08:05 – I’m always surprised at the price increases when I reorder kit components. For example, one of the components of the biology kits is a quarter-ounce (7.5 g) packet of gelatin. When I was ordering components for 60 biology kits in February, I paid about $19 including shipping for a box of 64 Knox unflavored gelatin packets, or about $0.30 each. Yesterday, I planned to order two boxes, but the cheapest I could find them on offer was $49 per box including shipping, or about $0.77 each.
So instead I’ll order five pounds (2.2+ kilos, enough for 300 packets) of bulk powdered gelatin for about $30, or $0.10 each. Barbara and I will just make up our own packets. Counting the cost of the gelatin itself, a coin envelope, a label, and labor, those packets will end up costing us about $0.30 each. We try hard to keep the prices of our kits as low as possible, and saving $0.47 on the cost of one small component is significant when you consider the number of components in the kits.
There you go again, claiming that you see price increases. The US
federal government, which sees every sparrow fall, claims that inflation
is very, very low. What are you going to believe, the official
government numbers or your lying eyes?
Just out of curiosity, what are you figuring as the ‘labor rate’ for you & your bride?
I figure Barbara’s time at $10/hour. That’s obviously a lot less than she’s worth, but for cost-accounting purposes I’m assuming that I’m paying an employee a bit more than minimum wage.
Also, a lot of what Barbara does, like labeling bottles and envelopes or filling envelopes or taping bottle lids, doesn’t require her full-time attention. She does things like that while sitting in the den watching golf or one of the series she likes on Netflix streaming.
The opportunity cost of Barbara and you doing that stuff is a lot higher than $10 per hour, even taking into account her doing it while watching TV. She could be doinbg something else, or just enjoying the programme more
Of course it is. We’re building a business.
My son had a part time job for a while folding boxes for high end chocolate bars, similar to what you would find a fancy pen and pencil set boxed in. He was paid a nominal price of 10¢ per unit, and between us we perfected the time and motion for the task. He ended up getting paid $12/hr at a time when min. wage was $8/hr, and he watched TV while doing it. Almost as good as a government job! Well, except for the lack of benefits and pension.
Greg wrote: “The opportunity cost of Barbara and you doing that stuff is a lot higher than $10 per hour, even taking into account her doing it while watching TV. She could be doinbg something else, or just enjoying the programme more”
Ever heard the term “Sweat Equity”?
“Of course it is. We’re building a business.”
Oh no you didn’t just say that. Don’t you know Obummer says the government is responsible for building everything.
Well, it’s true that I couldn’t have done it by myself.
When my wife heard BO’s off the cuff remark (she built her own biz, too), she said the Prez should tactfully insert his penile shaft into his rectal orifice. That’s lady talk for go fuck yourself.
These days it seems to me gummit entities go out of their way to regulate, penalize and tax small businesses to death. Where does all the money go?
Welfare. Specifically, welfare for people who are too good to apply for
welfare. You know, government employees.
Long article at the BBC on kids’ chemistry sets of yore and how they have changed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19050342
Apparently, 2011 was a banner year for chemistry set sales (I guess worldwide—it did not really say).
There is not much info about it, but tomorrow marks another EU economic meeting. Rumor has it that this meeting may be the one where action on dismissing Greece from the euro may be undertaken. Apparently, the US Treasury Chief Geithner will be in attendance, which reportedly will be the first time he has actually attended such a meeting, and not just given out his advice before the meetings.
Apparently, EU sentiment has changed during the last several weeks, from the FANG nations wanting to withdraw, to their actively pushing for ejection of those who are not meeting the targets. It may be an interesting weekend in Europe.
It is pretty clear that a new recession is forming in the US; thus Geithner’s excessive interest.
I made a somewhat flip response yesterday regarding the power shortage in India.
My reply did not contribute anything besides a snide and sarcastic opinion, so I’d like to remedy that.
What I’d like to focus on is de-centralization.
I know for Chuck, and others living in the modern, enlightened Western World it’s taken as a given that clean, pure water will run through your taps and that clean, pure electricity will flow though your mains, and that natural gas might also pipe itself down your pipes, but in India that’s not the case and everyone, by and large, gets along just fine even when CNN reports otherwise.
