12-31-2016, 07:07 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-31-2016, 07:07 PM by Warren Dew.)
(12-31-2016, 12:06 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:(12-31-2016, 04:11 AM)Galen Wrote:(12-30-2016, 05:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(12-30-2016, 02:32 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: The ideological support for privatization rests largely on the specious premise that the "market knows best." But we now have much evidence to the contrary when it comes to introducing a profit motive into the delivery of common goods: education, utilities, national defense, and so on. Think of the bankruptcies of not a few for-profit charter schools and universities; think of the tainted water (lead)scandal in Flint, MI.
That bad private schools go bankrupt rather than sticking around and miseducating more kids as bad public schools do is a good thing, not a bad thing, and illustrates exactly why education is an area where the market would work better. The Flint water supply was also publicly run; privatization couldn't have made things worse there, and might have made them better.
This is the primary advantage of the market over the state. What the state tends to do is indefinitely subsidize failure.
What examples of subsidizing "failures" can you cite? Do we presume that you're referring only to government expenditures on the common welfare? Let me cite a few in the private sphere that could clearly be labeled failures. How about we start with the most obvious one: the bailouts that followed the financial crash of 2008--Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, GM, private enterprises all, which according to the strict dictates of the "free market" should have been allowed to fail.
Your examples are in fact also examples of the government subsidizing failure, just as much as failing inner city public schools are. The failing corporations should absolutely have been allowed to fail rather than bailed out. The bailouts were an egregious example of undermining of the free market, and did incalculable damage to the economy as a result.