With trash collection and other government tasks that get privatised, the contract is in most cases granted to one, and sometimes two contractors. That's far form a free market where you as a consumer can choose your trash collector. That is your government picking a winner who is handed a monopoly that of course will be abused when the government, as a representative of you as consumer has drawn up a bad contract or isn't bothered to hold the contractor to the contract.
When government picks winners and losers, corruption is just one step away. In such a case the government shouldn't have privatised the job.
This has nothing to do with socialism being better in such matters. It's just common sense that mono/duo-polies are bad when uncontroled.
In free markets one is also free to lobby and make 'friends'. Therefore the most important thing is to keep things honest and accountable. And that is far fetched in today's politics. Ursula-Pfizer gate is a recent example of how things shouldn't be done, but has become normalised in high places.
Saying that free markets includes subversion of free markets is like saying “starting” your “marathon race” at 50 yards shy of the finish line, & then dashing that “win” into prerogative “law” that enforces the guarantee that you’ll keep “winning” & will even be able to hand all that “victory” dynasty-down is … what?
Competition isn’t a free-for-all. But the chaos of color o’ law fraud/force is.
I think it closer to say that what history teaches is that humanimal in the main is incapable of freedom ... but man-oh-man-o'-war that herd sure talks a lot of good sounding game.
I lived in the suburbs of a large city before, there the city had decided that only one provider can pick up the trash (a large multinational of course).
Service was very bad, price was very high, schedule and bin size was mandated by the city and trash bins looked nearly as bad as in Alex's photos.
Moved to the countryside - can choose from multiple providers, can decide the schedule and bin size myself and service is great and four times cheaper than in the suburbs.
Sadly now the county has decided in their infinite wisdom (after someone was paid a large sum of money, i suspect) that county should decide only one provider who can operate in the county beginning in 2026 and likely the same shit will happen that did in the suburbs when there is only one provider and you can not change and not complain, service will degrade and prices will go up.
To my great misfortune, i live something like 50 meters inside the county limits. Well maybe i can vote harder in the next county elections and it will be fixed (yeah right)
Perhaps all these services need to be transparent in their negotiations, contracts, accounting and the government’s job should be to hold them accountable. Problem is we know someone is gonna get paid off and not properly report because opportunists will always look for a grift and humanity is opportunistic by nature, for the good and the bad. When ethics don’t manage opportunism, we have a problem.
There was a reason to why people of Thatcher's native town of Grantham were refusing to erect a monument to Thatcher. It was finally imposed on the locals in 2022.
"Some locals in Grantham question the expenditure on the Thatcher statue, arguing that public funds could be better utilized for other community needs like local shops or services.
Initially, plans for a lavish unveiling ceremony with taxpayer funding were proposed but were later scrapped due to public outcry. ... Thousands of Brits were planning to egg Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s statue at its unveiling in her hometown. "
More: "She wounded the unions, ushered in a new era of toxic Toryism, laid waste to the country's manufacturing base, introduced privatisation and deregulated the City, leading to the economic and banking catastrophes of recent times."
And this all-explaining specialty: "The Thatcher's government deregulation of the financial services industry has been linked to significant increases in banking sector compensation over time."
George Monbiot and Chris Hedges discuss the book “Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism,” written by Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson.
Together, they tackle the truths of neoliberalism, including its origins in colonialism and how it became the dominant ideology in the most powerful countries in the world.
OK, but please put her in historical context. She righted a very sick Britain with rubbish in the streets in 1979. She took us a step forward. The problem we have isn’t her’s, it’s the failure of her successors to continue to innovate.
Order itself does not arise from chaos and if no one controls chaos there will always be chaos. And Thatcher simply established the appearance of order, which in fact did not exist because state control was weakened.
This suggests that we need to start teaching people to do simple cost-benefit analyses (as you're actually doing here) as a tool for thinking, understanding, and discussing. Who gets the benefit or value, and who bears the costs or penalties? Simple, straightforward, and removes the ideology. It's surprising how often you don't even need to gather any data, a simple thought exercise with a piece of paper will do. The conclusion that invariably happens: why are we paying and sacrificing to make someone else rich?