Let us take these three examples in a row, and compare and contrast how different countries deal with them:
Water
Electricity
Natural Gas
1. Water.
Sorry Charlie, but clean water isn’t a right, it’s a responsibility. Anyone and everyone I know in India, and that includes members from the entire income spectrum, either has a water filter or just boils water for drinking. They all know how to take a bath out of a 5 gallon bucket, too.
Let’s contrast this with the exemplar of one reason why I left California in 2004: the endless number of Clean Water Bonds. I’ve voted since 1982, and every year there were more and more Clean Water Bonds. I would dearly love to know the total amount of California indebtedness, present and future, is devoted toward “Clean Water”. The argument is always the same: “1 PPM million of lead will harm our children, so vote Yes!” No matter if farmers use 90% of it irrigating corn, walnuts and other crops, the voters fall for it.
Does your thirst give you a right to my water?
2. Electricity
OFD, I’m sure, can make a case for living without them pesky electrons. Folks I know in India can do quite well with a power cut of a few days or more — and I’m talking across the entire income spectrum.
Upper-middle-class folks often have huge UPS units, and those are not unusual. (For the nonce, we won’t discuss where all that lead comes from)
Lower-middle-class folks take it for granted — they have UPS units for the computer and whatnot, and if the refrigerator goes out it’s simply a time to cook.
Lower-class folks don’t seem to worry about it at all; until they can no longer recharge the cell-phone.
Seems to me that if folks like Edison were in the business of selling electrons, the matter would take care of itself. Edison wouldn’t allow power-leeches, but somehow the leeching business is a big business, involving everyone from politicians to the guy next door.
Does your discharged cell phone give you a right to my electrons?
3. Natural Gas
My favorite! Do you know how the gas for most cooking stoves is sold, delivered and distributed throughout India?
Privately, and through a device conceived not by bureaucrats (who surely know what’s best!), but by greedy capitalists.
It’s called a cylinder. Usually avail in 5 Litres size. Often and usually delivered by bicycle, much as Domino’s delivers pizza.
Does your lack of gas give you a right to mine?
I’m not so good at writing essays, but I hope I’ve made a point here. Point being: if you want things to get done, get the government out of the way.
Yes indeedee, it would be nice if everything ran like it does in Germany or Singapore, but if you want robust redundancy, don’t rely on a central bureaucracy, esp. once which saps and saps and saps non-productive dollars out of a real economy.
Jim
I read your missive, Jim (not sure whether that backtick will cause any problem with proccessing my comment. Ah, hell, let’s give it a try: jim` .), but I didn’t comprehend much past the first couple paragraphs. What on earth would make you think flip, snide, and sarcastic were inappropriate around here and somehow deserving of an apology? Heck, you could even throw in supercilious and no one would bat an eye.
I like Jim’s information on Indian life—more of that please. Sounds like we in the US are really not as independent as the Indians in terms of being able to survive utility interruptions. I cook with electric, so 2 days of no power, would mean there is not much in life I could accomplish. And 2 days would also mean a lot of lost food in the fridge for me. I assume that Indian refrigerators are like the dorm-size units most Europeans have, so not a lot would be lost in a power outage, but I have one of those big American fridges now, and without electricity, I won’t be cooking any of it—it will all be spoiling.
One of the things that would worry me—if I had a generator—is that if an outage lasted a long time (several days to a week), living in a city,—tiny as it is,—the noise of the generator would attract attention to the fact that I have power, while others do not. Having worked around the big whopping generators (almost all big city TV and radio stations have them), I know that they can be silenced to incredible noiselessness, but a Honda in a completely uninsulated garage would ultimately attract some unwanted attention of the wrong kind, I suspect. There is enough crime in Tiny Town (lots of copper stolen, every day of the week—one guy even stole copper off the air-conditioning on the roof of the Bob Evans restaurant in broad daylight), that if word got around I had a generator during a period of several days outage, I imagine I would not have that generator for long, unless it could be silenced almost completely.
