Counting down...

[Rob C]

Life can be a tough mother:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_1zZ8Xx64

;-)

[RSL]

One of the easiest to understand examples of how well socialism works is the history of the Plymouth Colony.

[JoeKitchen]

FWIW the people I've spoken to who have been on beach holidays to Cuba have been disappointed. Those who went more off the beaten track had a great time.  What Cuban officials like, I have no idea, and I suspect neither do you.

My god, a statement you and I actually agree with!  I had a great time getting lost in Havana, and not just because I like cigars and rum. 

[JoeKitchen]

And your point is?  Some travellers travel to a communist country, see dilapidated buildings, and conclude that dilapidation is an inevitable result of a political system.  Are their conclusions more valid than those of the beach-dwellers?

The dilapidated buildings of Havana are a direct result of having in wall rain gutters (ascetically pleasing I'll admit) that are never cleaned or maintained.  So they rust, crack and start letting water into the baring walls, which eventually causes the building to collapse.  I ran into an architect when I was in Havana, and this is the actual reason why so many of Havana's buildings are falling apart. 

Now, who is to blame for this, well the property owners of course for not keeping up with maintenance.  Who are the property owners of those buildings, the communist government.  So, in fact, the communist government is directly to blame for the dilapidated buildings of Havana. 

Personally I feel that it is impossible for the same entity to both inspect/regulate and then maintain their property.  If you allow either private enterprise or the government to do both, in either case you end up with people cutting corners and pretty poor results.  You need a single entity, separate from the owners, to do the inspections and then require the owners to do the maintenance.  Unfortunately, by definition, in a communist country the government acts as both the inspectors and owners who do the repairs.  This is impossible to avoid in this type of governance, and part of the reason why things go awry in communism. 

[Alan Klein]

The dilapidated buildings of Havana are a direct result of having in wall rain gutters (ascetically pleasing I'll admit) that are never cleaned or maintained.  So they rust, crack and start letting water into the baring walls, which eventually causes the building to collapse.  I ran into an architect when I was in Havana, and this is the actual reason why so many of Havana's buildings are falling apart. 

Now, who is to blame for this, well the property owners of course for not keeping up with maintenance.  Who are the property owners of those buildings, the communist government.  So, in fact, the communist government is directly to blame for the dilapidated buildings of Havana. 

Personally I feel that it is impossible for the same entity to both inspect/regulate and then maintain their property.  If you allow either private enterprise or the government to do both, in either case you end up with people cutting corners and pretty poor results.  You need a single entity, separate from the owners, to do the inspections and then require the owners to do the maintenance.  Unfortunately, by definition, in a communist country the government acts as both the inspectors and owners who do the repairs.  This is impossible to avoid in this type of governance, and part of the reason why things go awry in communism. 

I worked for a few years for a NYC governmental agency.  It was at the end of my career that had always been in the private sphere.  (Well, except when served in the USAF). In any case, while in the government, I realized that if we changed one of our procedures, we could save a lot of (taxpayer) money.  So I went to my immediate boss and told him I have this plan.  And he interrupted me, looked me straight in the eyes,  and asked, "What do you care what it costs?"

That's why we need to keep government out of business. 

[LesPalenik]

I worked for a few years for a NYC governmental agency.  It was at the end of my career that had always been in the private sphere.  (Well, except when served in the USAF). In any case, while in the government, I realized that if we changed one of our procedures, we could save a lot of (taxpayer) money.  So I went to my immediate boss and told him I have this plan.  And he interrupted me, looked me straight in the eyes,  and asked, "What do you care what it costs?"

That's why we need to keep government out of business.

Best and most illustrative post in this thread.

[Rob C]

Best and most illustrative post in this thread.

No, it's why you need better vetting of those you promote to officers, either in the armed forces as per Alan's example, or in public office.

Also, it's crazy for anyone to state that the same entity can't both own, regulate and maintain and keep in good condition. Every person who owns their own home (house, as distinct from apartment which involves communities and communal regulations) has to do exactly that. In all cases, the quality of that state comes down to the money available to the owner to spend on mantaining the property. Poor lands have limited resources. Period.

Slum landlords; how do they get away with it? Do they salt away the money, or can they not collect it in the first place? There are no absolutes in these matters.

