Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

I have been wracking my brains trying to come up with something "public", that is better than "private"... so far, no dice. Here is my list so far:
Bathrooms
Schools
Roads
Displays of Affection
Military (as far as technology and ROE)
Heath care
Pools

How about:

elections
trials

...better for who? For people who can afford things like pools, private school, and private militaries? Since I can't afford any of those things, I'm pretty grateful for the public ones.

Also: libraries

How about sculpture?

Also police, firemen, roads and other such infrastructure...and I would argue schools and maybe even health care. Doesn't it depend on your definition of "better"?

I think the benchmark here is 'which would you prefer if given the choice?'

ahem. wrote:I think the benchmark here is 'which would you prefer if given the choice?'

You mean prefer for a whole society over time, right?

Sure, performance may be better for some of the private institutions...take schools for example...but I would certainly not choose to make every school in the country private.

As an individual, I also choose public school for my kids. And not just because of the money.

No I meant individuality in the short term. If given a choice between using the bathroom in my private home or using the public bathroom at the movies, I will chose the former. But I think private pied-à-terre bathrooms all over the city would be a ridiculously unsustainable idea.

ahem. wrote:I think the benchmark here is 'which would you prefer if given the choice?'

Also, I have to amend your benchmark, and add, "...if money was no object."

Which always it is, in the real world. So give me a world where everyone is wealthy enough to get educated, build a cross-country highway, and hire an army to protect their families on their own dime and I'll give you a world where it's better to have every single ever-loving thing privatized.

By the way, do those bathrooms that cost per use count as private or public?

While I agree that there are certainly things that work well as public projects ie national defense (private military groups are better trained and equipped and don't have as many restrictions, but they work better on the small scale (which what our military should do most of the time anyways)). But as for highways, schools, mailing/shipping, and many other areas have been shown to work much better in a private setting.

Highways managed by private companies aka toll roads don't cost the state in taxes, in fact the state is usually paid by the company. Companies usually builds better roads, and build them faster than public highways. In the end the tax payer pays less, and there is a company making a profit and actually making something.

Schools, voucher systems have been shown to improve grades almost everywhere they have been implemented. When teachers will be fired if they suck, they tend not to suck as bad. Good schools do well and are rewarded, while crappy schools die and are remade.

The postal system sucks. Period. They waste billions every year in tax payer subsidies, and the only reason Fed-ex and the like don't run competing mail business for a profit is because the Federal Government has required them not to.

@Craig Jessop Trials and Elections are by constitutional definition public.
@ ahem in Japan there are pay to go bathrooms that are nice... there are vending machines for everything too, so that is cool.
@krebscout in the real world most of these institutions work better privately, there are social stigmas now that say, oh, private companies and profit are bad. That is the government's job. Change is hard. Etc. In the beginning when the government starts most of its programs there is almost always a backlash because people know that the government and bureaucracy suck at getting stuff done well, on time, and at cost (not to mention a profit). The only reason massive social projects and institutions like social security are popular is because people are used to getting "free money" or services.

I'm glad you feel the way you do, Puck, but you really haven't demonstrably shown that any of these things are actually better. Using phrases like "have been shown to work much better" is your opinion and your opinion only. Before we go qualifying something as "better" we must decide an applicable metric.

I could just as easily say that highways, schools, mailing/shipping and many other areas have been shown to work much better in a public setting. You cannot disprove me since I have not specified what exactly I mean by "better" or how exactly it "(has) been shown."

I'd love to discuss these points with you once you actually do this.

I'm not sure what you directed to me was really relevant to what I said...

@marduk I just didn't feel like dredging up all of the studies that give merit to my observations. I'll be posting a nice list soon.
@ krebscout I think my brain went on a tangent. Sorry about that What I mean was that your point is moot because not everyone has to build those things. A company or wealthy person, or innovators make the leap and provide those services and people pay for them. In the real world it works great, because investors get to make money and people get services that are cheaper than the taxes that they would have spent supporting the same thing. Also they can choose if they want to support a certain thing by using it, thus better services are rewarded. Places that don't have a choice just get whatever the govt decides to build, most likely of less quality, costing more, and filled with corruption.

Fiend,

It's not about studies, it's about standards. Does better mean higher quality? Cleaner? Longer lasting? More affordable? More accessible? Yielding more in quantity? Funded in a fair manner (and that depends on your idea of fair)?

It's like comparing PCs and Macs. Which is better? Well, it depends on your goals.

Another point: a lot of your examples make no sense.
Public vs private bathrooms: most of what you think of "public bathrooms" are actually private bathrooms. At the movie theater, mcdonalds, the grocery store, target, the gym — all of those are privately owned. Unless by public bathrooms you meant only the bathrooms at libraries, courthouses, etc?

Public schools vs. private schools w/ vouchers - vouchers are publicly funded, so vouchers are still a form of hybridized public education. A real public vs. private debate would be publicly funded public schools and privately funded private schools — the schools that you have to pay for entirely on your own. Here is where the different standards of "better" really comes into play — of course that expensive private school will give you better test scores, but since it's not affordable for me to send my children to private school, public school is better because it's accessible.

The US Postal Service - as somebody who sends a LOT of packages through USPS, I disagree that the postal system "sucks, period." In terms of parcel delivery, the USPS does compete with UPS and Fed-ex, and it always has the best prices and very high reliability. I mean, come on, I pay 4 bucks and a guy comes to my house in LA, picks up my package, and drops it off in New York within two days? That's amazing! Yes, their budgeting is poorly managed, but our commercial endeavors would be impossible at Fed ex and UPS prices. The 4 billion dollar deficit is a big problem, but it's a historical problem — people send vastly fewer letters every year because of the internet — not a fundamental problem with public programs. When the volume of mail was still going up (1995 and 1996, for example - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4368184.html), the post office was making a profit.

Public and private institutions each have their own strengths and meet different needs for different people. Our country's economy is a strong mix of both public and private institutions, and in many cases hybrid institutions like federal funding for private entities.

True, true - we would just pay a fee for a lot of those services. Education still stands, though - every person would have to pay for their own education (or their children's), not pay a fee to a rich person who got their education and call it good. The world in which there are no public schools is a mighty sucky one.

Also, why do you get to assume that anything from the government is "filled with corruption" but I don't get to think that corporations ("social stigmas now that say, oh, private companies and profit are bad") can also be corrupt? Can we both agree that both can and do breed some degree of corruption? Power corrupts, right? So that's why we need checks and balances - to keep that power in check and not absolute. The government, imperfect as it may be, at least has these built into its structure. The only thing keeping the corporations checked and balanced is, well...the government. Corporations having free reign over the world terrifies me.

Uh, Sauron, I hope this wasn't intentional, but, uh,....check your salutations.

That's not appropriate.

Marduk wrote:Uh, Sauron, I hope this wasn't intentional, but, uh,....check your salutations.

That's not appropriate.

...I assumed that was intentional. You know, because of the name of the person he was addressing? Puckish Fiend?

ahem. wrote:

Marduk wrote:Uh, Sauron, I hope this wasn't intentional, but, uh,....check your salutations.

That's not appropriate.

...I assumed that was intentional. You know, because of the name of the person he was addressing? Puckish Fiend?

At least he didn't say "Pukish."

Granted, it's more offensive if you imagine it in a Gandalf-esque FIIIEEENNNDDD.

Yeah, you know, that thought never crossed my mind. I assumed he made a typo on "friend."

I call a mulligan.