I agree that, as you point out, some government services are terrible for certain groups of people (poor and minorities), but I don't think that's an argument for privatization because at least we try to pretend we hold the government to those standards. Nobody pretends that we do or even can hold corporations to any sort of standards. Sometimes there's regulation to help with that, but it's fought kicking and screaming the whole way from the regulated industry and is followed by constant lobbying to repeal or relax said regulation.
We're still losing the distinction between privatizing more things and privatizing everything. I'm not aware of any federal-level US politicians who want to privatize, say, the military.
> but I don't think that's an argument for privatization because at least we try to pretend we hold the government to those standards.
Personally, I'm not interested in the standards we pretend to hold the government accountable to. I'm interested in actual outcomes. If privatizing some service can vastly improve outcomes, then great, if government can do it, then great. Sure, there's the high school social studies explanation that governments are accountable to the people while corporations aren't, but in reality I think that varies vastly from one sector of society to another. Sometimes government accountability to the voting population seems to work, but sometimes it fails miserably. Sometimes corporate accountability from the market seems to work, but sometimes it fails miserably.
That's because we've already privatized the profitable bits of the military in the Defense Industry. There's a phrase I've heard that goes something like "Privatize the profits and socialize the losses". Human life loss is extremely expensive, especially for a private industry, so it doesn't surprise me one bit we haven't privatized that aspect of it.
>Personally, I'm not interested in the standards we pretend to hold the government accountable to. I'm interested in actual outcomes. If privatizing some service can vastly improve outcomes, then great, if government can do it, then great.
I agree with this somewhat, but the reason I mentioned it is because corporate accountability is only effective at keeping leadership accountable to profits not to morals and profits don't care one bit about whats right or wrong. When a company does something wrong most people say "they are a company, only idiots expect them to do the right thing, they did this because it is profitable", at least with a government we haven't given up all hope that that organization can do the right thing because it is the right thing. The fallback on profits serves as an excuse to not even need to pretend to do the right thing that at least the government is held to. Though you are correct that the accountability there varies and is dependent on the population, but I still argue it's better than hoping profits will suddenly start doing the moral thing.
Absolutely, and political accountability is only effective at keeping elected officials accountable to elections, not to morals. And that's only the aspects of government that are even supposedly accountable to the electorate (a huge amount of government is not).
My point in all of this is that the government is far from perfect, but I prefer it to corporations when profit and citizen's interests diverge (healthcare is a prime example).
Look at the most expensive issues that affect America and you will find the government interfering at all stages of that industry, whether it is health care, higher education, lower education, and more. How bad has the VA been and for how long. Do you think a privately run system would not have been fined to death over that?
One reason to privatize some of these services is because we can hold them accountable where we get the brush off by government sectors. Corporations are fined all the time and made to adhere to regulations the government excepts itself from.
The simple fact is, we can find fault in every implementation however government is the least likely to be changed. It doesn't actually report to anyone while at the same time supposedly reporting to everyone.
Yes. We have a big problem with accountability in this country, especially when profits are involved. The issue is not private vs. public. The issue is we sacrifice everything in order to make a buck.
Is that argument coming from the poor and the minorities, or from you?
The quickest study I could find from a Google search:
https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/CI_Summer2...
I've done some volunteer work at the Cambridge, MA public schools where my kids attend. The vast majority of any achievement gap that exists is not under the control of the school for any practical purposes, IMO.
Identify children without such parents and provide them and their parents with additional support; it's expensive, but it's the obvious and likely only way to narrow the gap more than trivially, and probably better than many things that schools are fruitlessly expending resources on.
How many words of in-person adult conversation does the child hear each week?
How many minutes of 1-to-1 direct, focused time does the child receive from an adult each day?
How secure does the child feel? What is their nourishment like? What is their sleep situation like? Are they taught age-appropriate amounts of patience? Do they believe that if they are patient that they'll still get whatever it is they're waiting for?
I'm doubtful of a government program being able to close those gaps in the 0.25 to 5 year old range and I'm doubtful that those early developmental deficits (especially around nourishment, sleep, and security) can be fully closed during the schooling years.
(Disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not a child development expert nor even a dabbler in it.)
So, yes, you can call that a succinct argument against privatizing everything, but very few people actually advocate for that (and those that do generally have ideas about revolutionizing the entire social and/or economic system, not just "eh, just turn off all the public services overnight."). It's easy to pick and choose certain services where private businesses seem to provide better access, and other services where the government seems to provide better access.