Atrios, Emptywheel, and plenty of others in the comments disagree with my post on choice. And many points being made are quite good: it is inefficient to have multiple trash collectors blocking up traffic, causing road damage, polluting the air, etc. That’s why the Fountain Hills council decided to grant the monopoly in the first place. There’s nothing pernicious in this decision. It’s a financially sensible decision.
But this is government we’re talking about, and government can’t always be efficient because we don’t live in a totalitarian state where everything is done by technocratic acolytes of the gods of efficiency. We live in a democracy, and in a democracy people have the right to make stupid choices. If the people of Fountain Hills don’t want a monopoly trash collection service even if it will save them money and cut down on pollution, then they have every right to be pissed off about this decision. It’s not your town, it’s their town, their street, their choice even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about your own street and they can make choices about theirs.
I could argue further about whether a biddable contract equals a monopoly (in this case it does – again, if Dell were to win a biddable contract to be the sole provider of all computers in the United States for five years that would still be a monopoly even if they bid on it, even if they only had it for five year. It would not be a monopoly if it were merely a single job – say the construction of a building on a college campus, or the single purchase of Dell computers for the Education Department.)
I could point out that the contractor granted trash collection rights in Fountain Hills is a corporation and that this sort of thing is a corporatist’s wet dream and something liberals especially should be wary of endorsing. The most efficient and sensible thing to do would be to provide the town with a public municipal trash service, cutting out the middle-man and the corporatist trap altogether. A public service is one thing; a private service mandated by the state is something else entirely. Yes, both limit choice, but at least one is a public service and not an act of crony capitalism.
My real point, though, is that this is a democracy and we don’t always do what’s efficient or best in a democracy. That’s why you have folks like Tom Friedman pining for Chinese style authoritarianism to help save the environment. They think it would be more efficient. And it might be, but that doesn’t really make it right.
The questions simply becomes – do we, as a people, have the right to make stupid choices? Should we be allowed to choose whether or not our children can have happy meals? Can our children purchase violent video games? Can we choose to implement (or retain) inefficient trash collection systems? Liberty and stupidity are often close bedfellows, but while we can easily extinguish the former, the latter is here to stay.
P.S.
Mark Thompson explains Kip’s Law and how it relates to trash collection.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
If the people of Fountain Hills don’t want a monopoly trash collection service even if it will save them money and cut down on pollution, then they have every right to be pissed off about this decision.
Are they aware of all the ramifications of their decisions? Given what we know about most teabaggers, I’d have to say the answer is no. And that is the real problem. It really does boil down to the infamous quote about the woman wanting government out of her Medicare. Teabaggers have no freakin’ clue. They’ve been bamboozled by RWNJ radio hosts and can’t see past the bamboozlement.
Germane Jackson
First they came for my trash collection service, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trash collection service (or something).
DJAnyReason
Garbage trucks spew carbon into the atmosphere. Its not my town, but it is my planet.
Externalities FTW~!
daveNYC
And they made the choice to elect the government that made this decision.
Seriously, ‘government’ isn’t some alien invader that comes out of nowhere to make and enforce rules. People voted the council and mayor into power. Once in power, they’re expected to make decisions concering such things as trash pickup. This isn’t some crazy unprecedented expansion of governmental power. If the people don’t like it, they are free to vote them out of power and break the contract.
Poopyman
Oh, for fuck’s sake:
Wikipedia: In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos / μονος (alone or single) + polein / πωλειν (to sell)) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
Free Online Dictionary:
n. pl. mo·nop·o·lies
1. Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service: “Monopoly frequently … arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals” (Milton Friedman).
2. Law A right granted by a government giving exclusive control over a specified commercial activity to a single party.
3.
a. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity.
b. A commodity or service so controlled.
4.
a. Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth.
b. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly.
Dictionary.Reference.Com:
mo·nop·o·ly
/məˈnɒpəli/ Show Spelled[muh-nop-uh-lee] Show IPA
–noun, plural -lies.
1.
exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. Compare duopoly, oligopoly.
2.
an exclusive privilege to carry on a business, traffic, or service, granted by a government.
3.
the exclusive possession or control of something.
4.
something that is the subject of such control, as a commodity or service.
5.
a company or group that has such control.
6.
the market condition that exists when there is only one seller.
7.
( initial capital letter ) a board game in which a player attempts to gain a monopoly of real estate by advancing around the board and purchasing property, acquiring capital by collecting rent from other players whose pieces land on that property.
You get the point: THIS IS NOT A MONOPOLY!
toujoursdan
If the people of Fountain Hills don’t want a monopoly trash collection service even if it will save them money and cut down on pollution, then they have every right to be pissed off about this decision.