Classical economics was predominantly focused on eliminating rent. In order to eliminate something, one first has to acknowledge its existence. Rent is the return to land, just as wages are the return to labor and profits are the return to capital (physical capital, not money, which is basically identical to land). The classical economists all understood there were 3 factors of production, if not 4. Land, labor & capital, or if 4, then land, labor, physical capital and money capital. Neoclassical economics reduces it to just 2: labor & capital. Why? Because most profit by large capitalists is actually rent, not profit. Today, the globe is completely dominated by monopolies and cartels. Capitalist nations are vehicles for them. Socialist countries try to represent the people and business, but are struggling simply because the laissez faire countries, mainly the US and England, have made all attempts to combat rent seeking impossible. The US and England are rentiers, not capitalists. China is where entrepreneurs have a much better chance of success. Money is not capital. It's the equivalent to land in that it costs nothing to produce, whereas labor and physical capital are the products of hard work. Capitalism as is practiced by the US is an insult to all people who have morals. The US is the modern equivalent of 19th century laissez faire British Empire.
Like demoRats or RepubliCretans, we are given the choice of socialcommunalism or Crapitalism, when we get neither anyway no matter who we vote, John McCoCaine still always wins
Wow, I am usually impressed with your ideas Alex, but this time you failed to delve into the crucial depths. OTOH you are very astute in pointing out some of the actual problems of the RESULTS of incompetent Governments and capitalists getting rewarded in an often monopoly or duopoly situation. (If I give one company the contract to collect garbage, I am creating a Monopoly, something that has long been recognized to not be advantageous for people at the mercy of the monopoly).
But the problems you point out ARE problems.
They are problems with solutions, which you don't point out, probably because you are focused on the Capitalism : Socialism dicotomy, not identifying solutions for each or recognizing that the solutions for BOTH are the same conceptually.
As a behavioural psychologist, I see that you are pointing out incorrect contingencies for the goals in your situations. The Government that set up those programs that private contractors failed to carry out "correctly" (in your view) caused incentivized the private contractors to do the negative things you cite, because of the Government specifications (or lack thereof), given the goals and restrictions (if any) in the contract, whether for garbage or child care.
People in Government and Private Industry behave according to the consequences of their actions. Do a "good job" in either and you get rewarded. If you do not get rewarded, the frequency of doing "good jobs", declines. What serves as rewards in Govt. and Private Enterprise differs, though.
Cut costs and reduce personnel in Government and you punished with a loss of power (in business you will increase profit), which is a prime reward for civil servants. Prime rewards in Government, which incentivizes inefficiency, are getting more subordinates in your department, more and better office space, and a larger budget that must be spent (regardless of additional benefit to taxpayers), lest you lose power by seeing your budget cut in the next fiscal year. An organization that rewards its human members this way will grow bloated and increase the busy work, producing more and more documents and programs to supervise.
Likewise in private profit-making enterprise, the actions employees take tends to be those that lead to getting more rewards. The Govt. contract for the garbage does not have to allow a change to a central trash depository. In fact, the Govt. contract can specify the exact ways the collection system must be run before it is put out for bid, with no bid being accepted that is not below the cost for the government employees do the work themselves.
I note you only specified service businesses, rather than businesses that produce "things", the preponderance of the former is one of the reason that Western Nations are in decline. This is also due to the contingencies of reinforcement. The financialization of Western economies eliminates many problems for the capitalists who seek to profit. Compare being a securities trader versus a farmer (and I have been both, among other things). I can start with less capital as a trader, I don't have to rely on the weather and I can make money every day as a trader, unlike the farmer. My capital cost for equipment is so cheap, I can have spares lying around so a breakdown is a minor annoyance as a trader, and I have no product that spoils, needs to be insured, transported, inspected, packed or rushed to market. Life is harder for the farmer and at the end, the crop may fail.
I could go on... but the bottom line is that the reinforcement (and punishment) contingencies are what encourage (or discourage) specific behaviours. Government (socialist by design) and Profit- Seeking Business can be controlled (improved or degraded vis a vis a value judgment) by changing the contingencies (and making them explicit in a clear contract).
Alex, it's largely because we DON'T have Adam Smith style free market capitalism. HEAR ME OUT! I'm not an Austrian, lol.
Capitalism can go in two ways: worker-ownership, or minority-ownership. Both are based upon private ownership; ie, making someone own the capital, ie they are capitalists, ie Capitalism.
You have accurately pointed out the problems that occur when minority-capitalism is imposed.
But consider what would have happened if it was privatised to the workforce instead?
The workers live in those communities, and want good trash collection themselves. So they wouldn't have pulled all those fast ones. Co-ops tend to be good neighbours.
But in actual fact Socialism and Capitalism go hand in hand. Backbone services (Health, Education, environment maintenance, public transport etc etc) are giving a service that is vital to the public - the public want the service, not someone getting rich off their need. Social welfare spending becomes more circular when the recipients spending goes back into the system after circulating for a while.
