative (such a thing is far beyond the scope of a forum post anybody would read, and also my ability).

[Sheb]

Yeah, I can agree with you then.