At 15:18 28/06/01 -0400, you wrote:
<<<<
(EW)
I appreciate your reply to my posting of a couple of days ago. However, I
don't think our argument is about the relative merits of private and public
schools, but rather about the respective general roles of the public and
private sectors.
>>>>
I agree.
<<<<
(EW)
Personally, I believe these roles are very different.
>>>>
I don't agree. There have been historical reasons why some roles are
considered to be private and others are more appropriate to be in the
public domain. More later (probably).
<<<<
(EW)
While self-interest plays a role in both, it is far more dominant in the
private sector, where fundamental concerns must be the profitability,
efficiency and the sustainability of an enterprise. I recognize that factors
such as efficiency are also important in the public sector, but I would
argue that the good of society as a whole, not the good of the individual,
must drive its institutions.
>>>>
This is, I believe, Bentham's philosophy -- the greatest good for the
greatest numbers. This drives out innovation and standardises everything.
It means that nothing new or experimental can ever be attempted. Ultimately
it produces totalitarianism.
<<<<
(EW)
The dominant concern must not be how to
maximize profits from given inputs, but how to maximize a public benefit
with given inputs.
>>>>
But, with the best will in the world, public service bureaucrats (and I am
not using this term pejoratively) have no real incentive to maximise public
benefits because their tenure, salary rises, promotions (or dismissals) do
not directly depend on efficiency (or profitability, when talking of the
private sector).
<<<<
(EW)
Given this, a public institution should not be expected to operate
competitively, as though in a market. However, if it is to operate
effectively, two things must be established. One is a thorough definition
of what the institution is expected to do. The other is continuous
evaluation of the extent to which it is doing what is expected of it.
>>>>
But we cannot do this with state bureaucracies! (I am assuming that you're
meaning "objective" continuous evaluation.) Continuous evaluation is hardly
ever carried out by a public service bureaucracy (one notable but limited
exception being the control of departmental spending by the Treasury in the
UK) and, if it happens, it is certainly never allowed to become public
knowledge.
To some extent this is now being challenged by university researchers --
thank goodness. For example, in the matter of Defence, the most
fundamental public service of all (within the context of the nation-state)
and hitherto the most obscurantist civil service department of them all, a
recent research report ("The Subsidy Trap") by the the highly reputable,
but independent, Oxford Rearch Group after years of study, attests that the
UK Defence Department could save at least 2.6 billion UK pounds a year out
of a total budget of 4.25 billion. The Defence Department has now joined
the ranks of the remaining government departments as having to be
researched and investigated by outside bodies because there is no other way
of really knowing what goes on, and how it is managed.
<<<<
(EW)
I would include health, the environment, education and a variety of social
services as properly belonging in the public sector,
>>>>
I suggest that you're exemplifying these not for functional reasons but
simply because these have been the areas into which the civil services of
the developed world have penetrated the most.
I don't want to sound like a conspiricist but the civil service (at least
in England) never came about because these roles were considered to be
essential for public control. The chief architect of the UK Civil Service,
Stafford Northcote, brought the civil service about for two reasons after a
lengthy campaign (from the 1850s). Firstly, to increase efficiency in those
departments such as the Treasury, Board of Trade and the like which were
nepotic, and secondly (and very consciously indeed) as a career opportunity
for the increasing number of brilliant (non-science) graduates who were
pouring out of Oxford and Cambridge Universities for whom there were no
careers other than the Church of England. This finally resulted in the
institution of competititive examinations in 1870. These exams were
carefully "tuned" to the curricula of Oxford and Cambridge, and it's only
been in the last ten years or so that graduates in other universities have
finally been recruited into the fast admin stream.
As soon as this brand new body (the term "civil servant" itself being new)
had absorbed all the disparate sinecure departments, then it set out to
expand its power base. Far from being "at the service" of civilians, the
*higher reaches* of the UK Civil Service (and in all other state
departments in other countries) are quite self-consciously aware that it
was a political power bloc in its own right. It then went more than
half-way to meet the aspirations of any political party that wanted to
extend control over this function or that -- education, insurance, health,
etc, etc.
The senior staff of the Civil Service Departments (Permanent Secretaries in
the UK) are, without doubt, very powerful people and wish to extend
centralised control as often as possible. They are not totally powerful, of
course, but there is little that politicians can do without the personal
support of Permanent Secretaries. (America is far healthier in this respect
in that new senior people are brought in with each change of President --
but the yearning for power, size and numbers in Federal Departments is much
the same as in the UK and elsewhere.) Senior civil servants also share
their power with the "democratic" power of elected politicians, and also
the power of major business firms (to which they often migrate after early
retirement).