That would fine if others didn’t to live with their pollution or congestion.
But there are a lot of other people in the Phoenix area that do.
(And anyone can have a Happy Meal. SFO is merely restricting the targeting of children through the use of toys in non-nutritious meals.
Quote: The supes today passed an ordinance that will require meals to meet nutritional guidelines if restaurants wish to include a toy with the food purchase.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/11/03/131039290/san-francisco-banning-toys-from-most-mcdonald-s-happy-meals
God! Can’t one thing be reported in the press correctly, instead of sensationalizing it? )
MikeJ
Everything is a monopoly if you want it to be apparently. I granted Tully’s a monopoly on my morning coffee, but only for this morning!
We get it. You hate the gubmint.
MattR
And we can point out the stupidity of their decisions as well as the contradictions inherent in it.
(EDIT: So what about a Dept of Education policy that says all computers they buy over the next 5 years will be Dells? Is that a monopoly in your world?)
Shawn in ShowMe
I get it. Everyone should have to the right to dispose of their waste anyway they see fit.
It’s not your air, it’s their air, their choice even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about your own air and they can make choices about theirs.
It’s not your water, it’s their water their choice . . .
scav
so now we’re arguing against doing prudent things because of abstract theoretical fears that groups of people acting together when named “government” are necessarily bad whereas when named “corporations” are inherently good because of an unproven theory of how reality works. I can almost see where the freedom to make dumb decisions progressed to the worship of dumb decisions from here.
LT
Didn’t the people of Fountain Hills, thorough their representatives, choose the service?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
So, you’re argument is that it’s ok for them to be stupid because this is a Democracy. Well then, I actually have a documented First Amendment right to call them fucktards.
And all this being a Democracy of one might work OK when the consequences were that you and your family died of something on your farm, but living where we are now means they should be considering the total cost of their actions.
And I’m sorry you don’t like government, but it keeps my water clean, my neighborhood safe, and it keeps the rules consistent enough that I have a place to work at. Go find a place without a government if you don’t like it.
El Tiburon
For the love of God. Nonsensical platitude alert.
I have had zero problems with my trash pick up in over 20 years. It is a nominal charge on my electrical bill. No strikes or problems ever. They have yet to miss a day and I have never heard any complaints ever. In my city we have trash, yard refuse and recycle pick up. All on the same day. It can’t get anymore efficient.
Shorter ED: Boy, I stepped in it this time. How do I get out of this pickle? Oh, I know! I’ll mention China and Tom Friedman!
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Absolutely – as long as they understand they’ve surrendered any standing on fiscal responsibility. So they can just trash any planned lecturing on gub’mint waste.
Noonan
We also live in a capitalist society, and in a capitalist society people have the right to make stupid choices.
For those scoring at home, the common thread there is “people” and “stupid.”
maus
What kind of specious reasoning is this?
“Because I say” it does all these things?
Of all the arguments, the ones for wasted resources seem a bit weak.
beltane
We live in a town where the town manager felt the same way as these morons, claiming that a monopoly on garbage collection would lead to a “nanny state”. The results of his love of freedom are collecting in my garage. There’s a guy with a truck who will take your household trash for two hours every Saturday morning for $7 a bag, but for hazardous waste and big items there is nothing. If I were a good Libertarian I would build a Freedom Pyre to Ayn Rand made of old mattresses and tires, and have my children breathe the sweet fumes of Liberty, but alas I am not overly fond of that type of squalor.
Linda Featheringill
Then why the heck are you discussing it in public?
If you don’t want my opinion about something, don’t bring it up.
neill
i like this more and more… shiny bright deification of ‘competition’
plus
some article in the bill of rights of the magical constitution, to remain stoopid — along the lines, generally, of wingnut destructiveness.
i think we’re beginning to see the new coherent conservative philosophy.
Uh, but didn’t Stan Lee (or somebody) already figure that one out with the planet Bizzarro series of Superman comics about 50 years ago?
(I wish I had a job where I could just get high in the middle of the day and think up shit and blog it.)
Maude
I like you E.D. You don’t give up.
LT
I’m sick of Obama being the only president. I want choices!
Steve
“It’s their decision even if you think it’s stupid” is a pointless argument. No one is disputing their right to make a democratic decision. The entire point was that we think it’s stupid.
Karen in GA
@scav:
This.
Morbo
@El Tiburon: Five year contract… five year plan… connect the dots, sheeple!
mistermix
Man, you really dragged a big old red herring into this one — Democracy.
People making noise about a city council decision they don’t like isn’t democracy, it’s people exercising their right to free speech.
