Yeesh. I don’t think you’ve read all my points. I basically agree with everything you wrote. I think the position is nonsensical. The ONLY reason I brought it up is that levdrakon thinks that using an example to illustrate a point is the same as using an example to illustrate no point. Romney was using his examples to support (cavalierly, yes) the notion that the private sector tends to be much more efficient than the federal government. (For the many reasons you listed.) Perfect examples or poor, that’s legitimate. Cherry-picking examples that would go to make the opposite point would be ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous would be bringing up and contrasting to things that are representative of no point. THAT has been my point.
So, we agree that private enterprises are more efficient than the federal government. Excellent. Where we disagree is the degree to which the pressure to make a profit and stay in business may drive efficiencies that would never materialize without the pressure there. If your position that is correct, then wouldn’t the government always be able to provide the same service for less money? But more and more, services are being farmed out to private enterprises with better results an a cost savings.
What? I think his point was that business is better when you eliminate people and make it more efficient and profitable while the government just wastes paper. Bad government!
So the private sector is good at something simple like ordering a sandwich. Bully for them. And he contrasted that with something completely different that the federal government does that is NOT simple. Do you begin to see the problem here? Perhaps these are not comparable things?
And I also made a simple point in post # 154. I took one example from the private sector (bank giving a mortgage) and one from the government (changing my address a the DMV). I held up the latter as what happens when the “completive” forces of the public sector come to bear on something as simple as a change of address. I contrasted this with an example from the private sector, which clearly cannot deliver a mortgage with the same efficiency as the DMV allows me to change my address.
This was meant to illustrate how Romney’s comparison was idiotic.
So, as others here will see (and you, no doubt will not), the comparison Romney made is ludicrous, laughable, and downright foolish.
It;s only ludicrous if you think that he offered it up as proof of the proposition that the private sector is more efficient than the federal government, due to the role competition plays in the first entity and the lack of it in the second. It’s only ludicrous if you think that a stump speech should be judged the same way a white paper should be.
You’re making the same mistake that levdrakon made. Look, if you believe in the general proposition that the private sector is more efficient than the federal government (something that should be taken as a given) then if you contrast an example of efficiency from the private sector with an apparent inefficiency from the government, what you’re doing is making sense. Sure, there are better comparisons and worse ones. That’s also a given. But your examples align with the larger point your trying to make.
The examples that you and levdrakon give or meaningless, as they do not go to making a larger point—unless you, or he, believe that the federal government is more efficient than the private sector. Otherwise you’re just comparing things for now reason: oreos and the moon are round, but ores are smaller. Gah!
And again, his example was not something offered up in a thesis or a white paper. It was a friggin’ stump speech. OMG, Romney tried to make his point while at the same time pandering to the locals. Unbelievable that a politician would do such a thing!!! It was not offered to prove the proposition, only to be an example that contrast the two entities. And on that level, it was perfectly valid.
You say this, then you reiterate the same point question moments later. If you agree with what I said, you wouldn’t continually ask the question expected a concrete answer. See below.
Again, asking this question without realizing you are comparing apples to car wrenches is silly. If a private company was tasked to take on all the roles government does, I don’t think it’s a given they would be more efficient.
This is just flatly untrue. Even in cases where typical government services are privatized, very few of them result in any cost-savings that are passed on to consumers or the government. Two recent examples of this are prisons and roads. Ask someone from Indiana about how they like paying the tolls on privatized roads. No need to rely on anecdotes either. A recent study from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, linked to here, states the following:
So no. Even when private companies don’t have to shoulder all the costs, they still don’t do things cheaper or more efficiently (in general terms) on a regular basis.
That said, please stop trying to compare government “efficiency” to that of the private sector. Whether you are merely asking the question, or accepting it as a given, it’s a fundamentally dishonest and nonsensical exercise, and you know that.
Did you travel the country 4 years ago running for president? Have you been to NJ several times in the last few years for political events? Where you employed as a governor, nominally in charge of bringing business to your state? Like I said before, I can imagine some/many people in Mass. have never heard of Wawa, but it was pretty much his job to know these things. Wawa is not some small company. They employ 16k+ people, and have 4.5 billion in revenue. They are about the 65th biggest private company in the US. They are roughly the same size as companies like Bloomberg and Kohler. If the CEO of a company that big calls the governor, the governor picks up the phone. For Romney to seemingly be unaware of the company is strange to say the least.
Yeah, I do. Did you miss the part where he held up the mortgage loan process as an example of private sector innefficiency? Half the documents (or more, depending on how you count) are not the requirement of the lender, they are a requirement the lender has to fulfill for the government. Whether they are “protective” or not - neccessary or not - that’s a different discussion. Clear title and an agreement to repay (the note) are all you’d really need to make such a loan, at least privately.
Of those laws, I could only find out that the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act was submitted by a Democrat and allegedly granted powers that could have mitigated the effect of subprime mortgages and that the Patriot Act had 210 Republicans and 145 Democrats voting for it (3 Republicans and 62 Democrats voting against).
Fair point. Perhaps I overstate things somewhat. I think it’s fair to say to say he was, at the very least, noticeably impressed by a system they have had in place for at least 10 years. I remember seeing stoned teenagers confounded by that system in the wee hours of the morning on a regular basis at least as far back as 2001. That alone tells me he is likely not too familiar with the store. Couple that with him mispronouncing the name repeatedly, and speaking about them like a lovestuck teenage girl, and I I think it’s a fair bet he has, at most, a passing acquaintance with the brand and the stores. That said, it may be going a bit too far to imply he has no awareness of their existence.