Rob

[Alan Klein]

No, it's why you need better vetting of those you promote to officers, either in the armed forces as per Alan's example, or in public office.

...


Rob

Unfortunately, Rob, government and governmental employees learn not to care about money except to keep things within their budgets.  Government also encourages huge goofing off.  Half the people around me did nothing or maybe worked three days a week out of five.  They'd "disappear around 1pm in the afternoon saying they were going to a job site when they really went home.  No one cared other than to keep their job.  Yes, there were many who worked very hard and did a great job.  But the environment creates sloveness and lack of caring.  Lack of profit motive in government raises cost to do things.  Also, many in government never worked in private industry.  They have no concept of profit and think spending is the answer to everything.  They're more concerned about getting votes than saving tax money. "Why should they care what it costs?"

[JoeKitchen]

Unfortunately, Rob, government and governmental employees learn not to care about money except to keep things within their budgets.  Government also encourages huge goofing off.  Half the people around me did nothing or maybe worked three days a week out of five.  They'd "disappear around 1pm in the afternoon saying they were going to a job site when they really went home.  No one cared other than to keep their job.  Yes, there were many who worked very hard and did a great job.  But the environment creates sloveness and lack of caring.  Lack of profit motive in government raises cost to do things.  Also, many in government never worked in private industry.  They have no concept of profit and think spending is the answer to everything.  They're more concerned about getting votes than saving tax money. "Why should they care what it costs?"

Although a little different than the point you are making, but this reminds me of a somewhat disconcerting theory I recently heard of, Price's Law.  It essentially states that within any group, half the work is done by the square root of the group size.  So if you have a company of 9, 3 of those people do half the work.  If you have a company of 100, only 10 do half the work, and so on.  So, "as your company grows, incompetence grows exponentially and competence grows linearly."  Being that government is just so large, maybe this is another reason why government is so incompetent. 

It is also the case that most supervisors really don't know who the top performers (but they know who they are), which sows discontent and often leads to top performers leaving.  Of course in a business when a few top performers leave, the company starts to go into a death spiral and if competence does not return, the business goes under.  In government though, the result is often much different; they get more funding. 

[OmerV]

I worked for a few years for a NYC governmental agency.  It was at the end of my career that had always been in the private sphere.  (Well, except when served in the USAF). In any case, while in the government, I realized that if we changed one of our procedures, we could save a lot of (taxpayer) money.  So I went to my immediate boss and told him I have this plan.  And he interrupted me, looked me straight in the eyes,  and asked, "What do you care what it costs?"

That's why we need to keep government out of business.

You have a point, Alan. Not knowing the possible side effects of the medicines we take would make life easier, I suppose.

[Alan Klein]

Although a little different than the point you are making, but this reminds me of a somewhat disconcerting theory I recently heard of, Price's Law.  It essentially states that within any group, half the work is done by the square root of the group size.  So if you have a company of 9, 3 of those people do half the work.  If you have a company of 100, only 10 do half the work, and so on.  So, "as your company grows, incompetence grows exponentially and competence grows linearly."  Being that government is just so large, maybe this is another reason why government is so incompetent. 

It is also the case that most supervisors really don't know who the top performers (but they know who they are), which sows discontent and often leads to top performers leaving.  Of course in a business when a few top performers leave, the company starts to go into a death spiral and if competence does not return, the business goes under.  In government though, the result is often much different; they get more funding. 

Price Law sounds about right. Thanks for mentioning it.  In a good private business however, the deadbeats finally lose their jobs. If not, the business dies and the better companies get their customers.  That's a good thing in an economy.  It weeds out marginal business.  It produces better products at cheaper costs for the public to consume.  With government, the agency goes on forever and even grows.  And the workers rarely lose their jobs.  Useless agencies that should be cut to a quarter their size or eliminated altogether. 

[Rob C]

Unfortunately, Rob, government and governmental employees learn not to care about money except to keep things within their budgets.  Government also encourages huge goofing off.  Half the people around me did nothing or maybe worked three days a week out of five.  They'd "disappear around 1pm in the afternoon saying they were going to a job site when they really went home.  No one cared other than to keep their job.  Yes, there were many who worked very hard and did a great job.  But the environment creates sloveness and lack of caring.  Lack of profit motive in government raises cost to do things.  Also, many in government never worked in private industry.  They have no concept of profit and think spending is the answer to everything.  They're more concerned about getting votes than saving tax money. "Why should they care what it costs?"

