Water

[Somewhere_]

Yes, I suppose that's true, but come on, I'm obviously talking about publicly owned enterprises.

-Note: all the following are getting worse and worse, not better and better as you would suggest because of the government being accountable to the vote. I would like to point out that Congress approval ratings were low at 18% in November, but 97% of them were reelected. In 2014, it has 11% percent approval rating, yet 96% of them were reelected. There is no incentive for government to be efficient or wise with funds at all. It does not have to compete, and thus, inefficiency and wasteful spending is rewarded. The government or elected officials are really punished for this. Partly because much of it is due to unaccountable bureaucracy that elected officials can't really reign in.

-Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974: Various bureaucratic agencies budgets cannot be changed without 60 votes in the Senate. The president can longer refuse to fund any programs deemed unfit, which means that the bureaucracy that works for the president no longer has to listen to the president.

-National debt almost 20 trillion and unfunded liabilities are well over 100 trillion

-An average elementary school classroom (say 20 students) costs $220,000. And only 20% of this goes to overhead. We see the US lagging behind significantly in education despite spending more than all the other countries.

-70% of funds that are supposed to go to welfare are sucked up by bureaucracy
https://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/welfare-reform

-The pentagon has lost 6.5 trillion https://www.dodig.mil/pubs/report_summary.cfm?id=7034

-According the World Economic Forum, the US's largest hindrance to economic growth is inefficient government bureaucracy

-Federal employees are hardly fired. https://www.federaltimes.com/story/...ency/2015/02/24/federal-firing-2014/23880329/

-Government programs rarely (if ever) die. here is an example: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/28/government-programs-never-die/

-I can go on if you would like more examples and evidence that government is inefficient and wasteful. Claims without a source are from the book "Conspiracies of the Ruling Class" by Lawrence Lindsey.

 

[gimmepie]

All of these theories are widely accepted by various schools of economics. And are prevent to have true applications.

So are all the theories that resulted in socialism in its various incarnations - which you believe are as ineffective as I find capitalism. Not much of a point.

So actually debate the points. Dont cop out by saying they dont apply in practice without providing evidence. They are 100% legitimate.

No, they aren't. I don't care how good your system is in theory it doesn't work in reality. A system that encourages and creates class divide and extreme inequity to essential resources is not a good system. That is the whole point I am debating. It is view points like this that contribute to the poor distribution of resources people need - like clean water.

What a blatantly false statement. The US is not a hyper-capitalist country by any means.

How exactly is using a subjective term to describe what looks to me a highly capitalistic society blatantly false? In my eyes if you're in the top 20 most capitalist states right now, you have got a lot of work to do.

Of course there will be inequity of access to resources because some will be more successful than others or make better decisions.

This should not determine access to essential resources. You should not have less access to water because you had a stroke of bad luck or made a mistake and yet that is the kind of world we live in and it truly bothers me that profit is more important than people's needs.

Explain the massive class divide. How it happens and actually give me some evidence.

If we want to continue in this direction, we can but its kind of a bunny trail.

Here are a few quick links explaining how capitalism leads to a class divide.

https://www.workers.org/2012/us/inequality_0308/
https://www.worldsocialism.org/english/what-capitalism
https://www.globalresearch.ca/capitalism-and-class-struggle/24487
https://business.time.com/2013/03/25/marxs-revenge-how-class-struggle-is-shaping-the-world/

Essentially, in a capitalist system you've got two groups. One who owns the business/property and one who is paid for their services in generating profit for the former group (by the former group). That's not so bad in itself but the other key component of capitalism is that the market exists to produce profit not to meet people's needs.

Water is no exception to this. There are the people who own the water companies and the people who depend on them. Water is an essential resource so there is enormous demand (and no alternatives) so those companies can essentially charge whatever they want even if they themselves don't pay out enough for the working class to have fair access to that resource. The people who own those resources are a part of a class that thrives on the profit earned for them by the lesser class they exploit and as a result has far greater access to that resource which they can then happily waste while the poor struggle to stay afloat. Those links explain it better than I do though.

I already gave you a source debunking this. Did you read it?

I gave them all a quick read. I'll admit to not spending hours pouring over finite details but they all read more like the ravings of people who've never actually experienced the suffering a capitalist economy inflicts on the working class more than anything "debunking" anything.

How will you do this without rational economic calculation? How does voting equate economic calculation? Btw I provided explanation of this point in the above post.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here but I'll give it a shot. Firstly, the average person is plenty capable enough economically to realize that water prices are going up whilst their wages are not and can probably deduce that this means they will have less access to water. Votes are power over a government that wants to remain in control, so, if the government controls most of the water, the working class can then use that vote to pressure the government in power to lower the cost or to elect a government that will. It's not perfect sure, but it's a lot better than giving corporation that exist solely to produce a greater profit power over something as essential to both survival and modern life as water.

I would really like you to go through those 5 or 6 points.

I also have a question for you: Do you trust government?

I don't have complete unshakable faith in specific governments because all sources of governance should be questioned and held accountable for their failures, but as a concept yes I trust government. I certainly trust a government that I have some power over as a voting citizen more than I trust a corporation that isn't beholden to me in any capacity and instead exploits my dependence on the resource they provide.

 

[Kanzler]

-Note: all the following are getting worse and worse, not better and better as you would suggest because of the government being accountable to the vote. I would like to point out that Congress approval ratings were low at 18% in November, but 97% of them were reelected. In 2014, it has 11% percent approval rating, yet 96% of them were reelected. There is no incentive for government to be efficient or wise with funds at all. It does not have to compete, and thus, inefficiency and wasteful spending is rewarded. The government or elected officials are really punished for this. Partly because much of it is due to unaccountable bureaucracy that elected officials can't really reign in.

-Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974: Various bureaucratic agencies budgets cannot be changed without 60 votes in the Senate. The president can longer refuse to fund any programs deemed unfit, which means that the bureaucracy that works for the president no longer has to listen to the president.

-National debt almost 20 trillion and unfunded liabilities are well over 100 trillion

-An average elementary school classroom (say 20 students) costs $220,000. And only 20% of this goes to overhead. We see the US lagging behind significantly in education despite spending more than all the other countries.

-70% of funds that are supposed to go to welfare are sucked up by bureaucracy
https://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/welfare-reform

-The pentagon has lost 6.5 trillion https://www.dodig.mil/pubs/report_summary.cfm?id=7034

-According the World Economic Forum, the US's largest hindrance to economic growth is inefficient government bureaucracy

-Federal employees are hardly fired. https://www.federaltimes.com/story/...ency/2015/02/24/federal-firing-2014/23880329/

-Government programs rarely (if ever) die. here is an example: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/28/government-programs-never-die/

-I can go on if you would like more examples and evidence that government is inefficient and wasteful. Claims without a source are from the book "Conspiracies of the Ruling Class" by Lawrence Lindsey.

I don't know about the United States, but in my experience in Canada, a lot of the publicly owned corporations that get criticism are owned at the province level. I suspect it might be the same at the state level. Usually it's the premier's (governor's) government that gets in trouble and it's responsible for more than a few scandals.

You're conflating a bunch of things with those random facts. A lot of them have nothing to do with publicly owned corporations.

 

[Somewhere_]

You're conflating a bunch of things with those random facts. A lot of them have nothing to do with publicly owned corporations.

I know. I was just listing facts. Some are connected, some aren't. The purpose of the seemingly unrelated ones to your comment was actually just there for the broader debate that the government is not very economical.