The two systems, of socialism and worker-ownership go hand in hand.
The outlier is "Minority Ownership". This is where things start to go pear shaped.
And no, I do not believe it is "Accidental" that all the education and extant books for the past 150 years have heavily promoted the notion that "Capitalism" just means minority ownership.
If you read Adam Smith carefully, you soon realise that all his equation regarding 'free markets' are implicit upon being a worker-ownership model economy.
How to you get to "Producers and consumers approach infinity? By making everyone a producer, a capitalist. Someone who can take their capital from their current company, and transfer it as seed capital to another freely.
We have been had - and I don't just mean the now bankrupt and desperately poor British.
Love it. That's a form of anarchism, no? The form is where you minimise central government and people organise themselves locally to deliver what is required locally. My kind of government.
Both right wing and left wing governments require gigantic amounts of money and massive bureaucracies (also known as politicians seeking power, money and influence) and it is that which seems to get in the way and create so many of our problems.
Unless miraculously we had politicians who actually cared about their people. Someone said China has had more of a go at that than anywhere in the Western world of democracies: where promising the earth to buy votes goes hand in hand with corruption and an inability to deliver.
It is a form of Anarchism yes. It's also the ideal of Liberal Democracy, and that's not contradictory. :)
The Danish of all people probably got closest to attaining it in the late 19th/earth 20th, they turned their agricultural sector into coo-ops, and build strong local democracy. Within 2 generations they went from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest and most prosperous.
Another thing to note in their system is that they have the least number of bureaucrats per head of population; there is very little arse-covering. Whoever makes the decision puts their name to it - and mistakes ARE allowed. So there isn't all that forms in triplicate up the chain of command nonsense typical of bureaucracies - that was 20 years ago. Now they've had a neolib regime too for 20 years, the ideal is breaking down. The elites must profit!
That's interesting about the Danes. I wasn't aware. Something I must read up on.
And yes, Liberal Democracy is far better terminology. Mostly, if you say anarchy you'll get short shrift. People imagine a rapid descent into chaos and unimaginable violence. As though somehow it's just the fear of a policeman or some written ruling that keeps you from killing your neighbour!
Unless, of course, your neighbour is a Bezos, Musk, Gates, Koch or Soros type, who has gutted your company, impoverished your fellow citizens, and is threatening to repo your home and make you homeless, and doing so gleefully, while denying your grandma medical care for her easily-treated cancer.
Breaking every 'natural law of justice' that we instinctively feel.
Then you realise why this tiny sliver of people hate 'anarchism' considerably more than they do leftism/marxism.
Free market capitalism is good. Unfortunately we have crony capitalism run by private international banksters and their currency based on debt that rewards the few at the expense of the many.
Congratulations for the clear approach - - science is plenty of lies by logic or necessity. We have an extraordinary linguist who proved this long ago, but few care. His name is Agustín Garcia Calvo. One of his last books proving this disconnect between language or science and reality is 'What is it that's happening?' (2006). In the case of economic science you have the additional glitch that large parts of it have been written precisely to conceal the meaning of money, the bankers' scam. What Keynes called 'the veil of money', for he couldn't be as clear as you. My kind regards and best wishes.
He sounds really interesting. I'm fascinated by how language shapes the way we think, and how we see and contend with the world in turn shapes language and, of course, reality. Most people believe there exists only one true reality and it is the one they live in and understand. Nowadays, science occupies much of what we think of and believe to be real. Which is a shame. It has its place, of course, but it isn't reality. Only a way, one way, of looking at, engaging with and creating the world. As such I don't consider it as lies by logic or necessity but I'll take a look-see at what Calvo says.
"- - science is plenty of lies by logic or necessity."
That is not true of real science.
"In the case of economic science you have the additional glitch that large parts of it have been written precisely to conceal the meaning of money, the bankers' scam."
Personally, I don't believe the word 'science' can actually be applied usefully. It's been appropriated by so many vested interests that it no longer holds the status it used to. Claims like 'the science is settled' are misleading and do a disservice to all the people who spend their lives seeking the truth in the knowledge that they can only approach it, never reach it.
Economics has been called the 'dismal science' which is - and I entirely agree with you here - half-right.
O suggest that you become aware of the discoveries made by modern linguistics, of which the above-mentioned author is an excellent summary and recent contributor. No way to say the truth in reality, where the main truth at reach beyond feelings is discovering the successive lies making up human knowledge, with unavoidable technical progress being misunderstood as such.
