Now let’s say the bird-catcher negotiates an agreement with the other two to be the island’s government employee, and gets 1 coconut and 1 fish per day, guaranteed, if he spends just 1/3 of the time catching birds, and continues to give 2/3 of his daily catch to the other 2.
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Totally false argument.
What evidence do you have that shows the govt employee is less efficient than the other two?
I’ve worked in both public and private industries.
-The standards for public employment (education and experience) are much higher than equivalent private employment.
-Oversight of public employees is standardized, more thorough, and has provisions which help minimize nepotism and favoritism, giving superior employees greater ability to move to more responsible positons. Nothing is perfect, and one can certainly take issue with some seniority clauses, but overall, it’s much more likely to reward better and more efficient employees.
-Public employess are held to a much higher standard due to liability issues. Let’s take a public vs. private police force. With public police, the city is liable for any wrongdoing on the part of an officer. The city has deep pockets, and is constantly aware of the liability issue. Because of this, they institute very stringent controls over their officers, and the quality of service reflects that.
In my experience, the private industries don’t worry nearly as much about liability, because they figure the worst case scenario would force them into bankruptcy. Because of corporate protection, the owners/executives are rarely held responsible, so they are free to persue other ventures. There is much less quality control, IMHO.
It’s a bit like how our houses are built. Back when contruction workers were unionized, you got MUCH higher quality, though labor cost more. Now, we hire non-union illegal immigrants and other “unskilled” workers, pay them less, and the quality of workmanship suffers greatly. Oddly enough, though it’s cheaper to build homes today, they are more expensive than when built by journeyman craftsmen (even taking into consideration labor alone). What happened to the spread? It went to the HB companies — in the form of bloated compensation to executives and shareholders (a little bit). IOW, the cost savings will NOT be realized by the general public, and the housing stock will deteriorate more quickly…causing more environmental pollution (through tear-downs, R&R cabinets, roofs, siding, etc.) and taking more capital out of the economy to maintain and replace those structures.
So, you get lower-paid workers, still-high prices, and greater wealth for the very few at the top (you’re likely not one of them). This is what’s been happening to our country. As jobs have moved off-shore, the labor costs go down for the corporations, U.S. wages are fairly flat/down, and they still expect Americans to pay prices that would be more in-line with higher wages. We’ve used credit to fill-in the gap between lower wages and higher prices, and this credit bubble is the end result.
