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Much of the new important technologies are actually heavily publicly funded, rarely does the private sector produce totally new technologies without any public funding.
It's not a complete lie by any stretch of the imagination. Lots of money goes from the public to private sector in order to fund research projects et cetera which leads to the development of new technologies.
In your banal rhetoric the idea of cost effecivity is for someone else to pickup the bill then everyone pay for it anyway, but with less competition and on unequal platforms (High costs, worse service).
The permission to make those decisions is given by the public through elections, the public nominate who they want to make decisions on their behalf based on their manifestos. The public are willing to pay for it in a free market, the public sector is just acting as a player in that market.
If by primary needs you mean in order to survive, then you are right it isn't a primary need. However in that case, technologically advanced infrastructure is up there with Health case and Education in importance (But as we can see, you don't value education or health care for everyone anyway).
Your boring old idea of cost effective is that the private sector picks up the bill and then everyone ends up paying for it anyway (which can get quite costly per person in some instances). The problem with it is, for large scale industries and infrastructure the market becomes dominated by one or two players on a totally unequal footing to the rest (See BT and Virgin for internet providers in the UK).
The public sector can act as a player without distorting the market. The market isn't the be all and end all of economics anyway, it certainly hasn't proven itself to be perfect by any means.
The government isn't tyrannical. I agree that governments do seem to want to control too much but providing Education, Healthcase and Infrastructure is exactly where it should be using its power as the benefits of these are truely beneficial for everyone.
That is what I'm debating, yes I do believe that everybody should pay for the infrastructure including those who don't use 100mbit connections. Because even if they don't directly use a 100mbit connection they indirectly benefit from it.
Imagine you have two cities one in the south of a country and one in the north, if a train line is built between the two, the citizens of both cities benefit regardless if they ever use the train line to travel to the other city because the economic impact it has in increasing trade and communication speeds up development of all sorts of things.
Having a high speed information network is an important development for any nation, it benefits everyone, even those who do not wish to use it and therefore the public should fund and own the network.
In the same way, everyone benefits from public education, health, transport and infrastructure even those who never use such things. That is why these are the things heavily funded by the public and why things such as the retail aren't.
I've never stated that high speed internet infrastructure was the priority of government, just that it was a highly important service that should be built and owned by the public.
Maybe you should provide this list of yours so we can see what you consider most important?
I don't recall anyone claiming that money should be spent without expecting actual results. I guess I'll just put this down to your baseless belief that the state cannot possibly provide good results but the private sector always can.
Just so you know, Civil Servants don't really make decisions on things, they simply implement government policy.
I didn't say that the public should pay for anything and not expect to see results or value for money, that is your invention based on your belief that the government doesn't ever get results.
It is of high importance to the whole country, from any branch of government (Including health/education et cetera) to all sorts of different industries most important of all being the technology, retail and services industries which is where most people are employed in most "advanced" nations and it also benefits small businesses and the general population.
I agree that all the things you listed are important and require public investment but you can't just focus all the money on those things and neglect other things totally.
The implementation of government policy involves very minor decision making, since civil servants aren't elected they are not at liberty to make any big decisions. The government consists of Members of Parliament and Lords in the UK, then civil servants work on implementing government policy.
I believe that the public should expect both good results and value for money for all publicly financed projects/services.Your Ferris Wheel example doesn't work. If I don't use the Ferris Wheel then there is no benefit to me at all (directly or indirectly), but with a road for example I do benefit from it even if it is indirectly (Same goes for an educated, healthy population and for digital infrastructure).
The reason why you don't understand here is that I didn't even mention expectation of results or value for money in anything I have said (Until you decided I had said so) due to it being a rather obvious expectation to have.
I believe that the public should expect both good results and value for money for all publicly financed projects/services.
Your Ferris Wheel example doesn't work. If I don't use the Ferris Wheel then there is no benefit to me at all (directly or indirectly), but with a road for example I do benefit from it even if it is indirectly (Same goes for an educated, healthy population and for digital infrastructure).
You can't focus your entire public spending into just a select few sectors and not provide any investment in others. Your emotional appeal while touching doesn't work as an argument against mine since I am not saying that digital communications infrastructure should be financed to the detriment of those things.
