I would like to remind everyone that we DO NOT live in a FREE marketplace. Not when government is bailing out and offering huge perks and tax benefits to large corporations or when elected officials in the legislature and elsewhere are on the payroll of many of these corporations, by receiving campaign funds for their campaigns and the like.
I am for the free market, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking that the original idea of a free marketplace as espoused by John Stuart Mills and others is in play in our nation. When people like Kenneth Lay can bilk the pensions and retirement funds of his own employees with little said by the current administration in Washington about it, then let us not delude ourselves that somehow big money corporations and the government have any separation. If privatization is the way to go, than it should be driven purely by the ability of the private entity to provide a service and make a profit to take care of the cost of doing business. If this were so, there shouldn't need to be any lobbyists at the State Capitol or the in Washington. I think that the time has come to have a constitutional amendment that calls for the separation of business and state. Perhaps then we could attract the sort of individuals that run for office that feel called to be a public servant and not a fat cat that is just moving up the ladder for prestige and power. Perhaps then there would be no need to call for campaign finance reform, it would happen constitutionally. I think if the state believed it was important enough to delineate between church and state at the time the constitution was penned, then it appears to me that perhaps the church back in that day had too much power, as does big business now. I am an Independent who believes that we cannot always solve problems by just throwing more public money at it. I DO however believe that corporations need to cover their own expenses bills and costs of doing business. I would agree that privatization is good in many areas, but not when the constitutions of the state and country call for government to be responsible for certain things. Then government is charged constitutionally with doing them. Education is one of them. So, if someone wishes to send their child to a school that is non-public, that is certainly their perogative, however I think that those that approve of vouchers are endangering the private school system by watering down the values and discipline they are hoping to find there. Remember when government pays for such things, government then has the right to require what they wish from the entity that they are subsidizing. I am happy to say that both of my children are products of the Saint Paul Public School system and are doing well and thriving. I could not have afforded them to go to private school, nor did I wish them to be sequestered away in a setting that was not a microcosm of the REAL world. They have been served well by it and have come to respect the faiths and beliefs of others, while still holding on to the values they have themselves. They are more prepared for the world marketplace as a result. Pamela Ellison Como Park Saint Paul From: "Dennis Tester" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 3:26 PM Subject: [StPaul] Mea Culpa (I think) > Gee, I didn't mean to raise so many hackles. As a new person here, I admit that I may be out of line in that I don't have a history of the types of conversations that take place here. If my comments were out of the bounds for this forum, please forgive me, and I won't post such radical comments again. > > However, since several people did choose to reply to my comments and asked that I reply to theirs, I will. For all the examples people gave me of the benefits of public institutions, I could have given arguments why the private version was preferable, but in the interest of bandwidth, I'll try to respond to the spirit of the disagreement, rather than the myriad of specific examples that would only be redundant to this discussion. > > In the aggregate, most of the disagreement with my comments on privatization boiled down to, of course, money. Should the government have the right to spend someone's money to benefit someone else. Most people believe that the role of government spending is to do those things collectively that we can't do individually. When that means the common defense, roads (the interstate highway system was really a national defense initiative) or anything else provided for in the constitution, I'm all for it. But we must be willing to admit and recognize that all of the other public benefits provided for by the taxpayers that are not provided for in the Constitution (libraries, transportation, national parks, are done so only out of the kindness of the taxpayers' hearts. They are gifts from the taxpayers. So let's not confuse being nice with being obligated. We live in the most generous country in the history of the world. But a gift is not a "right," and I rankle when people say > that a certain gift is not generous enough. > > On to the evils of privatization. I remember when the City of St. Paul collected trash and operated the city dump. In fact, my uncles were employed doing those things. But the city council realized that it's not the role of the city to provide jobs, but to provide needed public services as efficiently as possible. They determined that the most efficient and cost-effective way to collect and dispose of trash was to let each taxpayer contract with their own trash collection agent. It was not, they determined, the role of government to collect trash. Other than my uncles, I never hear anyone lamenting the loss of city's brillant trash collection operation. If it's not the role of government to collect trash (a public health issue), why is it the role of government to operate golf courses? > > All that said then, what the respondants to my comments are really saying is that we should continue to be "nice" and continue to provide these services, even though we admit that the public version of these services is generally the substandard version (I remember my wife and I, although improverished, choosing to live in an off-base apartment instead of Navy housing). So I suppose there's value in having the U.S. Post Office and UPS together in the marketplace. It's instructive for young economics students to think about why they prefer to eat off campus instead of in the school cafeteria, or analyze why they'd rather have their own car instead of taking the bus, or to have accounting students calculate the million dollar difference between individual savings accounts versus social security benefits. > > Remember, the real power of the free market is not the profit motive, but consumer choice. Privatization is not your enemy. Lack of choice is. > > ;-) > > Dennis Tester > Mac-Groveland > St. Paul > _____________________________________________ > To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > _____________________________________________ > NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: > http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul > > Archive Address: > http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/ > _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