Democracy involves people voting for their representatives, and voting them out of office if they’re not satisfied with it.
Nobody was arguing that these idiots couldn’t exercise their democratic rights, just that the freak out about the “government” was stupid, because all they need to do is to elect better city council members.
Rome Again
Well, it may not be my town, but I can see it from my house. :P (fer realz!)
Catsy
This is utter nonsense. Yes, there is a difference between these two things. But the difference is between a public service provided by the state, and a public service fulfilled by a private contractor for the state. Not between a public service and private competitors, or between a public service and a monopoly.
It’s frakking contract work.
It is no more “crony capitalism” than the fact that the state hires contractors to build and maintain roads.
Napoleon
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
And to take the next step in logic, why should I have to pay extra to have my garbage picked up because they town now has 4 suppliers due to my nutball neighbor, any one of which would have been cheaper if they had to bid for the whole job for some period.
Mike Kay (Team America)
well if atrios and emptywheel disagree, then you must be right.
I mean, when have they ever been right.
Calouste
Balloon-juice, the only blog that doesn’t only have it’s regular frontpagers spoofing in the comments, but even with the frontpage articles itself.
It’s ok DougJ, we’ve caught onto your act. Nobody in real life can be as stupid and wilfully ignorant as this “E.D. Kain” character you have created and still be able to string two coherent sentences together.
Joel
We also don’t live in a direct democracy where the people are consulted on every decision made by government. Like every free society in the world, we live in a republic. We elect representatives to make choices for us. You can argue the merits of direct democracy, but the general popularity of republican government indicates that it probably succeeds because it works better.
L Boom
I’m not saying it’s necessarily a good choice to drive after drinking a 12-pack of Bud, but it’s a choice and having those choices is much more important than the obviously likely consequences. It’s principles we’re talking about here.
Likewise, you have no right to impinge on my ability to swing my fists and kick my legs around. It’s your own unfortunate choice to get in the way of my swinging fist or kicking legs. And given the free market incentives for not walking around with a black eye or stumbling around with a broken kneecap, I suspect you’ll be highly motivated not to be in the way of my flailing body parts.
beltane
@El Tiburon: Didn’t you know that the only alternative to Libertarian stupidity is totalitarianism? That’s why clean drinking water is just like Hitler. A society measures its freedom by the volume of raw sewage pouring forth from its unpaved streets.
mantis
And we can talk about how stupid they are for objecting to something like this with their ridiculous hyperbole about socialism, and we can disagree with you for defending them in their stupidity (even though it isn’t your town or street either).
And you really ought to stop making the analogy to consumer products like computers. Public utilities (or private utilities providing public services under contract from public entities) are not consumer products, and having one water, electricity, or trash provider for a town is not at all the same thing as preventing people from purchasing certain consumer products.
The questions simply becomes – do we, as a people, have the right to make stupid choices?
Yes, in something called elections. The fine people of Fountain Hills have the right to vote for a new town council, one that promises not to commit the town to the nefarious evil of five-year contracts with trash haulers, which will surely lead to socialist work camps for us all.
Surly Duff
For example, making the choice to continue to argue against common sense and logic, despite the pleas of the masses to stop and a myriad of commenters pointing out the inanity of your “argument” in multiple posts about trash pickup?
At least you are also embracing that which you condone.
JRon
I’ve gone to a lot of real estate conferences (I’m not a developer, but work with them) where people extol the advantages of working in China. A lot of talk about the BRIC economies, why China’s is doing so well, etc.
I don’t recall who the speaker was, at one conference, that pointed out very clearly that it’s just easier to do business with totalitarian regimes, as long as they pay you up front, since they can do whatever they want. Democracies, like India’s, are a messy business; it’s tough to get approvals when the people have a say. He was making the point clearly because he wanted to work in democracies, and was troubled by this.
Democracy by its nature is not efficient; it can’t be.
When my coworkers go to China to work on our projects there, they still sometimes come home surprised that our professional counterparts share rooms in company dorms, work 60-80 hour weeks, and have no safety standards.
Communism today is, somewhat ironically, a Republican wet dream.
Alex S.
I don’t see potential for a trash disposal market.
Jim Pharo
I think to ask this question is to answer it. “No.” The people do not have the right to make stupid decisions.
Should I be allowed to build and operate my own B-1 bomber?
No.
Should I be allowed to purchase food with poison in it?
No.
Should I be allowed to buy electricity from a company whose service will fry all my appliances?
No.
