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The Hidden Cost of Privatization

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Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#31

Post by ashark »

pizzetta wrote: post #16
rainbowmverse wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Imagine if unions were strong and IT were unionized. How would you imagine the progress we've seen in information technology? We are a long way off from being able to say high technology has truly caused progress. Right now, it seems to do more harm than good. People in the tech industry are slowly coming to terms with their impact on the world outside their sphere of awareness, but that newfound conscientiousness…

I imagine the progress in microprocessors, photolithography, search, education, power generation, drugs discovery, communications, etc., etc., do have a measurable impact on progress of the species. Imagine if tech were stuck where it was in even 1999. So many things possible today would not be possible (due to cost or unavailability).

> Imagine if tech were stuck where it was in even 1999. So many things possible today would not be possible (due to cost or unavailability).

Where tech directly touches my life, I wouldn't say today's tech makes me any happier or substantially improves my wellbeing over what 1999-level tech did. Worse in some ways. I do different stuff with 2017 tech than I would without it, but I doubt it's actually improving my life more than 1999 tech. I do have to remain up-to-date and immersed in it because it's an expectation of modern life and you'll drop out of what remains of shared culture and expectations of availability, et c if you don't (especially being a developer) but it's not per se especially appealing.

Self-driving cars (though I expect their benefit to largely be eaten up by race-to-the-bottom behavior or some form of rents capture, same as wide availability of personal automobiles mostly destroyed their time-saving benefits) and (even better) affordable, highly capable general-purpose housework robots would be a big deal for my quality of life, but we don't have those yet.

I'm sure industry and R&D applications of post-1999 tech improvements have been important, of course.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#32

Post by naravara »

pizzetta wrote: post #26
csydas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine if unions were strong and IT were unionized. How would you imagine the progress we've seen in information technology? I'm not sure this is really a compelling point. Tech companies have made some cool stuff, but technology is also heavily driven by FOSS, which is not really driven by the same factors business are. Union or no union isn't really a question with FOSS, as these projects, many of which drive mod…

I could argue that if unions were strong and everyone had to belong to a union to participate in an economy the unions could see an advantage to controlling how you contribute to FOSS because your "free" contribution to FOSS impinges on the rights to another unionized worker's right to work. The FOSS developer would theoretically be undermining the union worker.

When unions are huge and cover large swathes of the workforce, they tend to be more focused on the long-term health of the industry/economy.

It’s when they’re small and parochial that they get really zealous about incumbency protection at the expense of everything else because they don’t have to balance competing interests the way you do when you have a bigger picture to worry about.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#34

Post by csydas »

pizzetta wrote: post #26
csydas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine if unions were strong and IT were unionized. How would you imagine the progress we've seen in information technology? I'm not sure this is really a compelling point. Tech companies have made some cool stuff, but technology is also heavily driven by FOSS, which is not really driven by the same factors business are. Union or no union isn't really a question with FOSS, as these projects, many of which drive mod…

I could argue that if unions were strong and everyone had to belong to a union to participate in an economy the unions could see an advantage to controlling how you contribute to FOSS because your "free" contribution to FOSS impinges on the rights to another unionized worker's right to work. The FOSS developer would theoretically be undermining the union worker.

Well, you certainly could, but that wasn't the argument presented or responded to. The argument you put forth was Technology's advancement was due to IT businesses, and what would the world be like if there were more Unions; but this is not really a sensible proposition because major technological advances, indeed the majority of which are driving the backbone of the world economy and technology as we know it, were developed without any of the incentives provided by a business structure. Union or not is irrelevant to such forces because they operate outside the realm of business.

The idea that FOSS would be quashed under a mandatory unionized economy is not what was being discussed, and I'm not sure of the relevance of such a theoretical world in the context of what was said. It's tangential at best.

What was being discussed, the advancement of technology as we've seen it, has happened independent of how employees are organized and employed. As long as there are inventive persons looking to try something new, there will be technological advancements.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#35

Post by ZeroGravitas »

anonymousiam wrote: post #33

Rebuttal: http://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/the-impac...

I wonder if they worry about their Climate Change denial impacting their credibility in other areas. If they'll happily take money from fossil fuel interests to try to undermine the scienctific community, who won't they attack for pay?

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#36

Post by rainbowmverse »

anonymousiam wrote: post #33

Rebuttal: http://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/the-impac...