Powerful article, Alex. Another wonderful example of privatizing to the point of destroying a system that used to work is the US Prison system. Taxpayers pay much more per prisoner now than when the system was govt run--but we also have fewer 1/2 way houses that help people adjust to the trauma of moving from prison back into society. The private prison business manages the system in such a way that you are almost guaranteed to return--through the revolving doors--to prison because there are so many infractions that will send you back into prison and life outside makes you want to go back. It's damn hard out here--hard enough that you will either return to drugs or what ever got you in in the first place. And there will be a nice, warm slab--oops, bed--to sleep on which has hardly had a chance to get cold. They keep them coming back as fast as they can arrange it--especially the people of color who barely had a chance from the get go...
You need to understand fiat currency as debt to understand we have a kleptocracy not capitalism. Socialism? Maybe if we had started a century ago to rework the system.
"It’s not that free market capitalism is bad: it’s that we don’t live in free market capitalism and much of what we think we understand about “socialism” is patently wrong."
Indeed, we do not live in free market capitalism. I would prefer that we do.
To claim the Britain & USA are Free Market examples with no mention of the fascism used by the fascist banking oligarchs who bankrolled the socialists.
From: European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century by Professor Lloyd Kramer:
the 20th century “State” was an administrative structure increasingly dominated by a bureaucracy which was empowered to regulate and integrate the economy and provide social welfare service.
Theorists of the Frankfurt School called this new structure of the state,
"State Monopoly Capitalism" - (fascism) and its cause was championed in the U.S. by Social Democrats, Progressives, New Dealers, and by European Socialists.
And then the socialist media in control of the "State Monopoly Capitalism" & their monopoly of information & education called this system "Capitalism".
Looks like Alex Krainer continues in the socialist trickery & treachery that the fascists use in their lust to make economic tyrannies.
I would agree with most of what you say 100% but regarding Mussolini, it was his puppy defined as fascism - the merger of state & corporation -the logo - a faces is a bound bundle of rods. - the indvidual is free in so much it allows the indvidual for the state and by the state that the indvidual is free.
Alex, I live in western Washington State in the U.S. of A. We have private trash and garbage pickup which is handled by a company called Waste Management. It is a very large company, serving numerous cities in our area. This company is one of the best run companies I've ever experienced, regardless of the fact that they possess a monopoly on this service. So...there you go.
Your essay strongly generalizes, leaving the upshot being that any privatization of garbage pickup leads to the horrendous situation you describe in your homeland. Fortunately for us this is not the case.
I understand your contention that sometimes privatization is bad. I also understand that government can often do things better than the private sector. Such as a postal service. And certain municipal agencies where private companies would be an unnecessary duplication of resources, like road construction. Or utilities.
But there is no right answer. Afterall, we are dealing with human beings here, in the aggregate. Societies are only as good as the people who are in them. It seems to me that the problem is not capitalism vs. socialism. The problem is human beings - who are fallible.
What I see (and others too) is a gradual decay in the body politic of my country. Many of the problems we see now, we did not see when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s of America. This was due to a general level of acceptable behavior in society, which was driven by culture, especially religion. Afterall, the word itself is Latin, derived from religio, which means "to bind".
Say what you will about religion, but I believe it is beyond argument that religion has proven over and over again to be a necessary function within any society: be that the Roman Republic or Byzantium or Confucian China.
Religion creates a citizenry of responsible individuals willing to give of their time and virtue to any society. Perhaps religion is a "necessary evil". That's a debate for another time. But, put simply, a nation or a city is only as good as its constituents. Gandhi said it best and most succinctly: 'if you wish to change the World, change yourself'.
The same trend of "privatization" has occurred with the US Post Office. Any part of the business of delivering snail mail has been cherry picked off for privateers to make profits, such as the Internet and Twitter or "X". As soon as electronic mail could be privatized, the private companies were not subject to privacy laws as government is. So, cell phones are now used for "surveillance capitalism" to track every purchase and movement. I had to buy a phone called the Unplugged Phone so I can't be tracked and have every phone call monitored by NSA. Sure, I'm skeptical about the US Postal Service running the cell phone business but what could be worse than privatization?
With trash collection and other government tasks that get privatised, the contract is in most cases granted to one, and sometimes two contractors. That's far form a free market where you as a consumer can choose your trash collector. That is your government picking a winner who is handed a monopoly that of course will be abused when the government, as a representative of you as consumer has drawn up a bad contract or isn't bothered to hold the contractor to the contract.
When government picks winners and losers, corruption is just one step away. In such a case the government shouldn't have privatised the job.
This has nothing to do with socialism being better in such matters. It's just common sense that mono/duo-polies are bad when uncontroled.
