I've run a couple posts so far critical of certain feminist positions or talking points. I want to be clear, however, that I'm not inherently anti-women's rights, or even anti-feminism. I probably give feminism more of a hard time than MRAs (that's short for "Men's Rights Activists" for those not in the know) since feminism is so much more popular and the not-totally-true things they say tend to carry much further, but there plenty of good feminists out there, like those at feministing.com, to give one example. And, it's not hard for me to find MRAs that I completely disagree with, and most men's rights sites are bound to have at least the occasional post that I disagree with, though I'll admit I can't think of any site that's popular enough to be worth linking (and in any case, if I linked to sites that I disapprove of, all I'd be doing is giving their organizers extra advertising money).
I like to think of myself as a "gender egalitarian": that is, I'm against sexism, period, regardless of which gender or sex it's against, and if one gender is discriminated against in some way, you try to fight against it. If that means that one gender gets more help, because they're more discriminated against, then that's how it goes. I don't see any reason to budget my non-discrimination, since it's basically a free resource.
I'd like to do more posts on specific topics, but just for the time being I wanted to apply a temporary corrective to how some of my earlier posts may have been perceived until, over time, I'm able to get into particular issues in a more in-depth manner.
2010/06/26
How I Became a Socialist, Part Two: Government Efficiency
If you talk to people about government waste, you'll inevitably hear about the $500 dollar toilet seats that are paid for by public money. The problem is that these are not examples of government waste, they're examples of private companies ripping off the government. Those $500 dollar toilet seats were sold by private companies in "public" bids (the scare quotes are used because frequently the only people to know about these bids happen to be friends or financiers of some public official involved in the deal) and because the various regulatory arms of the government have been weakened and eroded by decades of corporate lobbying, no one's able to check to see who's paying for what before the checks are signed.
The government can, and does, run efficient programs, but only when they're actually run by the government, not by handouts to private industries. To give a local example, I'll use the Salt Lake County Library System. In 2008 (the most recent year data is currently available), they had a budget of about $30 million. For a population of one million, that's an average of roughly thirty dollars a year (which would be graduated by income in practice). To pick a point of interest (I'll admit it's not at all perfect, but it's the closest I can think of), the standard Blockbuster membership is $204 a year. Again, it's not the best comparison for a variety of reasons, but in the interest of focusing on issues of local interest, I'm going to use it. The most pertinent issue with this example is that, of course, everyone who pays taxes in Salt Lake County pays for the library, but only people who go to Blockbuster pay for that - but our library system has especially deep penetration, with roughly 50% of the population registered, I believe, and even if you assumed that only a small part of those used the library on a regular basis, the Blockbuster membership would still be more expensive or, perhaps, about the same price. And, in the library, you get a whole lot more than just DVDs, you get books, audiobooks, music, computer access with high-speed internet and word processing, regular events like story-times for children and such, as well as at least one professional on staff at all times that's trained specifically to help you find the information you want to find - and you get as many of these items as you can use, whereas the Blockbuster membership has a limited number of rentals (except for their DVD-by-mail program, but even then you only get 2 DVDs at a time, compared to 10 with the library). Still not a perfect example, but I think it illustrates pretty clearly that the government can run an efficient and effective operation. And, when I worked there during the last recession, they made a commitment not to lay off a single person when every private business was shedding employees like a cat in summer. They instituted a temporary hiring freeze, yes, and they didn't immediately replace a few employees who retired or left for other reasons, but not a single person was laid off - and, mind you, even their 20-hour employees are eligible for health insurance and receive paid sick leave and vacation time.
To give a couple national examples, there's government-run healthcare (pertinent quote: "In 2000 the United States spent considerably more on health care than any other country, whether measured per capita or as a percentage of GDP. At the same time, most measures of aggregate utilization such as physician visits per capita and hospital days per capita were below the OECD median. Since spending is a product of both the goods and services used and their prices, this implies that much higher prices are paid in the United States than in other countries."), and private contracting in Iraq (pertinent quotes: "Over the course of several years, the Defense Contract Audit Agency found that $553 million in payments should be disallowed to KBR, according to 2009 testimony by agency director April Stephenson before the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Some of the overbilling in Iraq appears to have been done from haste or inefficiency, or even in a desire to please military officials in the field without regard for cost.")
So, in short, while there are undoubtedly some things that private industry is better at, and government is worse at, there's no reason to assume that just because the government is running it that it will be less efficient. To the contrary, the opposite is frequently true.
The government can, and does, run efficient programs, but only when they're actually run by the government, not by handouts to private industries. To give a local example, I'll use the Salt Lake County Library System. In 2008 (the most recent year data is currently available), they had a budget of about $30 million. For a population of one million, that's an average of roughly thirty dollars a year (which would be graduated by income in practice). To pick a point of interest (I'll admit it's not at all perfect, but it's the closest I can think of), the standard Blockbuster membership is $204 a year. Again, it's not the best comparison for a variety of reasons, but in the interest of focusing on issues of local interest, I'm going to use it. The most pertinent issue with this example is that, of course, everyone who pays taxes in Salt Lake County pays for the library, but only people who go to Blockbuster pay for that - but our library system has especially deep penetration, with roughly 50% of the population registered, I believe, and even if you assumed that only a small part of those used the library on a regular basis, the Blockbuster membership would still be more expensive or, perhaps, about the same price. And, in the library, you get a whole lot more than just DVDs, you get books, audiobooks, music, computer access with high-speed internet and word processing, regular events like story-times for children and such, as well as at least one professional on staff at all times that's trained specifically to help you find the information you want to find - and you get as many of these items as you can use, whereas the Blockbuster membership has a limited number of rentals (except for their DVD-by-mail program, but even then you only get 2 DVDs at a time, compared to 10 with the library). Still not a perfect example, but I think it illustrates pretty clearly that the government can run an efficient and effective operation. And, when I worked there during the last recession, they made a commitment not to lay off a single person when every private business was shedding employees like a cat in summer. They instituted a temporary hiring freeze, yes, and they didn't immediately replace a few employees who retired or left for other reasons, but not a single person was laid off - and, mind you, even their 20-hour employees are eligible for health insurance and receive paid sick leave and vacation time.