There are many defensible arguments against government programs from across the social and political spectrums, but they don't come from the Heritage Foundation. They have a severe beyond reason bias against government.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#37

Post by _jal »

pizzetta wrote: post #8
yequalsx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of unions will increase income inequality. Just compare for profit higher education with public higher education. The wages/benefits for workers former very much lag those of the latter. Private prisons pay way less too. But the people at the top get outsized pay. The cost savings to taxpayers are not sufficient to justify this inequity.

Imagine if unions were strong and IT were unionized. How would you imagine the progress we've seen in information technology? The impact on progress should not be discounted as an externality. Imagine if taxicabs or any livery service of any kind had to have a union member associated with it. Would autonomous cars make the same progress (for example, we can have autonomous subways/trains but they have to be "personne…

I think there's an ordering problem. IT jobs have never faced union pressure because, in part, of massive, ongoing change and high wages.

Private prisons are not labs of innovation. "Innovation" in this context means maximining prison labor and cutting healthcare costs. Schools are similar - we don't know how to make them work better, but bullshit standardized testing and cutting wages isn't it.

I absolutely agree - not every work force should be unionized. I just wish folks would acknowledge that the titan-CEO/interchangeable wage-slave model is also leads to terrible outcomes in a number of industries.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#38

Post by piva00 »

pizzetta wrote: post #8
yequalsx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of unions will increase income inequality. Just compare for profit higher education with public higher education. The wages/benefits for workers former very much lag those of the latter. Private prisons pay way less too. But the people at the top get outsized pay. The cost savings to taxpayers are not sufficient to justify this inequity.

Imagine if unions were strong and IT were unionized. How would you imagine the progress we've seen in information technology? The impact on progress should not be discounted as an externality. Imagine if taxicabs or any livery service of any kind had to have a union member associated with it. Would autonomous cars make the same progress (for example, we can have autonomous subways/trains but they have to be "personne…

I recommend looking up the union/labour movement model of Sweden. It's a three-way between unions, employers and government to get into agreements, doesn't seem to be hurting Swedish economy (nor its IT industry).

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#39

Post by crdoconnor »

pizzetta wrote: post #8
yequalsx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of unions will increase income inequality. Just compare for profit higher education with public higher education. The wages/benefits for workers former very much lag those of the latter. Private prisons pay way less too. But the people at the top get outsized pay. The cost savings to taxpayers are not sufficient to justify this inequity.

Imagine if unions were strong and IT were unionized. How would you imagine the progress we've seen in information technology? The impact on progress should not be discounted as an externality. Imagine if taxicabs or any livery service of any kind had to have a union member associated with it. Would autonomous cars make the same progress (for example, we can have autonomous subways/trains but they have to be "personne…

>Imagine if unions were strong and IT were unionized. How would you imagine the progress we've seen in information technology?

The following would likely happen:

* Wages would be higher, tech behemoth profits would be lower.

* Vastly more attention would be drawn to some of the worse outsourcing disasters (some of which are currently covered up).

* Those egregious IP agreements would be less common.

* Employee share options agreements would probably be fairer. Not like this: https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/26/skypes-worthless-employee-...

* Wage fixing cartels like this would be busted quicker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

>they also have externalities we need to acknowledge.

So acknowledge them?

Re: The Hidden Cost of Privatization

#40

Post by crdoconnor »

EGreg wrote: post #24

Look, I actually argue for social safety nets. I believe government's role can be defined simply as "ensure that the minimum expectations of society are met", with the full understanding that these expectations (running potable water, medical advances, etc.) increase over time and vary from place to place. I am totally fine with decentralizing government functions to the point of neighborhoods – many of you know that…

>Because when providers compete, quality goes up and costs go down.

Public Private Partnerships are not creating competition and that was never their intention. The legal set up of such agreements is set up, in fact, in order to purposely exclude competition.

In the NHS it tends to both drive up costs and filter out money to companies run by the friends of politicians. It's simple parasitism.

In general, if there isn't a chance to leech off a monopoly of some kind there is no political impetus to actually privatize. The railway system in the UK wasn't privatized in order to create competition. That was patently impossible. It was privatized precisely because it was so well insulated from competition.

>Well, as Hayek argued, everyone setting their own prices is a far superior system than central planning to set the price of a toll.

Hayek made the same typical tired old assumptions that never hold - perfect competition, perfect information, etc.

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