There are a whole lot of culturally different things, that I imagine would excite trouble here, should utilities become unreliable, which would not even be a factor in Indian society. I am really not looking to do with less technology in some kind of return to more primitive means—after all, being in the video profession requires electricity, and nearly all-day use of a computer for processing and editing,—but how one would cope with unreliable electric service, is a question I suspect one should have answers for.
SteveF,
I don’t know where I was or am going with my argument either. I still think de-centralization is the point; and that government, for all the good it can or would or should do, is NOT the answer because in most cases it eventually leads to greater problems that it purports to solve.
I also don’t hang around here enough for you guys to get to know me; so throwing out an ad hominem without context like I did a few days ago isn’t fair play for the sake of civilized discussion. I’ve been visiting and living in India on and off for over 10+ years, and take personal interest in her welfare.
I like to compare India’s evolution as a republican “democracy” alongside our own, and we’ve made some bad mistakes which I hope she doesn’t copy. I think I’ve shown that India deals with three “public” utilities in quite a different way than the US does, and I propose the reason it can cope so well is because they are NOT so dependent on a government and bureaucracy.
Sure the trains might run a little cleaner, a little better and more on schedule if they were, but in the event of system-wide breakdown, who you gonna call? GhostBusters?
You don’t have a “right” to clean water, esp, not at my expense.
You don’t have a “right” to free electrons, esp. not at my expense.
You don’t have a “right” to cooking gas, esp. not at my expense.
If you insist those things are rights, along with color TV and Broadband cable access, you’ll have to figure out how to pay for them, and at whose expense. And even if a centralized system for that distribution system might work well for 40 years, what happens when it fails?
jim`
Chuck,
Looks like we cross-posted, so I didn’t get a chance to reply specifically. I love discussing and/or mocking cultural differences ! Ask me about toilet paper some time…
jim`
“Ask me about toilet paper some time…
Jim”
Having spent time in Asia some years ago, toilet paper was a small can maybe the size of a coffee can filled with water next to the commode. Make sure to clean your hand afterwards with soap and water. Same way in Middle Eastern Countries.
On the subject of refrigerators most women went to the wet market early in the morning, nothing to spoil during the day.
Due to large number of people stealing electrical power, a lot of times power outages were done on purpose to save local utilities money. Most bars had backup generators and the beer was cold 😉
Steve
“Most bars had backup generators and the beer was cold ;-)”
Always good to see a man who has his priorities right… 🙂
When I read tour guides for eastern Europe and the ex USSR about 20 years ago they usually recommended taking your own paper. Never been that far east so it’s not a problem for me.
I was amused by a newspaper story of a local woman who was going to the Balkans during the Nineties civil war. She bought enough, ah, feminine hygiene products to last her for her trip, and then some.
The guy behind her in the supermarket queue was looking incredulously at the 128 packets of tampons and panty liners this woman was buying, she just said “It’s been a bad month.”
“Miles_Teg says:
Most bars had backup generators and the beer was cold
Always good to see a man who has his priorities right… ”
Back in my navy days I could keep up with the best of them drinking beer, this includes the great people of Darwin! 🙂
Another advantage of hanging out in the bars besides the cold beer and cute waitresses was the A/C. The humidity was suffocating most times.
Sadly not much of a drinker these days. ;-(
I used to work with a chap who was a serious drinker. He told the story once of a visit to the US where he went to a tavern and drank the locals under the table. They were used to “lite” beer (not sure what that means in US terms), he was used to full strength beer (starts at 5% and goes up). They simply couldn’t keep up and soon had rubber legs. Sean was just warming up. I can’t boast, I don’t have his “training” so I would have been under the table even before your compatriots.
He’s lucky he didn’t take on a bunch of fraternity boys. I was nowhere near the heaviest drinker around when I was in college, but over the course of several hours at parties I sometimes went through a case or more (call it 8 to 12 liters) of beer (5% to 6% ABV) or malt liquor (6% to 7% ABV) and was still mostly coherent and able to walk around. Well, kind of stagger around.