Oh yeah, I have to agree with what you say, having been given anecdotal, first-hand accounts (from family) of empire-building within local government, of pretending to require more staff than the department has work for such to do; seniority and responsibility-based salary payments come onto play. It's a bit sick, but in the end, doesn't excuse the fact that there are few checks and balances, only externally applied budgets which, if not used to the full during a given year, get cut the next time round. It's the system that creates the abuses. My relative got the hell out and went on to make his fortune ploughing his own field of related work. Partly, not just professional competence here, but loads of street smarts, something I never owned to any noticeable degree, cocooned in the faith that knowing your job was all it took. Innocence.

The relevance of working in private industry is real, and even more do I believe that everybody can but benefit from the experience of self-employment, especially the experience of failure within it. That drives away any residual imaginings about life owing us a living. Which said, a caring society does much - or could - to help folks make it through the night.

[Rob C]

Price Law sounds about right. Thanks for mentioning it.  In a good private business however, the deadbeats finally lose their jobs. If not, the business dies and the better companies get their customers.  That's a good thing in an economy.  It weeds out marginal business.  It produces better products at cheaper costs for the public to consume.  With government, the agency goes on forever and even grows.  And the workers rarely lose their jobs.  Useless agencies that should be cut to a quarter their size or eliminated altogether.

Marginal businesses. Why do you want to destroy them? They feed a family or go under; many just soldier on and keep Mum & Dad self-employed; why not leave them alone to keep on truckin' doing their thing? To do otherwise sounds terribly authoritarian and non- as well as anti-constitutional to me: a withdrawal of part of their rights, probably enshrined somewhere deeply in the small print of your olde Constitution... if you can let them own bazookas (the Dads, too) then is a tiny business too radical a step?

[Alan Klein]

Oh yeah, I have to agree with what you say, having been given anecdotal, first-hand accounts (from family) of empire-building within local government, of pretending to require more staff than the department has work for such to do; seniority and responsibility-based salary payments come onto play. It's a bit sick, but in the end, doesn't excuse the fact that there are few checks and balances, only externally applied budgets which, if not used to the full during a given year, get cut the next time round. It's the system that creates the abuses. My relative got the hell out and went on to make his fortune ploughing his own field of related work. Partly, not just professional competence here, but loads of street smarts, something I never owned to any noticeable degree, cocooned in the faith that knowing your job was all it took. Innocence.

The relevance of working in private industry is real, and even more do I believe that everybody can but benefit from the experience of self-employment, especially the experience of failure within it. That drives away any residual imaginings about life owing us a living. Which said, a caring society does much - or could - to help folks make it through the night.

Well, after twenty years of always making payroll, my business came to an end anyway. I didn't have the kind of street smarts either or personality to expand.   Like you said, there's more to making it work beside job knowledge.  But you really learn a lot.  It gets the juices going.   Also, $250K in legal costs to defend myself in a Federal Court patent and intellectual property case did not help either.    (I lost at trial but didn't have money left to appeal.)  But I learned a lot about the legal system.  At one point, I had a dispute with my own lawyer.  He told the judge I wasn't paying him fast enough and wanted to be dismissed from the case.  So we we met in the judge's chambers for a powwow.  The judge, a former lawyer of course, took my lawyer's position.  I complained it wasn't "fair".  So the judge looked me right in the eyes saying, "Well, Mr. Klein, you know the American jurisprudence system isn't always fair."  I was stunned to be told this directly by the judge.  Can you imagine that?  Knocked the wind out of my sails.  Lesson learned.

Regarding those who need help, I'm all for that.  But we don;t have the money any longer.  And I guess things are not "fair" in life for everyone.  Stuff happens.  But somehow we muddle through. 

[Alan Klein]

Marginal businesses. Why do you want to destroy them? They feed a family or go under; many just soldier on and keep Mum & Dad self-employed; why not leave them alone to keep on truckin' doing their thing? To do otherwise sounds terribly authoritarian and non- as well as anti-constitutional to me: a withdrawal of part of their rights, probably enshrined somewhere deeply in the small print of your olde Constitution... if you can let them own bazookas (the Dads, too) then is a tiny business too radical a step?

