Yesterday, I had to see Glenn Beck again on TV - It was in the locker room of my club, which is full of Republicans, so I had no choice. Beck was at it again: “The government is the problem, not the solution. If you want to solve America’s problems, just unleash free enterprise,” etc., ad nauseam. And I am afraid that the message is taking hold among the American people. Wherever I turn, I hear people repeating the same clichés: “The government can’t do anything right. Washington is the problem. All politicians are crooks,” etc.
What about the perception that most politicians are corrupt? The group Transparency International ranks annually most of the world’s countries in terms of their CPI - the Corruption Perception Index: Out of nearly 200 countries, we are the 19th least corrupt. This is not stellar, but neither is it terrible. We are right behind Japan and England, who are tied for 17th place. France is #24, Italy #63, China: #79, Russia: #146. Most of Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and the rest of the world is more corrupt than we are. The 18 less corrupt countries are in Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. So we shouldn’t get carried away with the mea culpa that always blames America, or the American government.
Furthermore, America’s Corruption Index would be lower if it didn’t include the private sector practices associated with Wall Street, the trade in junk bonds, hedge funds, derivatives, toxic loans, insider trading and all the other shenanigans which have brought the economy to its knees.
Does the government do everything badly? Here are just some anecdotes to refute this:
(1) When I first traveled across America in the 1960s, I was struck by the contrast between two kinds of tourist spots - public and private: On the one hand, we visited Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and other magnificent national parks. They were all fantastically clean; the environment was pristine, protected, kept inviolate. Services were excellent and cheap. And then there were those dinosaur-land and alligator-farm types of amusement parks in various parts of the Dakotas, Wyoming, Arizona. They offered vulgar, paper mache giant dinosaurs, they were littered with junked cars and rusty farm equipment. The prairie and the desert wore the scars of “free enterprise.” This left an indelible impression on me, strengthening my belief in social democracy, i.e. a system in which the government protects the collective patrimony against plunder motivated by the search for individual profit.
(2) Recently, my wife and I received our H1N1 flu shots. We stood in line with 5000 others. It took us less than two hours. There were volunteers serving coffee and providing chairs for the elderly. The shots were free to everybody. I know, I know, it was the taxpayer who paid the bill, ultimately. But wasn’t this well-spent money?
3) Come to think of it, I can’t think of many programs than are more efficient and work better and more fairly than Medicare and Social Security. The benefits are reasonable and well-deserved by the millions of people who paid in many thousands of dollars over their lifetime.
4) State Universities are frustrating bureaucracies, you say? After years of devastating cutbacks, California’s public universities continue valiantly to provide an excellent education to ten times more students than do the private colleges, which are prohibitively expensive for most people.
5) You don’t like the US Postal Service, or the Department of Motor Vehicles? Well, try to access Intel for information, for assistance, or to find one of their employees. Last time I tried (by phone) they threatened to arrest me. I could go on, and ask you how you like the services of the airlines, or the banks, or any other major corporation, whether you like talking to someone in India every time you need assistance. But you get my drift.
The bottom line is this: Bureaucracy, laziness, corruption and inefficiency are found everywhere. But on balance, the government is no more inefficient - and it may often be more efficient - than private companies.
Of course, if we keep cutting back funding for the public sector, there’ll be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it will begin to unravel. But the increasingly widespread belief that the public non-profit sector does things more badly and less efficiently than the private for-profit sector is hogwash. leave comment here
6 comments:
Tom,
It's so obvious to me that what you're saying is REAL. I've already said exactly the same things many times. It seems the ideologues on the Right are basing their opinions mostly on what is IMAGINED, or on outright misinformation they're getting from the likes of Faux News and Glenn Beck. They want to believe in the possibilities of unlimited personal freedom to get filthy rich.... but that's not what really happens. Only 1% are filthy rich in this country, and mostly by either exploiting other people or the environment or both. Since Reaganomics,we have a smaller middle class than we've ever had since the Gilded Age. Poverty continued to increase in the Bush years, when so many regulations were removed from corporations. The facts stand on their own as living proof that what you're saying in this piece is simply true. The problem is that the people in your gym seem to live in a dream world, and they listen to the media channels that lie to them to confirm their fantasies. Have you tried talking to these guys?
