Please stop telling me that corporations can always do it better than government

[Saviolo]

Here's something I ranted on Twitter about last night (imagine this divided across 10 separate tweets):

Please stop telling me that "private enterprise will do it better than government." How often do you complain about companies Companies with monopolies like Rogers and Bell, or Comcast and Verizon in the US. The tired old argument that the invisible hand will lift companies with better service and better products is baloney. The "invisible hand" lifts companies that have no ethics and are willing to predatorily drop prices to corner a market. Then you vote with your feet because you're saving a few cents, and ignore that the service isn't so good. Guess what? Stuff costs money. So, the company willing to take a short term loss and cut service will eventually BUY the company that isn't, because people will take the service cut to save pennies. I've seen it personally in travel booking. I had someone literally take a flight with two 4-hour stops instead of 1 2-hour stop to save $.24. Yes, twenty-four cents. And now we elect governments the same way? Who's going to save me $.10 at the pump? Who's going to save me 1% in taxes? Hell, we might as well just vote the Koch brothers in directly if that's going to be the case. If you figure they're going to screw you anyway, wouldn't you like the option to possibly vote them out every half-decade or so?

Just something that was weighing on my mind, I suppose. It's the attitude that brought folks like Rob Ford to be the mayor of Toronto, and the same attitude that constantly causes Toronto's transit plans to fall through, because we forget that things cost money. I realize people vote with their feet because every penny counts to far too many people. That's a systemic problem that is only being made worse by corporations holding increasingly huge segments of the market in a dwindling number of hands.

Just my $.02

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

1. Profit over people and quality

Nice thread!

[RandySF]

2. I think it depends on what service we're talking about.

Health care delivery, government is hands-down the better alternative. But building rockets, I would prefer private companies.

[Jim Beard]

6. Weiner Van Braun a government employee didn't do a bad job with the Jupiter C Redstone that

put Alan Shepard in Space. Our first American and he was also in charge of building the magnificent Saturn 5 that got Americans to the moon and back. Corporations built parts to government specification.

Saturn 5

[Rex]

3. Corporations can always steal and damage the economy better than government.

Unless you have an epic moron like Ted Cruz that promises to kill the government in order to save it.

[Saviolo]

4. They also...

did the death panels that everyone was afraid of from ACA better than the government. Asshats like Martin Shkreli are the panel members, and they get to decide that poor people matter less than profits.

[Nye Bevan]

5. Well going into an Apple store is usually a better experience than going into the DMV.

And the Amazon website is a little more efficient and user-friendly than Healthcare.gov. So there is quite a bit of truth in that adage.

Having said that, there are a list of things that should be handled solely by government. Police, fire department, health care, Social Security, to name a few.