To give a couple national examples, there's government-run healthcare (pertinent quote: "In 2000 the United States spent considerably more on health care than any other country, whether measured per capita or as a percentage of GDP. At the same time, most measures of aggregate utilization such as physician visits per capita and hospital days per capita were below the OECD median. Since spending is a product of both the goods and services used and their prices, this implies that much higher prices are paid in the United States than in other countries."), and private contracting in Iraq (pertinent quotes: "Over the course of several years, the Defense Contract Audit Agency found that $553 million in payments should be disallowed to KBR, according to 2009 testimony by agency director April Stephenson before the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Some of the overbilling in Iraq appears to have been done from haste or inefficiency, or even in a desire to please military officials in the field without regard for cost.")
So, in short, while there are undoubtedly some things that private industry is better at, and government is worse at, there's no reason to assume that just because the government is running it that it will be less efficient. To the contrary, the opposite is frequently true.
How I Became a Socialist, Part One: I Just Read: "A People's History of the United States"
Sorry for no updates - I spent a long time trying to think of how to summarize the data in the book, but there's just no way to do it, in large part because it's not this or that particular incident that was striking, but the sheer number of incidents. It's not that the governor of a particular state once sent in the National Guard to "pacify" a "riot" of peaceful protesters organizing against 16-hour workdays, or the fact that the mayors were themselves personally related to the business owners making millions of dollars off of virtual slave labor, or one incident of the federal U.S. government breaking a treaty with the Native Americans, or American soldiers committing mass rape against civilian populations during the Spanish-American War, or the fact that the soldiers themselves were dressed in rags because the government outsourced uniform-making to private companies that reaped millions by providing shoddy work, and on and on and on, it's the fact that it all happened so regularly, even consistently, and continues to happen.
All too often, the same people making the political decisions are the same people who profit from deregulation and war. How many U.S. senators are former CEOs compared with the general population? How many congresspeople leave public service for the lobbying industry? How many times have we heard of our soldiers in Iraq having to have their body armor bought for them by their families because the private companies that had won government bids gave them body armor that couldn't stop actual bullets?
Reading all the history that you don't hear in standard U.S. history books really spells out just how predatory Western society has been (and I'd argue continues to be even today). It's not just that the rich preyed on the poor, it's that the rich preyed on the poor, while the whites preyed on the blacks, while men preyed on women, while native populations preyed on immigrants, while the average preyed on the unusual, and so on. The Native Americans did not live in a perfect, idyllic society, but it's astonishing just how generous they were, and how brutal Westerners were. As a few individuals noticed way back when, quite a few Westerners defected to become Native Americans, but there were virtually no Native Americans that defected to become citizens in a Western government.
One last note of something that was surprising to me was how much of the population couldn't vote - not of just the black or female population, but how many adult, white males there were that couldn't vote. It wasn't until the early 20th century that even most white males could vote - before then, as much as 2/3 were disenfranchised due to being too poor to pay poll taxes, or not being legal landowners, or owning land but not enough to be eligible for the vote. So, basically, you're looking at something like 1/8 or less of the population that actually has a right to vote. We all know about black slavery and the women's suffrage movement, but I don't recall hearing anything about the class struggle to extend voting rights to the poor (who happened to constitute most of even the white male population), so learning about that came as a surprise to me.
All too often, the same people making the political decisions are the same people who profit from deregulation and war. How many U.S. senators are former CEOs compared with the general population? How many congresspeople leave public service for the lobbying industry? How many times have we heard of our soldiers in Iraq having to have their body armor bought for them by their families because the private companies that had won government bids gave them body armor that couldn't stop actual bullets?
Reading all the history that you don't hear in standard U.S. history books really spells out just how predatory Western society has been (and I'd argue continues to be even today). It's not just that the rich preyed on the poor, it's that the rich preyed on the poor, while the whites preyed on the blacks, while men preyed on women, while native populations preyed on immigrants, while the average preyed on the unusual, and so on. The Native Americans did not live in a perfect, idyllic society, but it's astonishing just how generous they were, and how brutal Westerners were. As a few individuals noticed way back when, quite a few Westerners defected to become Native Americans, but there were virtually no Native Americans that defected to become citizens in a Western government.
One last note of something that was surprising to me was how much of the population couldn't vote - not of just the black or female population, but how many adult, white males there were that couldn't vote. It wasn't until the early 20th century that even most white males could vote - before then, as much as 2/3 were disenfranchised due to being too poor to pay poll taxes, or not being legal landowners, or owning land but not enough to be eligible for the vote. So, basically, you're looking at something like 1/8 or less of the population that actually has a right to vote. We all know about black slavery and the women's suffrage movement, but I don't recall hearing anything about the class struggle to extend voting rights to the poor (who happened to constitute most of even the white male population), so learning about that came as a surprise to me.
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