So far you've failed to provide any arguments for why it would be beneficial for private companies to have ownership over digital communications infrastructure. Just that you don't want to have to pay for it.
It works by the public expecting good results and value for money from publicly financed projects, products and services. You're making the assumption that it is impossible for this to be true.
When I said "emotional appeal" I was clearly talking about your ramblings about hip surgery and theft/manslaughter and not alternative costs and prioritization.
The reason you can't just ignore things like digital communication infrastructure is because it is important for economic growth of the whole nation and of the majority of industries.
It isn't just a secondary need, it's an important technological step for the economy. A Ferris Wheel is just a secondary need as it has limited impact on the economy as it doesn't even act as a stimulus.
In the more remote places, it's impractical to provide the infrastructure so they are unlikely to be taxed anyway (Region based taxes) or a tax break could be provided for those who can clearly show it's of no benefit to them.
Scandinavia wouldn't have such a good reputation throughout the world for standard of living if it wasn't for public spending and it certainly wouldn't have such good infrastructure.
Please provide me with evidence that the wealth of Scandinavia (Not that wealth is the be all of quality standard of living) was generated before the 70s reforms as this claim just seems stupid to me when as far as I can tell the economies of Scandinavia have always grown from year to year.
Do you really expect a group of countries with relatively low populations to produce lots of giant companies or have economies that can rival countries with much bigger populations (Without the insane natural resources of some countries)?
Slow down the progress of what? Having quality public services which are the envy of the majority of the world? Having some of the best standards of living, education and life expectancy in the world?
The gap between the rich and poor will always increase unless you tax the rich only and not the poor.
As for Estonia, well we'll just have to wait and see but what exactly are these reforms they have made?
You've got all muddled up with what I'm actually arguing.
I'm not arguing against liberal economics, for unfair tax systems or waste of that money and I certainly don't want more state control.
I just believe that it is important that the public should own (Not even necessarily finance or run) certain services and infrastructure. This includes health care, education, energy, legal institutions and infrastructure (Both transport and communication).
I just felt saying that Scandinavia was essentially living off pre-1970 wealth was stupid as it implies that the area hasn't been making anymore wealth which isn't true.
I didn't mean to imply that the economies can't be successful just that you can't expect them to be as big in terms of scale with lots of big companies and the like.
While I don't know a lot about the other three, Irelands economy isn't as great as it seems. It's very reliant on foreign investment (Mostly from the USA and UK) and it was heavily exposed to the construction industry and as a result was the first EU country to enter recession. It's also benefitted greatly from exploiting the EU.
You say it's despite government policy, others will say it's due to reform and for all we know the economy could have collapsed without timely reform. I don't really have an opinion on that, I think both systems work and both have major problems.
Estonia financed its digital communications infrastructure (Which is very important to its economy) through public finance (Tiigrihüpe).
My position was and always has been that it is important for the public to own things such as health care, education and infrastructure and for them to be developed on the terms of the public. See the first post I made on the matter if you don't believe me.
You haven't provided examples of how to slice the pie, you gave a list of things that you believe are more important. I'm not arguing about what is a priority and I have no intention of commenting further on that matter since it doesn't affect my position.
Ireland is overly reliant on foreign investment and that without it, it would be a complete wreck. Obviously foreign investment is good, but if that's all you've got it only takes a small change and all that investment moves elsewhere.
The UK economy had a recession in the early 1990s and that was due to a government who increasingly privatised everything and now again, we're in a recession and the New Labour government has increasingly liberalised the markets and attempted to seek private finance et cetera.
So it's not so clear cut that the government, public funding and state control hold back the growth of the economy and standard of living.
It's not about people putting it before other needs, if you can't see the benefits of a modern advanced digital communications infrastructure to the economy then you're living in the past. I don't need a tractor, I've got a sickle!
Our wealth was generated before 70's reforms, and because of those reforms we only have few giant companies which we smooch on.So I brought up the point that due to the population size it was silly to think they could be as big as countries with bigger populations and have lots of giant companies.
