• uphillbothways@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Ya know what was a foundational part of the American dream? Pensions. Ya know which employers still offer them? Counties, states and the federal government.

    Private companies exist solely to make the people at the top very rich based on the stolen value of employee labor while dumping catastrophic losses in the public sphere. That’s capitalism in a nutshell.

    You’d have to be unbelievably gullible, naive, traumatized AND brainwashed to be a diehard for a system like that. But, somehow they’ve managed it. A deluded nation of Amway top performers just one move away from making their own imaginary millions. All simping for the system.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Yesterday an American accidentally admitted that they tip their landlord. It was at that point I said to myself “man you fuckers deserve to suffer under whatever republican you end up voting for next election because we all know that’s what you dumb ass motherfuckers are going to do”

    • IHadTwoCows@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Telecommunications Act. 1996. The Great Brainwashing where the Party began telling you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears.

      The best part? …if you endorse force and shick therespy to fix this fucking shit even the “leftists” will call you a violent fascist. Everyone got brainwashed.

  • grte@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    You wanna know something else? The majority of the world economy is already centrally planned. Not on the national level, on the corporate level. Business is dominated by a relatively few giant corporations with internal economies the size of some nations. None of them run free markets internally. Sears experimented with it, to their demise. Central planning is already the primary way that our economic lives are driven. It’s just we let unaccountable billionaires do the planning instead of an elected body.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      People’s Republic of Walmart, a very good book which goes into detail about how successful corporations use communist-styled organization and how we could have that for ourselves if we all decided to stop funneling all our hard worked dollars up billionaire noses.

  • 🦥󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Australia is a live example of the fact that they’re not. The state and federal governments have privatised a crap load of services and all they do is continue to hike our bills while providing less and less service. Electricity, water supply, employment services and more are now an absolute joke here.

    • set_secret@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yep because what’s more important than efficient, cost effective services? Spoiler, it’s profit.

      • 🦥󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Exactly what’s about to happen to employment services in Australia too. They spend more money chasing a hand full of people who don’t want to work than just continuing to pay them the pittance they exist on and have people apply to be the CEO of huge corporations who dropped out of high school in order to make their quotas. Government just announced an inquiry with the aim to reinstate control over it.

      • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yes, if not for when the Labor (sic) party got into power that one time, we’d all still be stuck on ADSL2 at best, and dialup at worst, depending on how close you live to a major-ish city. The NBN was a government infrastructure initiative. One which got gutted and watered down as soon as the Liberals got back in.

        Oh, and I’ve heard industry insiders claim that the mixed technology stack employed in the “new NBN” – FTTP for some places that already got it, FTTN for everywhere else in the city, fixed wireless or satellite for rural areas – is more expensive on an ongoing basis due to complications than just rolling out more fibre would have been in the long run.

      • galloog1@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Government consultant here. The federal government does nothing if it is not military related or medical care in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Everything they produce is done via contract. That includes leadership which is queued up using consulting. Sure, they make the decisions but that’s not management or the visionary leadership people think it is. It’s all contract management.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Only someone who has never worked for a large corporation could hold the belief that corporations are efficient at making their product.

    They’re very efficient at funneling money to their executives and owners though.

    • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Only someone who has never worked for the government could hold the belief that they are more efficient at doing anything at all at any time.

      • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        I’ve worked for the government both as an employee and a contractor. I’ve also worked for small and large companies. The government was by far better at accomplishing the actual objective / product. The worst government entity I worked for though was a city government. Those are terrible.

  • Punkie@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Having worked for both, I would say that most government offices are eternal, whereas private companies can vanish quickly. Sometimes without warning. Its really hard to kill a government office.

    Makes me wonder, how did a necessary office survive during a junta or an overthrow? For example, how did the office of a postal clerk change from 1925 to 1955 in, say, Berlin? How does the average Salvadoran DMV worker view the changes in El Salvador since 1980?

    How was a tax office run in ancient Babylon versus a modern one today?

    I bet there’s some weird insights into human civilization to be found in those stories.

    • _danny@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      My understanding is that the more removed you are from the “top” of the government pyramid, the less you are affected by disruptions of that position. Largely when a new face or party takes over (by force or otherwise) very seldom do they want to rebuild everything from the ground up and will keep most of the bipartisan offices untouched.

      If a very violent coup is successful and they’re planning punishments for all “government officials” the postman in a rural village is going to be pretty low on that list.

  • NewPerspective@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    My mom mockingly said once “do you want your doctor visits to be just like the DMV?”