Nowadays, I have a beer or two every few months, usually when we’re at dinner with Paul and Mary. I can feel the effect after just one or two beers. Granted, they’re usually one-liter mugs, but even so.
We have sold a lot of software in India over the years. Since all of their utilities are government owned, such as GAIL, dealing with them is a nightmare. When they have a invitation to bid, the first thing that they want is a bond of 15% of your bid. That bond must be deposited in a local bank. Chase cannot do that for you as it can in every country in the world. The other fees and customs are a total nightmare also. The result is that we only do business in India with those people who pay us by MasterCard or Visa.
One of my employees is from Madras. When he went back a few year ago, no private cars are allowed in the city limits anymore. He thinks that about 45,000,000 people are living in a area the size of 100 square miles. The traffic strictly limited to buses and motor scooters. And the pollution…
Based on my more recent forays into eastern Europe, toilet paper is not something you need to bring anymore. There is nowhere near the spectrum of choice we are used to in the West, but there is at least one of everything you need as basics, including women’s sanitary products.
We lived just fine with a miniature fridge in Berlin (and I do mean miniature, if you have never been abroad), but society is still built on neighborhoods in most of the world outside the US, and we regularly (almost every day) stopped at a grocery store near to where we worked, which took no time at all. In Tiny Town, the nearest grocery store is over 2 miles from my house (used to be a 5 minute walk when the stores were downtown), and a trip to them is well beyond a minimal effort. That is why I usually buy 2 weeks at a time; thus, a bigger fridge is a necessity.
As far as private enterprise running utilities and other basic delivery services, I’m flat-out against it. Duke Energy is in the middle of a huge lawsuit in Indiana for several types of felony collusion affecting rates and service. The former chief executive could serve significant time in jail, if convicted. We do not need ANY for-profit business running delivery of basic services—especially monopoly ones. The mess of government utilities being sold to private enterprise in Indiana is just that—a bloody mess, with rates skyrocketing, solely so those businesses can reap huge profits and go off and buy yet more utilities, while the top executives get the kind of pay you would expect in private business: many, many multiples of what the CEO’s in the government-run utilities were making. Meanwhile, service outages for electric now last days under Duke, instead of hours with the government-owned utilities. No wonder—they have cut the service force by over half (moved all the service people to 30-minute away Muncie and closed the Tiny Town bill payment office), while doubling rates to over twice what the public electric company needed for the same service. There is no way private enterprise delivers a better product than government, in the places I have lived during the course of my life. No way.
Is that doubling of rates related to the shift from government ownership to private, or the Obama Administration’s war on coal?
Chuck,
I could smell that coming a mile away, which is why I ask:
At whose expense do you have a “right” to your “basic” utilities?
Does your hunger for extra electrons give you a right to mine?
Does your hunger for bread give you a right to mine?
Does your anemia give you a right to my blood?
I think I’ve shown that de-centralized, private utilities for power, water and gas are more robust and fault-tolerant than planned, bureaucratic systems involving taxes and pensions and unfunded governement liabilities; yet you seem to think you deserve them, much as you seem to think you deserve a grocery store less than 2 miles away, lol.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, so takes your pick: governmental parasitism involving use of force to deny my property rights, or free enterprise.
The whole matter boils down to Property Rights, and you can’t escape that principle. Please demonstrate why you have any claim or “right” whatsoever, under any circumstances, to my property.
I’d also love to take up the toilet-paper question.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5142
According to these figures, the USA spends 5.7 BILLION dollars on tp, at what cost to the precious environment is anyone’s guess. You wanna “Save The Planet?” Ditch the Tp!
As steve in colorado pointed out, a can of water suffices for much of the world’s population.
May I submit that more people are trying to move to Canada and the US, than to India, and that TP is one of the (many) reasons?
I guess I’ll just have to stay here in the US. Australia won’t take me. Canada probably won’t, either. Even India might not.
Germany won’t take me back, as I am now past their retirement age, and they do not want anybody coming in, who is past that age. When we first arrived, we were both young enough that we still had the ability to work the 15 years to qualify for their version of Social Security. But that whole plan has now changed, and by leaving, I lost my grandfathering under the old plan.