All unfettered "free" markets evolve into monopolies and oligopolies. So have a mixed economy.
Indeed that is what history teaches us.
In free markets one is also free to lobby and make 'friends'. Therefore the most important thing is to keep things honest and accountable. And that is far fetched in today's politics. Ursula-Pfizer gate is a recent example of how things shouldn't be done, but has become normalised in high places.
Saying that free markets includes subversion of free markets is like saying “starting” your “marathon race” at 50 yards shy of the finish line, & then dashing that “win” into prerogative “law” that enforces the guarantee that you’ll keep “winning” & will even be able to hand all that “victory” dynasty-down is … what?
Schizophrenic maybe? Schrödinger's simultaneous cat/corpse?
Competition isn’t a free-for-all. But the chaos of color o’ law fraud/force is.
I think it closer to say that what history teaches is that humanimal in the main is incapable of freedom ... but man-oh-man-o'-war that herd sure talks a lot of good sounding game.
I lived in the suburbs of a large city before, there the city had decided that only one provider can pick up the trash (a large multinational of course).
Service was very bad, price was very high, schedule and bin size was mandated by the city and trash bins looked nearly as bad as in Alex's photos.
Moved to the countryside - can choose from multiple providers, can decide the schedule and bin size myself and service is great and four times cheaper than in the suburbs.
Sadly now the county has decided in their infinite wisdom (after someone was paid a large sum of money, i suspect) that county should decide only one provider who can operate in the county beginning in 2026 and likely the same shit will happen that did in the suburbs when there is only one provider and you can not change and not complain, service will degrade and prices will go up.
To my great misfortune, i live something like 50 meters inside the county limits. Well maybe i can vote harder in the next county elections and it will be fixed (yeah right)
Perhaps all these services need to be transparent in their negotiations, contracts, accounting and the government’s job should be to hold them accountable. Problem is we know someone is gonna get paid off and not properly report because opportunists will always look for a grift and humanity is opportunistic by nature, for the good and the bad. When ethics don’t manage opportunism, we have a problem.
There was a reason to why people of Thatcher's native town of Grantham were refusing to erect a monument to Thatcher. It was finally imposed on the locals in 2022.
"Some locals in Grantham question the expenditure on the Thatcher statue, arguing that public funds could be better utilized for other community needs like local shops or services.
Initially, plans for a lavish unveiling ceremony with taxpayer funding were proposed but were later scrapped due to public outcry. ... Thousands of Brits were planning to egg Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s statue at its unveiling in her hometown. "
More: "She wounded the unions, ushered in a new era of toxic Toryism, laid waste to the country's manufacturing base, introduced privatisation and deregulated the City, leading to the economic and banking catastrophes of recent times."
And this all-explaining specialty: "The Thatcher's government deregulation of the financial services industry has been linked to significant increases in banking sector compensation over time."
George Monbiot and Chris Hedges discuss the book “Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism,” written by Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson.
Together, they tackle the truths of neoliberalism, including its origins in colonialism and how it became the dominant ideology in the most powerful countries in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=see5c5Sgi14
OK, but please put her in historical context. She righted a very sick Britain with rubbish in the streets in 1979. She took us a step forward. The problem we have isn’t her’s, it’s the failure of her successors to continue to innovate.
Order itself does not arise from chaos and if no one controls chaos there will always be chaos. And Thatcher simply established the appearance of order, which in fact did not exist because state control was weakened.
ah! Two sides. 1. centralised control, and 2. a complex system of benefit maximising agents. I’m in favour of side 2.
Those in favour of side 1 must excuse the gross destruction and mass exterminations of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and others
Was not Tony Blair the Pious, her direct successor, “innovative?”
Let’s not forget TINA—There Is No Alternative.
This suggests that we need to start teaching people to do simple cost-benefit analyses (as you're actually doing here) as a tool for thinking, understanding, and discussing. Who gets the benefit or value, and who bears the costs or penalties? Simple, straightforward, and removes the ideology. It's surprising how often you don't even need to gather any data, a simple thought exercise with a piece of paper will do. The conclusion that invariably happens: why are we paying and sacrificing to make someone else rich?