    Nope, I want my doctor visits to be more like the USPS. Compare their numbers to UPS or any of the others and it’s night and day.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      My last trip to the DMV was surprisingly smooth. They finally implemented appointments, and, unlikely private doctors, they didn’t make me wait in the lobby for 30minutes to 1 hour and then in the examination room for another 15-30 minutes.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      My mom mockingly said once “do you want your doctor visits to be just like the DMV?”

      My answer would be “yes, because that’d be an improvement!”

  • nycki@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I remember in college we took a course on economic efficiency and the short takeaway is “the free market is extremely efficient, but only when the competing parties start with equal resources. the more inequal the starting position, the less efficient the market becomes.” and to my mind that suggests that we should enforce some sort of “rubber-banding” effect so that a company needs to keep competing or else it will “drift” back to the mean over time. Something like aggressive taxes on the uber-rich and comprehensive welfare for the poor, y’know? Capitalism but with safety guards would be pretty cool.

    • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Something like aggressive taxes on the uber-rich and comprehensive welfare for the poor, y’know?

      This is why aggressive estate taxes are so incredibly critical. People shouldn’t be professional descendants. And of course welfare provides both ladder and safety net. The fools who are trying to abolish one or both are working against social mobility.

    • Microw@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      There is a reason why the European/Scandinavian economic model works so well.

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      11 months ago

      I think just don’t allow other companies to buy others. Mergers should be illegal.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Afraid to say this but that college course was capitalist propaganda. When you look at the actual facts it points to capitalism being trash in every metric except cancer-like growth for the sake of cancer-like growth, which of course it’s good at because that’s what it was designed for.

  • crackajack@reddthat.com
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    11 months ago

    Anyone who worked in both private and public would know both are not more efficient than the other.

    Public services are chronically underfunded because of corruption. Private companies perform rabbit in a hat trick by making you guess what undisclosed ingredients they put in your food if they’re not regulated, just so to save cost and make money for themselves!

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Private companies are why Flint still has lead water pipes, and why Texas doesn’t have a working power grid, and why you and I are facing a 30%-50% increase in our cost of living.

    There needs to be MORE regulation. Not less.

  • Kage520@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I think a big issue is that the government takes a decades long view. This is great because they can plan how to effectively manage our water and other large scale projects with longevity in mind.

    Meanwhile, our corporate CEOs take a quarter of a year view. They’d burn the company to the ground as long as it happens after they are stepping down and makes them look good beforehand.

    • redditReallySucks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      the government takes a decades long view

      You mean four year term view? They dont give a shit about what happens next. If they did they would do something against climate change

      • Kage520@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Ah I wasn’t clear. I don’t mean government as in Democrats or Republicans. I mean government associations like US Army Corps of Engineers or the US Postal Service.

        Maybe we should start a US Army Climate Battalion or something to sound cool and get funding 🤔.

  • LoamImprovement@ttrpg.network
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    11 months ago

    They’re efficient at maximizing profits for shareholders, usually at the dire expense of literally everyone else.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Ignorant AF.

    They are better at maximizing profits at the expense of the employees, benefits, wages, local taxes and infrastructure. They work for the shareholders. They shovel money to the top few percent of the company. That’s what we call “efficiency”.

    The government does not profit. They government pays standard government wages along with union wages and benefits. They maintain infrastructure. They are only as efficient as contracts allow.

    Corporations do not have the same goals as government. One seeks to extract maximum profits for the few at the expense of the many, the other seeks to return to the many as much as is feasible in societal good - schools, roads, power, water, etc. at no profit.

    • set_secret@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Well said.

      It’s hard to believe that anyone with the mental capacity to lift a spoon to their mouth would vote for the right (who are solely responsible for mass privatisation in Australia anyway, im assuming it’s the same elsewhere).

      • IHadTwoCows@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Getting people to cuck to corporations was the entire point of the 1996 Telecommunications Act

      • rchive@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        In this case it’s the definition of efficiency. Efficiency = (resources used up) compared to (resources taken in). How else would you even calculate it?

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yes the actual work that is getting done by the company or government is important too. Private companies generally do better at efficiency of getting work done (products or services being produced) than government. This is because government agencies are burdened with an unimaginable amount of levels of bureaucracy which kills the shit out of any efficiency. The government is the ultimate bureaucracy.

        Anyone who has worked for both the government and private sector can tell you all about this. When I worked for the government it was the most boring job ever and there was so little actual work getting done that I would sit around reading a book on the job, waiting for something to do. At every non-govt job I’ve had that would not fly because the employer would see the dollars vanishing for my paid-to-do-nothing hours and put me to work doing something productive.