I just took the Canadian test, which requires a score of 67/100 for Barbara and me to pass and enter as a skilled worker. I got a 67, primarily because of my age and because neither of us speaks French. I suppose we could take a French course to achieve competency and boost our score that way. Australia doesn’t want me at all.
At one point in time, back in the ’70’s, Australia would take anyone with 2 years or more experience in radio or TV. Not sure why they have become so anti-immigration, but a friend in the UK who had an uncle living in Ozland (mother’s brother), tried to move there with her mother when she was in her mid 30’s in the early ’90’s, and they refused them both.
RBT wrote:
“He’s lucky he didn’t take on a bunch of fraternity boys. I was nowhere near the heaviest drinker around when I was in college, but over the course of several hours at parties I sometimes went through a case or more (call it 8 to 12 liters) of beer (5% to 6% ABV) or malt liquor (6% to 7% ABV) and was still mostly coherent and able to walk around. Well, kind of stagger around.”
Frat boys wouldn’t last five minutes against Sean. He really knew how to drink.
I’ve never been a serious drinker at any stage of my life, certainly not in Sean’s league. Once I had five margaritas over dinner, another time six over lunch. On the latter occasion I could barely walk in a straight line, or even a random walk, back to work. I don’t like the feeling of too much alcohol so I don’t even try now. In summer after mowing the lawn a couple of VBs don’t touch the sides, but three is the upper limit, after which I need a few hours alcohol free before I try again.
You need to marry one of the locals to get to live here. Ditch Barbara, marry a Kiwi chick (they have the right to live here without a visa) and you should be okay to move here. There are plenty of eligible Kiwi chicks available because the Kiwi guys have, ah, other interests.
Actually, a family my younger niece stayed with in Bristol were given permission to move here. Took about three tries before they got permission. Of course, you should say you’re a computer programmer, mathematician or physicist on your application. We have enough pharmacists already, which is what 99% of people think of when they hear the word “chemist”.
Chuck wrote:
“At one point in time, back in the ’70′s, Australia would take anyone with 2 years or more experience in radio or TV.”
In the late Sixties and early Seventies we’d take anyone who’d trained as a computer programmer, or who could even lie semi-convincingly about it. As a result we had zillions of Poms in the industry.
Nowadays it’s a fair bit harder. Skilled immigrants are generally welcome, but the best chance is to marry someone who’s already here. A friend who’s a highly competent secretary at a very senior level said she couldn’t get permission to live here unless she married a local. Unfortunately the local she fancied didn’t propose.
At whose expense do you have a “right” to your “basic” utilities?
Does your hunger for extra electrons give you a right to mine?
…
Please demonstrate why you have any claim or “right” whatsoever, under any circumstances, to my property.
I am baffled at that perspective, because I don’t think all electrons belong to you, and thus any I would like to purchase is somehow stealing from you. I just do not buy that. Nor do I agree that if the government delivers electrons, that is somehow stealing them from you, while if private enterprise delivers them, it is not stealing.
There is nothing any more inherently evil about government delivering services, than private enterprise. In fact, I would venture that—in this country—there is considerably less hanky-panky that goes on when government does the job than in private industry, as the Duke affair here is proving—and it is just one of way too many private enterprises being caught and charged with committing felony criminal offenses these days. And one thing about government delivery of my electricity: my money going to government for that service never paid for Congressional lobbying or campaign contributions, like it is now.
As far as “taxes and pensions and unfunded governement liabilities”, we are talking about a service here. Not sure how it is in your community, but take water, for instance: Tiny Town has a charter that requires water to be delivered “at cost”. So the city is recovering all their costs and there are no associated taxes, unfunded pensions or government liabilities. You use water, you pay to the city the full cost of obtaining the water, processing it, billing for it, maintaining the pipes for delivery, but no more.
About Dave’s question regarding Obama and rate increases—Duke bought out my power utility quite a bit before Obama became a household word. Rates were amazingly flat since the early ‘80’s, until Duke entered the picture.
…you seem to think you deserve them, much as you seem to think you deserve a grocery store less than 2 miles away….
