If you are talking about the U.S. government, you are almost surely wrong. There is a law (NEPA) which requires the government to follow the environmental laws. When they don’t, the Sierra Club or NRDC is more than happy to sue them.
Sam’s not an American citizen.
I can speak from my own personal field of expertise - prisons. Back in the eighties and nineties there was a wave of corporations looking to run private prisons and contract with various states for their business. Their premise was that government must be inefficient so all they would have to do is shake off these inefficiencies, provide the same services for substantially less cost, and take a share of the difference in profits.
Private corrections is currently thriving about as well as the zeppelin business. There are still private prison corporations but they’re an endangered species.
What these companies all found out was that they couldn’t compete with the existing government run prisons. We were apparently already running them as efficiently as possible. Private companies couldn’t find any areas where they could make any significant savings. And unlike government run services they had the extra expense of having to pay dividends to their investors. Some tried to claim they were able to compete by playing apples and oranges - showing that their cost per inmate was lower than the government’s. This was superficially true but it ignored the same USPS/UPS dichotomy - private corporations were only contracting for minimum and medium security prisons which are cheaper to run that maxes. The states were costing more per inmate overall but if you compared the figures for the same classes of inmates the state was costing the same or less.
Stop right there. “Made no demands on performance.” Does the military makes demands on performance? It seems to me that it does. It seems to me that demands on performance can be made regardless of whether making money is the primary activity of the agency. Does the CIA make demands on performance? How about the FBI? The National Park Service? Homeland Security? Hmmm … they all do. Interesting.
I reject the premise of your argument, because this statement, “make no demands on performance,” is something you just made up to make your argument work. Real government agencies absolutely can and do make demands on performance. Demands on performance can be built into the structure of the agency. More importantly, we have this funny thing called a democratically-elected representative government which has oversight over all government agencies.
The funny thing is, this is a democracy. If a government agency is failing miserably, it turns out elected representatives can get rid of it, or radically alter it. So, this premise is also false, because it makes it sound like any wasteful agency will just keep on running and wasting money forever, with no possible correction. That is not so. Did you miss welfare reform in the 1990s?
Look, if the Democrats succeed at passing UHC, what’s to stop the GOP from getting rid of it, next time it has a majority?
These questions are all ridiculous, because you set up an implausible scenario.
Depends on the government, how corrupt it is. The US isn’t one of the most corrupt governments in the world but it’s well down the list of least corrupt wealthy naations. I think Finland is generally ranked the least corrupt government and they do a great job for the tax dollar when you compare them to America. Government at its least corrupt can do a hell of a job. And after the last eight years I have to say it really helps if your country is not so wealthy and drunk with its own power and hubris that it can afford to elect an idiot to run it.
The DMV here in Nevada is excellent. I’ve never been in the building for an hour to get done what I needed, without an appointment; just walked in, and less than an hour later, walked out. Sometimes I’ve been done in less than 5 minutes.
mmmhmmm- oh there’s more 
Perhaps your standards are too high. They don’t rush out to your car with a silver platter to take your mail for you, and they wont lick the stamp. Ohhhh poor baby.
You mean like the FedEx guy who showed up here 2 weeks ago with a package for me? Or the UPS guy last month? Or the cabbie who wears a tank top? How about the DHL guy in a Metallica shirt that dropped off my errant luggage in the spring?
How is SS a nightmare? They get the checks out on time, and no check bounces. How is that “a nightmare”?
[quote[Governmental workers are way overpaid when compared to a free market.[/quote]
Cite that all governmental workers are way overpaid? You do have a cite for this, right?
[quote]
I will say our Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is the only place I’ve ever run into pleasent people. Oh sure there are a lot of rude bus drivers, but I have had many nice bus drivers too.
Elected people serve not a company but getting elected again. They depend on votes and they get these votes by dishing out jobs to people who will vote for them.
[quote]
cite? I’ve never been given a job in exchange for my vote. Just how many jobs do you think a US Senator or Rep can give out, to ensure that he/she will be re-elected?
No. I can’t. You haven’t shown it, and I don’t see it.
Cite for your 15% figure? Provide enough cites that we can all agree that it happens “oftentimes”, as you claim.
BTW, what’s 15% of 50,000? Do you really think your average small town politico has 7500 jobs that they can just give away? Asinine.
Don’t suppose you have a cite for that ABC News article? Or to the anthrax dismissals?
[yawn][/yawn]
bolding mine, cause I need to ask: what fucking country do you live in? No checks to government? WTF did we fight that war for a couple hundred years ago? What have all our wars been about, if not our determination to see to our our determination? I suggest you go read the Constitution, specifically the first amendment.
