RE: Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch as House Burns
October 6, 2010 at 3:59 pm
(October 6, 2010 at 1:18 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I'm a believer in private education; I think children can learn far better in an environment which is individually (at least in some part) suited to their ability. Public education suffers from the problem of the class learning at the rate of the 'slowest' individual. Those with potential are held back when they could be expanding their education.
Performance based public education would also accomplish this. It's very much what happens in NZ, the classes are divided by the performance of the student in each subject, allowing those that rise to the challenge to raise a class, and those who fall behind to drop down. So we have Cab maths, standard maths and high maths etc, and the scheme is expanding to all subjects.
What of the problem in your private education system of students falling too far behind? The school is still being paid by the family, so they still have the right to an education in that regard, but how would the resource allocation align with the needs of a learning deficient student?
That taken into account what are other advantaged you see in terms of private education? Imo i see public education for the large part being a better system. There is less elitism, less expense to the families (even taking into account the taxes being spent), better support for the poor etc.
Quote:Infrastructure? If I were to start a country from scratch, I'd have it privatized. However, given that all countries have some form of infrastructure in place, if I were to suddenly take over the UK for example, I would implement a plan whereby the government either leases or sells the infrastructure to the free market.
I think that is just plain stupid, but you know that already
Infrastructure of the kind that supplies people with their most essential services (power, transport, communication, sewerage). All of these things are far too important to be privatized and should be run at cost. Nobody should have to pay a toll to drive or for flushing their toilets and nobody should be subject to the cost of power services increasing faster than the average industry service. For the sake of keeping the cost of living low (which private infrastructure has never achieved) there should be state ownership of the essentials.
My proposal would be to run essential infrastructure maintenance at cost, so the power lines and generation are state-owned, as with the telecommunication lines and exchanges, and then allow private industry to compete over the state owned medium on a performance based contract. This puts real pressure on private providers to make the best cost to performance efficient services, and keeps the costs down.
Quote:Regulatory services would be private charities that work in the same way the government does.
Nobody is under any obligation to do a damn thing the private charities want, you can simply tell them to get fucked, and you're completely entitled to do so. Private charities CANNOT require that private industry comply to certain standards.
Anything important enough to regulate in the first place needs to be done by the state.
Not only that, but there is no evidence at all to suggest that if you cut the funding to government support services that people will donate the equivalent to private charity, in fact quite clearly has gone the other way. Our government privatized a whole range of support services in the 90's and many of them simply went under, the tax cuts taken from support services went to KFC and the local pub, not to private charity equivalents.
Quote: Business would have no requirement to have safety checks per se,
Fuck that. You're system puts people in danger. Not enforcing a safety standard, or having an appearance based intensive for safety is simply not going to cut it.
Quote: but the regulatory charities would offer rating systems that can be easily viewed by the consumer, so that the knowledge of companies that do not do regular safety checks will affect their business in an indirect way (i.e. customers choosing other businesses).
They can just form their own 'regulatory agencies' and give themselves fucking excellent ratings. There would be nothing at all to stop them, and most consumers, as you well know, aren't going to give a shit about the difference between the 'independent regulation body' and the 'safe workplaces regulation body' that is funded by the company.
Quote:Such checks would be seen by a business as an advantage to have, rather than some kind of burden. Of course, as with anything in the free market, businesses are not exempt from the standard laws applying to citizens. If a business fails to do safety checks and kill a load of people, they will face the consequences, which could range from compensation to charges of some form of manslaughter for those responsible.
But private charities as regulation authorities have absolutely fucking no power to enforce any of that, and having regulation from both the state and charity in going to create an expensive bureaucratic nightmare.
If the government does not legally require safety standards, nor regulate them, then they lose all legal precedent to convict for violations of rules that they are not responsible for.
Quote:I see the state as a necessary "evil".
*facepalm*
Evil? Really? Don't make me laugh, even in quotes it's fucking stupid... It's an imperfect pain in the ass sure, but it's better than not having one, especially in regard to some areas, and there is no fucking way that the idea of state is "evil". A collection of democratically elected citizens doing what they believe is best for everyone, yeah, real fucking evil.
Quote: It has to be there to uphold the constitution of the land, and as such does need some form of funding. You can view tax as the "fee" for ensuring that the government protects and upholds your rights. The government does therefore require some sort of department for handling taxes, which would be a low flat rate across the entire population.
So all the government does is enforce law? You want public cops and judges and private everything else? No fucking way that will be a stable system.
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