Classical economics was predominantly focused on eliminating rent. In order to eliminate something, one first has to acknowledge its existence. Rent is the return to land, just as wages are the return to labor and profits are the return to capital (physical capital, not money, which is basically identical to land). The classical economists all understood there were 3 factors of production, if not 4. Land, labor & capital, or if 4, then land, labor, physical capital and money capital. Neoclassical economics reduces it to just 2: labor & capital. Why? Because most profit by large capitalists is actually rent, not profit. Today, the globe is completely dominated by monopolies and cartels. Capitalist nations are vehicles for them. Socialist countries try to represent the people and business, but are struggling simply because the laissez faire countries, mainly the US and England, have made all attempts to combat rent seeking impossible. The US and England are rentiers, not capitalists. China is where entrepreneurs have a much better chance of success. Money is not capital. It's the equivalent to land in that it costs nothing to produce, whereas labor and physical capital are the products of hard work. Capitalism as is practiced by the US is an insult to all people who have morals. The US is the modern equivalent of 19th century laissez faire British Empire.
Like demoRats or RepubliCretans, we are given the choice of socialcommunalism or Crapitalism, when we get neither anyway no matter who we vote, John McCoCaine still always wins
Wow, I am usually impressed with your ideas Alex, but this time you failed to delve into the crucial depths. OTOH you are very astute in pointing out some of the actual problems of the RESULTS of incompetent Governments and capitalists getting rewarded in an often monopoly or duopoly situation. (If I give one company the contract to collect garbage, I am creating a Monopoly, something that has long been recognized to not be advantageous for people at the mercy of the monopoly).
But the problems you point out ARE problems.
They are problems with solutions, which you don't point out, probably because you are focused on the Capitalism : Socialism dicotomy, not identifying solutions for each or recognizing that the solutions for BOTH are the same conceptually.
As a behavioural psychologist, I see that you are pointing out incorrect contingencies for the goals in your situations. The Government that set up those programs that private contractors failed to carry out "correctly" (in your view) caused incentivized the private contractors to do the negative things you cite, because of the Government specifications (or lack thereof), given the goals and restrictions (if any) in the contract, whether for garbage or child care.
People in Government and Private Industry behave according to the consequences of their actions. Do a "good job" in either and you get rewarded. If you do not get rewarded, the frequency of doing "good jobs", declines. What serves as rewards in Govt. and Private Enterprise differs, though.
Cut costs and reduce personnel in Government and you punished with a loss of power (in business you will increase profit), which is a prime reward for civil servants. Prime rewards in Government, which incentivizes inefficiency, are getting more subordinates in your department, more and better office space, and a larger budget that must be spent (regardless of additional benefit to taxpayers), lest you lose power by seeing your budget cut in the next fiscal year. An organization that rewards its human members this way will grow bloated and increase the busy work, producing more and more documents and programs to supervise.
Likewise in private profit-making enterprise, the actions employees take tends to be those that lead to getting more rewards. The Govt. contract for the garbage does not have to allow a change to a central trash depository. In fact, the Govt. contract can specify the exact ways the collection system must be run before it is put out for bid, with no bid being accepted that is not below the cost for the government employees do the work themselves.
I note you only specified service businesses, rather than businesses that produce "things", the preponderance of the former is one of the reason that Western Nations are in decline. This is also due to the contingencies of reinforcement. The financialization of Western economies eliminates many problems for the capitalists who seek to profit. Compare being a securities trader versus a farmer (and I have been both, among other things). I can start with less capital as a trader, I don't have to rely on the weather and I can make money every day as a trader, unlike the farmer. My capital cost for equipment is so cheap, I can have spares lying around so a breakdown is a minor annoyance as a trader, and I have no product that spoils, needs to be insured, transported, inspected, packed or rushed to market. Life is harder for the farmer and at the end, the crop may fail.
I could go on... but the bottom line is that the reinforcement (and punishment) contingencies are what encourage (or discourage) specific behaviours. Government (socialist by design) and Profit- Seeking Business can be controlled (improved or degraded vis a vis a value judgment) by changing the contingencies (and making them explicit in a clear contract).
Alex, it's largely because we DON'T have Adam Smith style free market capitalism. HEAR ME OUT! I'm not an Austrian, lol.
Capitalism can go in two ways: worker-ownership, or minority-ownership. Both are based upon private ownership; ie, making someone own the capital, ie they are capitalists, ie Capitalism.
You have accurately pointed out the problems that occur when minority-capitalism is imposed.
But consider what would have happened if it was privatised to the workforce instead?
The workers live in those communities, and want good trash collection themselves. So they wouldn't have pulled all those fast ones. Co-ops tend to be good neighbours.
But in actual fact Socialism and Capitalism go hand in hand. Backbone services (Health, Education, environment maintenance, public transport etc etc) are giving a service that is vital to the public - the public want the service, not someone getting rich off their need. Social welfare spending becomes more circular when the recipients spending goes back into the system after circulating for a while.
The two systems, of socialism and worker-ownership go hand in hand.