That is way off-base. What I said was that having a tiny refrigerator in Germany, was not any kind of sacrifice, because there were so many grocery stores close to our daily paths, that shopping nearly every day was no real problem. That, of course, is not possible in the US, and thus nearly 100% of the US population has a fridge at least as big as mine, which can hold 2 weeks of groceries or more. I would not walk 80 minutes to my nearest grocery every day, even if I had the time, nor would I drive to it every day, just to have a dorm-size refrigerator, instead of the standard Sears model I—and most people I know in the US—have. Nowhere did I say I deserved a grocery closer than 2 miles away; that was not even remotely my point. It is an indisputable fact of life that Americans have much larger refrigerators than Europeans. I merely explained why.
It very well may be that India has a system that better copes with interruptions and delivery problems than the US does, but I would venture that costs of delivery are less in the US per unit used, and that there is considerably more efficiency per unit produced and used in the US. I have read that India subsidizes almost all their utilities at various levels,—and that really IS stealing,—whereas the subsidies to utilities like the REMC’s in the US (at least in the Midwest) ended decades ago.
My original comment attests to my lack of knowledge about life in India—which actually is one of my biggest peeves about Americans, who imagine life all over the planet is the same as here. This time, I am the ugly American, not having a clue about life in India.
Regarding TP, I do not consider it some kind of selfish act to use it, rather than a demonstrably unsanitary water bucket (I have a doctor’s appointment Monday, and I am going to ask him what he thinks about water buckets vs. TP). The inference that we would somehow be better off if we lived like pioneers or the third world does not resonate at all with me. My Walmart has an entire aisle of TP of every kind and description. (Which reminds me, I need some next time I am there.) Paper is a renewable resource, and increased planting of trees for those cut down WILL save the planet. I am sure glad I live in the part of civilization I do, in the age I do. I would definitely not choose any previous era. Pioneer life was super-hard and short. My forebearers in Tiny Town, died before reaching 60. By contrast, the last 2 generations have made it almost to 90 (which I attribute primarily to government-instituted clean water standards). Modern life is safer, more healthful, more productive, and requires less effort to do the requirements of living than ever before. I am not a Calvinist by any stretch, and no one is hurting anybody else by using TP instead of a water bucket.
Skilled immigrants are generally welcome, but the best chance is to marry someone who’s already here.
My stepson, who was married to a German, had 2 kids at the time and a “Beamter” job (a step higher on the ladder than plain old civil servant) was told by German immigration that he was going to be deported. This was at a time when Germany was desperate to have the patter of more little German feet in the country. Took a lawyer and a change in case workers at immigration to get that resolved. Legally, all he needed was to be married to a German, but bureaucracy being what it is…
Chuck, no one accuses you of being a Calvinist. You’re a bit too godless for that.
People’s opinion varies about toilet paper. I read once about a female Indian opera singer in London who was almost sick at the thought of all those unwashed bottoms in the audience. And then in a course I did at ANU a film from India was shown which had a snippet of a guy in public washing his arse (fortunately out of frame). We all groaned. Who wants to see that?
As to the talk of public verses government provision of utilities I’m almost entirely on Chuck’s side, and couldn’t work out the pointy Jim was trying to make. I’d like government to be fairly minimal but there are some sectors where it makes sense, such as electricity, water and telecommunications networks and airports. No government should own or operate airlines, there’s no need for that but most cities only need one airport for passenger planes and so the entry cost for a competitor is too high. This means that a private owner can set extortionate prices with no fear of competition. This, of course, is exactly what happened when Sydney Airport was sold doff. The owners greatly increased prices and treated airlines, passengers and concession holders like dirt.
I remember seeing my parent’s water bill in 1970, when the utility was a government department. They were being charged 4 cents per 1000 gallons. It’s been privatised since then and the price has has gone through the roof. Same with electricity. When Sir Thomas Playford set up the Electricity Trust of South Australia the unit cost of electricity was set to the minimum possible to attract industry, and hence jobs. ETSA was “leased” (for 200 years) to the private sector in the late Nineties and of course electricity bills have risen dramatically. The forerunner of ETSA, the privately held Adelaide Electric Supply Company (run by dorks in London) deliberately bought boilers that could only use black coal – from South Africa or the strike bound eastern states of Australia. Now, how stupid is that? ETSA procured boilers that could use brown coal from Leigh Creek in South Australia – a much more reliable source. So who says private is always smarter than public?