Maybe in Finland the poor have no food or clothes but pretty much everyone in the UK does.
In fact if anything the poor are worse off often due to the amount of money they spend on things they don't need relative to their incomes.
If you want to see what your country would look like with public funding, just look at Africa or what your country was like a few hundred years ago.
If there was no public health care and it was all private there would be no difference in waiting in line, the only potential difference is that people can't afford to go to the doctor/hosipital to get care they need so they don't or people with more money get to skip the line.
That sounds like a great system that provides for everyone who needs it in a fair and equal manner, oh wait no it doesn't it is biased against the lucky people who are rich.
Public health care is certainly not perfect and is in need of refining but private health care is not the solution.
Before public education there was private education and no education. Those who aren't educated can't get good jobs, they can't get money and they can't get education for their kids and the circle continues.
Why is it bad that more people are educated?
Public education is certainly not perfect, but neither is private education.
It's why you have both systems.
The circle would still continue because the people who are in these situations can't afford private education, even if it was a lot cheaper than it is now (It's very expensive over here, £10k per term etc.). It doesn't help that these people have the most children either, but that is an other issue.
HAHA, ye, private schools/hospitals/etc are there to make everything more effective, not because big businesses wants a piece of the pie. Look at private hospitals only accepting the patients that will benefit them, and private schools making every plausible cutback and so on, not to mention segregating society by, just as private dentists/hospitals only accepting the cost effective students.
Another good example of how well the private sector runs the previously public sector is the privatizing of swedens electricity, prizes has skyrocketed and service has declined.
Right now they are talking on the radio about closing a school in a socially weak part of my town, this will cause lots of problems because that school is highly active in that part of the towns community and it is a result of public schools taking students and thus funding from that school.
Of course theres always exceptions but this is how Sweden looks to me right now, and I dont think the solution is giving more control to the ever benevolent Market.
About public education, wouldn't it make sense to discriminate applicants based on their academic performance, and not how much cash their mommies and daddies bring in?
You would end up with a much smarter educated section of society that way, rather than an elite oligarchy that's moreso based on bloodlines.
Yes, but if you're arguing for the privatization of education, then it becomes foremost about selling a product and making a profit. We have loads of private colleges in the US and pretty much no one can afford them without taking out several thousand dollars in loans. Since a college degree is in such high demand (almost deemed a necessity), it has become the #1 fastest inflating product here; even faster than real estate.
How does the education not provide any of this? All I said was that if schools discriminated based on academic performance, then the outcome would be superior. What kind of "specialized needs" are you talking about?
I never said anything about "richer" schools and I wouldn't even know how to quantify that. Private schools do not necessarily produce more well-learned students. A lot of it depends on the country and how those public/private schools are run.
The most elitist private secondary schools in the US could never compete with the public secondary schools in say, Sweden.
Are you sure about that? Oligarchy certainly has a massive influence in Westernized free market societies. The only difference is that it's legal here and 'hidden' over in Finland. What kind of government is that when it doesn't even try to control it? :/
Those schools are entirely public funded but privately run and they aren't allowed to charge extra fees. Basically the change was really about being able to choose which school you went to rather than them being privately run.
If it works exactly the same, then what's the problem with it being state funded since you get the same results?
In a fully privatised education system, unless it had massive government regulation would become totally polarised, with cheap, poor education schools for the poor (Or just no education whatsoever) and expensive, quality education schools for the rich.
The exact same thing can be achieved publicly, it just requires less state control and more freedom in choices made.
I don't know why you assume that education will be better in a private system, nothing really suggests that is the case. It all comes down to education methods and the children/parents themselves. A public system can equal a private system, it just comes down to how quickly it adapts instead of being dogmatic and old fashioned.
An overly controlling and bureaucratic system is of course not desrible. In the UK at least, they do have incentives to get the absolute the best results they can. Just because something is funded publicly doesn't mean it has to be how it is at the moment or in the manner you describe.
In the same way I am looking at the worst scenario of your propositions you are looking at them from the best scenario and what you said is still true for you.
Socialism can "fail" for all sorts of reasons, as can free market economics and protectionism and any other system you wish to talk about.