Hi Jan,
I don't want to get into a fist fight. I am a coward.
However, I did turn off Fox News when no one was looking. Unfortunately, when I cam back to the locker room after my workout, it was back on...
The profit motive and competition in private business insure the efficiency and effectiveness, and most importantly, openness to change of most business organizations. Other than the armed forces with their “up or out” philosophy that culls the organization of deadwood, there are no equivalent systemic mechanisms in government organizations to insure constant improvement. I’ve worked both in private and government organizations, and there is no question in my mind that the private organizations were better managed and had more motivated employees. In business, the motto is the customer comes first, but in government one can’t help but believe that the employee comes first. It’s anecdotal but I can’t recall going into my local supermarket and seeing them close a lane when there were more than three people in line, yet I’ve been at the post office several times when they’ve closed a clerical station with more than 10 people in line. I’m also convinced that Catholic schools do a better job educating lower class students than public schools, and MediCare is going broke and only works because doctors compensate for their under reimbursed MediCare payments through private pay patients.
You articulate the conventional wisdom well. I have occasionally felt that way myself. For example, when I got terrible service in formerly Communist Europe, I used to attribute this to the lack of incentives that comes with a socialized economy.
But it is precisely this conventional wisdom which I question. Anecdotes can support either side. I mention the National Parks, you mention Safeway.
You say that the military is the only efficient and “meritocractic” public service. What about Europe’s phenomenally efficient public transportation systems? What about American public radio and TV, providing the best and only commercial-free programs in this country?
You say that the profit motive insures effectiveness, and that business’ motto is “the customer comes first.” Sometimes, yes. But sometimes the motto is, “screw the customer.” If something isn’t profitable, business is not interested. And to maximize profit, costs have to be cut. That’s why crap - McDonald, Walmart, Kraft cheese, Reality TV - drives out quality. That’s why sparsely populated areas lack adequate medical services. It’s not cost-effective. Some things are simply not profitable, and yet they are necessary. Who will provide them, if we let profit determine everything?
But let me lay some heavier stuff on you:
I want to question the near universal belief that Adam Smith, the free market and Capitalism are the be-all and end-all of social, economic and political organization. Since the fall of Soviet Communism, American-style capitalism has been the only game in town. So it’s tempting to believe that we have reached the end of history - that our system is IT, from now and for ever. The Marxists used to believe that their system was the end of history. I believe that neither Marx nor Adam Smith are the end of history.
But I do accept one aspect of Marx (Hegel, actually) - the dialectic: History progresses to higher stages by synthesizing conflicting opposites. In other words, we will see the emergence of a THIRD WAY - a synthesis of the best that Capitalism has to offer with the best that Socialism has to offer. This is why I argue for SOCIAL democracy, not social-Darwinistic democracy; for a public-private partnership, in which neither the public nor the private sector dominates, a society in which individual rights remain sacrosanct, but where the collective welfare is an equally high priority. One can argue about where the best balance lies. American conservatives are now erring toward excessive individualism (as some socialists are too collectivistic).
Tom:
Doesn't this already take place in Europe? In some European countries where free market capitalism is the economic model, the collective welfare is as important as the individual rights of their citizens. In Germany, because of the economic downturn, workers get paid 90 percent of their salary even though they only work half time. It is cheaper for the government to cover their salary than to give unemployment benefits!
I actually like it when the government takes over. What I have learned thus far is that private corporations may not care enough to spread the wealth. Giving out big bonuses to people on Wall Street when there are so many people who can not find work just isn't fair
Gail
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