The outlier is "Minority Ownership". This is where things start to go pear shaped.
And no, I do not believe it is "Accidental" that all the education and extant books for the past 150 years have heavily promoted the notion that "Capitalism" just means minority ownership.
If you read Adam Smith carefully, you soon realise that all his equation regarding 'free markets' are implicit upon being a worker-ownership model economy.
How to you get to "Producers and consumers approach infinity? By making everyone a producer, a capitalist. Someone who can take their capital from their current company, and transfer it as seed capital to another freely.
We have been had - and I don't just mean the now bankrupt and desperately poor British.
Love it. That's a form of anarchism, no? The form is where you minimise central government and people organise themselves locally to deliver what is required locally. My kind of government.
Both right wing and left wing governments require gigantic amounts of money and massive bureaucracies (also known as politicians seeking power, money and influence) and it is that which seems to get in the way and create so many of our problems.
Unless miraculously we had politicians who actually cared about their people. Someone said China has had more of a go at that than anywhere in the Western world of democracies: where promising the earth to buy votes goes hand in hand with corruption and an inability to deliver.
It is a form of Anarchism yes. It's also the ideal of Liberal Democracy, and that's not contradictory. :)
The Danish of all people probably got closest to attaining it in the late 19th/earth 20th, they turned their agricultural sector into coo-ops, and build strong local democracy. Within 2 generations they went from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest and most prosperous.
Another thing to note in their system is that they have the least number of bureaucrats per head of population; there is very little arse-covering. Whoever makes the decision puts their name to it - and mistakes ARE allowed. So there isn't all that forms in triplicate up the chain of command nonsense typical of bureaucracies - that was 20 years ago. Now they've had a neolib regime too for 20 years, the ideal is breaking down. The elites must profit!
And the people be damned.
That's interesting about the Danes. I wasn't aware. Something I must read up on.
And yes, Liberal Democracy is far better terminology. Mostly, if you say anarchy you'll get short shrift. People imagine a rapid descent into chaos and unimaginable violence. As though somehow it's just the fear of a policeman or some written ruling that keeps you from killing your neighbour!
Unless, of course, your neighbour is a Bezos, Musk, Gates, Koch or Soros type, who has gutted your company, impoverished your fellow citizens, and is threatening to repo your home and make you homeless, and doing so gleefully, while denying your grandma medical care for her easily-treated cancer.
Breaking every 'natural law of justice' that we instinctively feel.
Then you realise why this tiny sliver of people hate 'anarchism' considerably more than they do leftism/marxism.
Free market capitalism is good. Unfortunately we have crony capitalism run by private international banksters and their currency based on debt that rewards the few at the expense of the many.
Agreed !
Congratulations for the clear approach - - science is plenty of lies by logic or necessity. We have an extraordinary linguist who proved this long ago, but few care. His name is Agustín Garcia Calvo. One of his last books proving this disconnect between language or science and reality is 'What is it that's happening?' (2006). In the case of economic science you have the additional glitch that large parts of it have been written precisely to conceal the meaning of money, the bankers' scam. What Keynes called 'the veil of money', for he couldn't be as clear as you. My kind regards and best wishes.
He sounds really interesting. I'm fascinated by how language shapes the way we think, and how we see and contend with the world in turn shapes language and, of course, reality. Most people believe there exists only one true reality and it is the one they live in and understand. Nowadays, science occupies much of what we think of and believe to be real. Which is a shame. It has its place, of course, but it isn't reality. Only a way, one way, of looking at, engaging with and creating the world. As such I don't consider it as lies by logic or necessity but I'll take a look-see at what Calvo says.
"- - science is plenty of lies by logic or necessity."
That is not true of real science.
"In the case of economic science you have the additional glitch that large parts of it have been written precisely to conceal the meaning of money, the bankers' scam."
The term 'economic science' is an oxymoron.
Personally, I don't believe the word 'science' can actually be applied usefully. It's been appropriated by so many vested interests that it no longer holds the status it used to. Claims like 'the science is settled' are misleading and do a disservice to all the people who spend their lives seeking the truth in the knowledge that they can only approach it, never reach it.
Economics has been called the 'dismal science' which is - and I entirely agree with you here - half-right.
O suggest that you become aware of the discoveries made by modern linguistics, of which the above-mentioned author is an excellent summary and recent contributor. No way to say the truth in reality, where the main truth at reach beyond feelings is discovering the successive lies making up human knowledge, with unavoidable technical progress being misunderstood as such.
You reply says nothing about science.
Very interesting videos about the banking system and money...