Here in Canberra the water supply is basically private having been gradually moved out of the public sector by governments greedy for money to pork barrel their favourite projects. I used to get a yearly allowance of 450 kl of water included in the basic charge, now I get zero for “free” and have to pay for every kl. And I sure do pay. I’m very frugal with water, practically never water the garden, but my water supply charge just keeps going up and up. We ended a major drought here 2-3 years ago, in which we had strict rationing. The water company put up the rate per kl to encourage “conservation”. Now the dams are overflowing – literally – and rainfall supplies everyone’s garden needs. As a result the water company lost revenue. How did they react? By putting up the rate to compensate for lost revenue. Most free enterprise companies reduce their charges when they start selling less of their product.
I’m not anti-free enterprise, of course, but I don’t buy the free market ideologues mantra that the market will sort it all out. That just doesn’t always work. To paraphrase Einstein: “The government should be as large as necessary, but no larger, and as small as possible, but no smaller.
Maybe I am old fashioned. I agree that private enterprise is likely to provide better service than a government-run organization. However, I think some degree of regulation is important.
Take electricity as an example. If you include the maintenance of the cables (which is kind of important), then you have the situation referred to as a “natural monopoly”. Meaning that you don’t want x sets of wires going everywhere, but whoever maintains the single set has a position of unusual power. In a case like this, I think the best approach is to use government regulation to guide company behavior using capitalistic incentives (read: pay money for good behavior, impose fines for bad behavior).
A simple example: In a pure free-market, it may well be in a power company’s interest to have blackouts, rather than building extra generating capacity to handle peak loads. For example, black out the slums when middle-class air-conditioning demand hits a peak during mid-afternoon. Government regulation can counteract this by imposing a fine for blackouts and/or paying a reward for long periods of service with no interruptions.
Who cares about the slums? 🙂
Here in Oz Telstra (the successor to the government owned telco) was the owner of the copper wire between the exchanges and homes/businesses. Their competitors owned their own backbone but not the last mile to the end consumer, which wasn’t economic for them to build in most cases. Of course, Telstra charged its competitors more for access to the last mile than they charged their own customers.
Dang! Wrong day again. See Friday.
[quote] As to the talk of public verses government provision of utilities I’m almost entirely on Chuck’s side, and couldn’t work out the pointy Jim was trying to make. I’d like government to be fairly minimal but there are some sectors where it makes sense, such as electricity, water and telecommunications networks and airports.[/quote]
The [i]pointy[/i] Jim was trying to make is that if Edison were selling electrons he’d keep track of how they were sold and there’d be little [i] slippage[/i], or whatever they call shoplifting these days.
In India, Kerala specifically, official figures say something like 40% of the electrons generated are pilfered. You can imagine the real figures are likely to be higher, but there’s a collusion to keep that quiet, much as there’s a collusion to keep it an entirely Public enterprise.
I’m with Brad who said, [quote] Maybe I am old fashioned. I agree that private enterprise is likely to provide better service than a government-run organization. However, I think some degree of regulation is important. [/quote]
Drawing the line is the hard part…
Re TP: I was being slighly facetious, but my point is that the “environmental impactfullness” of using TP contributes meaningfully to CO2 and the environment. Imagine what would happen if you washed your butt with water and washed your hands afterwards? No little Klingons, for one thing…
And as a matter of public health, why doesn’t the “gubbmint” legislate hand-wash stations at every McDonalds? Hand-mouth contamination is surely the most common vector for disease. In India that’s dealt by a cultural, NOT governmental, authority.
I hate this WordPress thing, and would love to contribute more, but the format seems more suited to snipes and gripes than conversation. I’d love to address and discuss Chuck’s argument in more detail, but in this little Twitter box it’s very hard to follow a conversation.