On 27-Jun-06, at 4:45 PM, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
Counter evidence: The US and Canadian health systems.
The US health system is still largely private. The socialized Canadian
health system SUCKS. People wait years for critical surgeries and
transplants. They give labor-stopping injections to pregnant women
so they can keep them waiting while the clogged system tries to
deal, ineffectively, with the demand for health services. Many people
die waiting in line for medical services in Canada.
Mass transit in
Mumbai against private transport in Delhi, or Bangalore.
Mass transit is only a state monopoly (in some countries, not all)
because
the state outlaws private competitors or controls them out of existence.
The public
Internet (Remember X.25?).
The Internet is mostly privately run and operated. True the protocols
were originally designed with DARPA funding, but they were still
envisioned, designed and implemented by private parties, not by the
state. The Internet's development could just as well have been privately
funded. The first WAN was created with almost zero funding by a single
individual.
See http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml for the details.
Pollution control (yay! for the gas guzzler
selling automobile industry.).
Which was subsidized in huge part by the state's highway-building, and
the active co-operation of the state in crushing the much more fuel-
efficient
tram industry that preceded it.
None of your counter-examples really hold up under detailed scrutiny.
Whenever you need to sink in really large volumes of money with risky,
very long terms returns, a government works better than private
enterprise (which tends to inflate the value of short term results
over
long term gains).
Private enterprise has produced all the goods you use every day, from
the computer you use to type your messages, to the satellites that carry
your message over the 'Net, to the food you eat, the clothes you wear
and
the medicines you depend on for protection against disease. Private
enterprise is more than adequate to deal with all real needs people are
willing to pay to have satisfied.
Governments specialize in throwing huge sums of money down the
toilet to pursue such damaging (and unachievable) goals as the war
against
(some) drugs, or posturing and overly expensive ventures of dubious
worth,
such as NASA space programs.
#!