I think it is naive to assume that any public service is anything other
than secondarily interested in carrying out functions for the public good.
This, plus the complexity of modern life, explains, as you write below, why
most governmental departments are now becoming increasingly incompetent.
<<<<
(EW)
and that provincial
governments in Canada, which operate such services, have drifted into a
state of muddle by attempting to intrude the market into them. They have
done so partly out of a confused political philosophy, but also because of
pressures on resources and a temptation to score political points by holding
the line on, or reducing, taxes.
>>>>
On the matter of taxation I was interested to read some years ago in
Fernand Braudel's massive work ("Civilization and Capitalism 15-18th
Century) of instance after instance where the rent, tithes and taxes
received by moghuls, princes, the church, etc, etc nearly always amounted
to about 50% of the peasant's/ordinary person's income. It was when this
rose to more than 50% that control started to break down in one
civilization after another. This is pretty well exactly what is happening
now. It is not just that people don't like taxation. But it takes on the
aspect of tyranny when it starts to exceed 50%. That's why high taxation
countries (e.g. Sweden, France) are starting to backtrack as rapidly as
they can.
<<<<
(EW)
There is no question but that our health, education and social institutions
can operate more efficiently than they have in the past. Nor is there any
question that they need to be reorganized from time to time to make them
more effective and responsive to emergent public needs. However, to move
them into the market (or the market into them) suggests a failure to
understand the difference between public and private interests.
>>>>
Once again I think you're trying to demarcate between public and private in
an artificial way. The split -- which we now seem to take for granted --
has been a case of historical opportunism, not because of intrinsic
functionality.
<<<<
(EW)
Attempts to hold the line on taxes are understandable, as are cuts in public
services which have become redundant. People are working harder and feel
they are being rewarded less. Productivity and income are not rising as
rapidly as they once were. Nevertheless, there are some things that simply
must be afforded if society is to remain viable. Quality education, health
and social services are foremost among them. Cuts in such functions can
engender problems ranging from the difficult to the disastrous. In Canada,
we are currently experiencing teacher burnout and declining morale in our
education system, and labour turmoil and long waits for treatment in our
health system. We have had recent examples of how neglect of the
environment because of fiscal restraint and the devolution of
responsibilities from senior to junior governments has impinged on public
health. Because provincial governments have failed in their
responsibilities, many communities now have drinking water of questionable
quality. Walkerton, Ontario, is a tragic example. A number of people in
that community have died because of contaminated water and many others
became ill.
So, Keith, you can see where I'm coming from. It's much broader than
education, and has a lot to do with allowing the various things we need to
access in our lives their proper place. Even when the questions are
enormously complex, politicians favour simple answers and, rather sadly, so
does the voting public. For the past several years, simple answers have
been applied in Ontario under what the government termed a "common sense
revolution" which has not, it would now seem, made much sense at all. The
end result is that many of our public institutions are in danger of coming
apart at the seams.
>>>>
Yes, I can see where you're coming from, Ed, but I think you're wrong. I
think it a counsel of despair to suggest that there's any prospect of
internal reform of civil service bureaucracies. To quote the Bible, you
can't pour new wine into old wineskins. There's nothing really objective
for civil service "efficiency" to be measured against. That's why they're
coming apart at the seams. And the quicker they do so, the better, in my
view, because this produces gaps into which new initiatives can be seeded
and hopefully flourish.
In the last four years, the Blair (New Labour) Government tried to bring
about reform in public transport, education and health. They failed
dismally. They were only returned to power because they pledged to try
again in the next four or five years. But they know it's impossible.
(They're sincere in wishing to do so -- I'll give them that -- but they've
no idea how.) So that's why, despite fierce resistance from trade unions
and left-wing Labour MPs, the government are still going ahead with all
sorts of private initiative experiments in health and education (and also
refusing to re-nationalise the railways).
So where I'm coming from is somewhere around the 1820-40s (when my present
house was built, actually!) before the Northcote's power putsch. As
putsches are, by definition, failures, Northcote's has actually been a
failed one, it's true, but the failure has been at a cost of over a century
of floundering about concerning real democratic control (and efficiency) of
so many of our social services.
Keith Hudson
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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