Let’s see. USPS Click-and Ship is great. Much better rates than UPS and FedEx, gets there sooner, and has an easy to use web interface that is much better than UPS. Used it daily for several years.
Oregon DMV was easy-peasy. Got my new DL while I waited.
When I used to get SS as a student (dad died) the checks came every month on time.
Passport was a cinch to re-new.
Compare that with trying to get a straight answer out of Dell, Microsoft, or other companies with call centers in India. My Blue Cross Blue Shield billing has been a nightmare. Oil change places try and rip me off. SDMB is slow and goes down a lot.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had such bad experience with the government, but I don’t think it’s as widespread as you think. My local post office is awesome, they all seem to know my name even though I only go there every couple of weeks. The wait at the local courthouse (for car registration) was about 10 minutes even when I went on the last weekday of the month. I’ve had much worse experience dealing with big corporations, especially cell phone and cable TV companies.
I don’t recall. They must be less common than ads that offer to help us deal with credit card companies.
The ads for local elections all seem to emphasize better government service. That must be a pretty strong pressure on local elected officials to make government services work well. And also, those TV lawyers you mentioned are also a form of a check on the government. And obviously they have an incentive to create favorable conditions for local businesses, lest they leave the area (or not come to the area in the first place).
They raised the postage rates 3 times in the last 3 years, adding up to a 12.8% increase. Furthermore, they announced they are considering reducing deliveries from 6 to 5 times a week, and now they’re closing down 700 post offices to cut costs. Presumably these measured would reduce the number of postal workers, or the number of hours for each worker. That doesn’t sound like the decision of a selfish and inefficient organization who can to dip into tax funds whenever they want, and don’t need to worry about efficiency.
They’d become package Nazis. “You live in Podunkville? No package for you!” And if they were made to deliver to everyone, and didn’t make as much money, it would be all the fault of government regulation, since if people wanted to get Christmas presents they could just move to the city.
You see it’s all the externalities, which must have something to do with passing wind if you ask me.
I’m not sure, but I’d wouldn’t be surprised if Sam was correct during the Bush years. All that environmental stuff is socialist nonsense, after all.
Before the efficiency of a government can be evaluated, its real purpose must be known. Historically the real purpose of government has been to allow the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor while providing the poor with some rationale/incentive for not violently rebelling.
Totalitarian governments obviously have it easiest in this regard and are therefore the most efficient at fulfilling their real purpose.
A country such as ours which was built on the premises that only landed white males could vote and that all men deserve equal protection under the law required special handling of the poor. In our early days, with a huge continent ripe for exploitation, Horatio Alger and the Protestant Ethic was an easy sell, and quite a few made themselves rich, always at the expense of our red brothers. And the really rich got richer.
As things got more crowded, PE became a harder sell. Improved communication made it pretty clear the game was rigged and there was scattered orgnanized revolt. At first we used goon squads and the National Guard to keep folks happy but that could not go on forever.
What to do?
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Establish a legal social equality among the poor. We eventually even allowed women to vote and extended to all the right to be a consumer among consumers.
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Sponor and control two Parties, one supporting the poor, the other supporting the wealthy. Let 'em shout at each other in favor of their nominal constituencies and confuse the public mind by taking public what should remain private issues. When the poor are at each others throats, that’s when our government is really efficient.
The apparent inefficiencies of our government in managing the public trust are merely part of that old trick known as the Left Hand Giveth While the Right Taketh Away. Talk much, do nothing.
This does nothing to keep the discussion civil.
[ /Modding ]
I don’t follow your maths here: That’s a disbursement rate of 76%, so the overhead is 24%, not 0.8%.
You’re assuming that they want to pay out everything they take in and not bank it against future costs. We’re missing those figures, but I wouldn’t assume that all 24% is overhead.
It is corruption and self-interest that makes any government “inefficient” in returning good value to the tax base.
Yet that is the historical record of government with no foreseeable change coming up. The only reason that is is because we allow our representatives to trash transparency and inevitable political embarrassment to both parties behind sacred national security.
The more transparent a government is, the more efficient it is.
Of course it does happen sometimes due to political games and what not, but believe me, there are a whole raft of environmental organizations whose pretty much sole purpose is to sue the government when it violates NEPA, the CAA, the CWA, the Endangered Species Act, etc.
Edit: If you want to be technical, the U.S. Military is exempt from some of these laws, but I don’t think that’s really what anyone was talking about.
See here. 75% was paid out, and 24% was put into the trust fund.
Here’s one example of a suit based on the Bush administration not following a law. I seem to remember about one lawsuit a week in the Times. However, they take a long time to resolve, and are expensive and iffy. I doubt very much the prospect - no certainty - of a suit stopped the anti-environmentalists in the Bush admin one little bit.