Editorial: When an insecure government borrows credibility from business leaders, a lot can go wrong
  • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
    3·
    15 days ago

    Lots of business logic can contradict the business logic that is applied to government. Often because the people applying it aren’t concerned about efficiency at all, they just want to steal or disempower the government.

    Often the government is encouraged to outsource or privatise its services. The most efficient businesses don’t do this. They are vertically integrated, Starbucks makes their own cups and this leads to more profit as they don’t lose out on paying for the cup manufacturers profit. Therefore the government should look to own most of their services not outsource or privatise them.

    Highly efficient business use extra cash to invest in the business, to make more money in the following years. They don’t cut and stripe services, unless the business is failing. Therefore the government should use its cash to make its services more effective in the longer term.

    Government can be capable and competent. It’ll never be the case when we elect people that think government is inherently inefficient. Ideally everyone gets one vote and so we all have an equal say in how the government handles things. When the government is weak each individuals power is weaker and wealth becomes a bigger factor in how our society is run. I think this is the prime motivation of neoliberals, less liberty for the individual (working people) more for liberty for money.

    A good contrast to the approach of delivering government services in the UK is Scotland. Water supply in Scotland is by a company that the Scottish Goverment owns. People in Scotland use more water per person than the rest of the UK, the quality of the water supply is the highest in the UK and the price is the lowest. At the end of the year the Scottish goverment often gets money back from Scottish Water. In England the water companies require heavy subsidies, pollute water ways at a higher rate, limit water due to droughts (their is enough water just the amount of leaks causes this to be lost) and charge based on metered consumption. Privatisation of water doesn’t work for most people. Now in England the water companies have people over the barrel. To such an extent they can extort the tax payer for their poor performance. Business logic wouldn’t tolerate this. They would not source water from such businesses and would become their own supplier if they had the capital to do so.