Prof. Richard Werner (2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLVHbY66ioA
Werner Economics (2025): "Secrets of the Financial System and the Truth About Economic Growth", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHtiVuf_cfs
Who was responsible for the UK’s privatisation programme of all state services and utilities, under Thatcher and successive governments?
NM Rothschild…
Powerful article, Alex. Another wonderful example of privatizing to the point of destroying a system that used to work is the US Prison system. Taxpayers pay much more per prisoner now than when the system was govt run--but we also have fewer 1/2 way houses that help people adjust to the trauma of moving from prison back into society. The private prison business manages the system in such a way that you are almost guaranteed to return--through the revolving doors--to prison because there are so many infractions that will send you back into prison and life outside makes you want to go back. It's damn hard out here--hard enough that you will either return to drugs or what ever got you in in the first place. And there will be a nice, warm slab--oops, bed--to sleep on which has hardly had a chance to get cold. They keep them coming back as fast as they can arrange it--especially the people of color who barely had a chance from the get go...
You need to understand fiat currency as debt to understand we have a kleptocracy not capitalism. Socialism? Maybe if we had started a century ago to rework the system.
"It’s not that free market capitalism is bad: it’s that we don’t live in free market capitalism and much of what we think we understand about “socialism” is patently wrong."
Indeed, we do not live in free market capitalism. I would prefer that we do.
To claim the Britain & USA are Free Market examples with no mention of the fascism used by the fascist banking oligarchs who bankrolled the socialists.
From: European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century by Professor Lloyd Kramer:
the 20th century “State” was an administrative structure increasingly dominated by a bureaucracy which was empowered to regulate and integrate the economy and provide social welfare service.
Theorists of the Frankfurt School called this new structure of the state,
"State Monopoly Capitalism" - (fascism) and its cause was championed in the U.S. by Social Democrats, Progressives, New Dealers, and by European Socialists.
And then the socialist media in control of the "State Monopoly Capitalism" & their monopoly of information & education called this system "Capitalism".
Looks like Alex Krainer continues in the socialist trickery & treachery that the fascists use in their lust to make economic tyrannies.
I would agree with most of what you say 100% but regarding Mussolini, it was his puppy defined as fascism - the merger of state & corporation -the logo - a faces is a bound bundle of rods. - the indvidual is free in so much it allows the indvidual for the state and by the state that the indvidual is free.
Alex, I live in western Washington State in the U.S. of A. We have private trash and garbage pickup which is handled by a company called Waste Management. It is a very large company, serving numerous cities in our area. This company is one of the best run companies I've ever experienced, regardless of the fact that they possess a monopoly on this service. So...there you go.
Your essay strongly generalizes, leaving the upshot being that any privatization of garbage pickup leads to the horrendous situation you describe in your homeland. Fortunately for us this is not the case.
I understand your contention that sometimes privatization is bad. I also understand that government can often do things better than the private sector. Such as a postal service. And certain municipal agencies where private companies would be an unnecessary duplication of resources, like road construction. Or utilities.
But there is no right answer. Afterall, we are dealing with human beings here, in the aggregate. Societies are only as good as the people who are in them. It seems to me that the problem is not capitalism vs. socialism. The problem is human beings - who are fallible.
What I see (and others too) is a gradual decay in the body politic of my country. Many of the problems we see now, we did not see when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s of America. This was due to a general level of acceptable behavior in society, which was driven by culture, especially religion. Afterall, the word itself is Latin, derived from religio, which means "to bind".
Say what you will about religion, but I believe it is beyond argument that religion has proven over and over again to be a necessary function within any society: be that the Roman Republic or Byzantium or Confucian China.
Religion creates a citizenry of responsible individuals willing to give of their time and virtue to any society. Perhaps religion is a "necessary evil". That's a debate for another time. But, put simply, a nation or a city is only as good as its constituents. Gandhi said it best and most succinctly: 'if you wish to change the World, change yourself'.
The same trend of "privatization" has occurred with the US Post Office. Any part of the business of delivering snail mail has been cherry picked off for privateers to make profits, such as the Internet and Twitter or "X". As soon as electronic mail could be privatized, the private companies were not subject to privacy laws as government is. So, cell phones are now used for "surveillance capitalism" to track every purchase and movement. I had to buy a phone called the Unplugged Phone so I can't be tracked and have every phone call monitored by NSA. Sure, I'm skeptical about the US Postal Service running the cell phone business but what could be worse than privatization?
Your use of the word "privateer" is very apt! Perfect. Do you know how the "Royal Mail" in England is doing now that it has been privatized?