The government doesn;t put them out of business.  Other private businesses do that by providing a better product.  If a photographer can;t sell his photos because others are selling better ones, should the government subsidize him?  That's not in our Constitution although the government has subsidized companies for political reasons. (The car companies in 2009. Energy companies like Solyndra who went out of business anyway for over 5 years to the tune or $39 billion a year. Oil companies with the oil depletion tax allowance.) 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Half the people around me did nothing or maybe worked three days a week out of five.  They'd "disappear around 1pm in the afternoon saying they were going to a job site when they really went home...

No way, Alan, you are just peddling fake news! Surely someone would notice their absence!?

“Spanish civil servant who had €50,000 salary but failed to do a day's work for ten years banned from post”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/10/ban-spanish-civil-servant-paid-50000-year-despite-not-turning/

[Rob C]

Well, after twenty years of always making payroll, my business came to an end anyway. I didn't have the kind of street smarts either or personality to expand.   Like you said, there's more to making it work beside job knowledge.  But you really learn a lot.  It gets the juices going.   Also, $250K in legal costs to defend myself in a Federal Court patent and intellectual property case did not help either.    (I lost at trial but didn't have money left to appeal.)  But I learned a lot about the legal system.  At one point, I had a dispute with my own lawyer.  He told the judge I wasn't paying him fast enough and wanted to be dismissed from the case.  So we we met in the judge's chambers for a powwow.  The judge, a former lawyer of course, took my lawyer's position.  I complained it wasn't "fair".  So the judge looked me right in the eyes saying, "Well, Mr. Klein, you know the American jurisprudence system isn't always fair."  I was stunned to be told this directly by the judge.  Can you imagine that?  Knocked the wind out of my sails.  Lesson learned.

Regarding those who need help, I'm all for that.  But we don;t have the money any longer.  And I guess things are not "fair" in life for everyone.  Stuff happens.  But somehow we muddle through.

Lawyers and going to court: I learned the hard way. I did a week's shoot for a tour operator company, my second for that firm, and during the course of the shoot in Spain the operator's location manager, who was there with me all the time, asked if I could extend the shoot a further week. i asked that he check it out with HQ, and he got back telling me it was okay.

So, I worked that additional week, and job done, sent in my invoice to the advertising agency. You know what's coming: the agency denied all knowledge of that additional week and so I got in touch with a lawyer across the road from my studio at the time.

One thing led to another, and the tour operator decided to claim against me for work that was never on the list I had to cover. I realised I couldn't afford to fight the company, and went to see them. We agreed to call off our respective dogs. The upshot was that the extra week for which the tour operator had asked me to work was never paid, the money the agency paid me for the original week was lost, as was he as a client, in paying the lawyer's fee for writing a couple of letters. And you know what the mother told me at the end of it all? It was my fault for not knowing the difference between the principal contractor (the ad agency) and the tour company, who were not my clients, but those of the ad agency. You'd have imagined the guy could have told me that the day I walked into his office.

As they sometimes say on tv: I rest my case. And yeah, live and learn.

:-)

[Rob C]

The government doesn;t put them out of business.  Other private businesses do that by providing a better product.  If a photographer can;t sell his photos because others are selling better ones, should the government subsidize him?  That's not in our Constitution although the government has subsidized companies for political reasons. (The car companies in 2009. Energy companies like Solyndra who went out of business anyway for over 5 years to the tune or $39 billion a year. Oil companies with the oil depletion tax allowance.)

Nevertheless, those that survive are still marginal, so why do you believe they should die, by governmental hand or not, or by big business?

If they can struggle on and keep their independence, good for them!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Marginal businesses. Why do you want to destroy them?..l

Rob, “Price’s Law” is a law just like Godwin Law is. Which means it isn’t. Just a rule of thumb. Not a legal document.

Or Parkinson’s Law: "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

[Alan Klein]

No way, Alan, you are just peddling fake news! Surely someone would notice their absence!?

“Spanish civil servant who had €50,000 salary but failed to do a day's work for ten years banned from post”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/10/ban-spanish-civil-servant-paid-50000-year-despite-not-turning/

Well, my immediate supervisor was one of those who use to do that.