And no one would argue (I think) that I have the right to make stupid decisions that obviously impose costs on others, like beating my wife or burning down a bookstore that sells books I think are dreadful…
So. There are some stupid choices we should be allowed to make (burning a $20 bill) and others not. The questions are where are the lines drawn, how, and by whom.
Blackfrancis
@Morbo: Five year… mission?
to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
MobiusKlein
@MattR: Sanctioned Monopolies are passable if there are certain conditions. Open bidding, limited term, regulation, and gains to the public by having fewer providers.
example – if my school district wanted to pick a single vendor for all the office computers for purposes of standardization, it may very well make sense. Why have 10 different brands, each with different difficulties, setup issues, installs, etc.
There are of course counterpoints to this too, but it’s not without some logic.
We also have one public bus service, one sewage handler, one water provider, one company providing electricity.
Yes, they are monopolies. Fact. And I like that our streets don’t have to have 3 competing sewer lines.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
People do.
And the Government has a responsibility to manage those choices to balance freedom and the common good. Your epic failure to actually deal with the reality of commercial “retail” trash collection is a perfect example of ignoring that balance, just as the Government managing the vast and complex needs of Industrial Waste would be an example to the other side.
Well, if liberals, as a rule, blindly hated corporations. Which, to be blunt, is your stupid and asinine strawman, perched up to defeat a point the liberals here aren’t even making because it’s not something we dislike.
Dude. PLEASE.
Evan
If a private company is better at picking up trash (that includes maintaining a fleet of trucks, operating landfill sites and recycling plants and/or maintaining contracts with same, paying sanitation workers, billing, &c), then use a private company. In the People’s Republic of Portland, Oregon, they sliced up the city into chunks, then auctioned off the rights to the contracts for residences in those areas. There are 15 or 20 pickup companies. Everything works great. There’s nothing wrong with the government outsourcing work, as long as there is a competitive process to award the contracts that is more or less free of crony influences, everything is peachy.
But organizing trash pickup is definitely a legitimate exercise of government power at the municipal level. Are you really arguing that this is reducing citizens’ liberty in some significant way? Allow people to opt out, and institute hefty fines for illegal dumping. Problem solved.
Midnight Marauder
Think about what you wrote here. You literally just said “Sure, I could argue this further if I created a hypothetical that has absolutely no bearing on the issue we are discussing, and was completely ungrounded in reality as well.” Is there ever going to be an event in time where competitive bids were submitted for a contract to be the sole provider of all computers in the United States?
It’s just such a weak argument, Kain. So, so very weak.
MattR
@MobiusKlein: I think you misread my comment. (Or my comment was not sufficiently clear). I was trying to figure out what ED thinks since his repsonse about the Dept of Education buying all Dells in a single buy not counting as a monopoly is a bit of a strawman.
To quote a previous comment I made in another thread: “There are times when economies of scale mean that a monopoly (or oligopoly) are more efficient. The flip side of that is that those situations are also the ones where government regulation is most needed. But since conservatives/libertarians reject the first statement, there is no way to convince them of the second. “
jl
I broke down and read the Cole post, and the linked article.
As far as I can see, a mainly Republican city council in a mainly Republican town decided to contract to one garbage disposal service and introduce curbside recycling. And there are enough insane Tea People in town to make a stir in the news when they go apeshit over it.
So Cole posts a silly post about this squabble, pretending that these people are coherent enough that they are making a serious constitutional issue about it. And Kain posts several responses, the first with hack suggestion that all single contract garbage services will be mobbed up, and the second that seems to suggest that inchoate and ignorant rage is a noble example of direct democracy rebelling against, what exactly I don’t know, the statist Republican councilpeople? The institution of local representative democracy? Or that this will be the sequel to the Sopranos? Whatever.
Both of you get a grip.
It is unlikely that these fine citizen’s have really free choice in garbage disposal now. They probably have choices from companies that the city contracts with. If not, if I need some spare change, can I drive my pickup down there and undercut one of the companies. Why not? FREEDOM!
What if some people want recycling, but none of the companies offer it? Well, FREEDOM! COMPETITION!.
Or maybe not. Do these five companies have five separate dumps, er, sanitation facilities that they use? That is unlikely. They probably take to the same place, but I obviously don’t know for sure. There are surely economies of scale in the garbage disposal business, and such economies of scale may require reducing the number of companies to get a recycling program going. Or reducing the price competition between companies that would drive one that attempted to recycle out of business.
So, let me hear about that stuff, if either Cole or Kain wish to do the research, rather than putting up silly posts about local squabbles, where we do not have enough information to discuss anything intelligently.
ChrisNYC
Way to change the rules, ED. You started with — when the govt is handing out “monopolies” you get corruption, high prices, poor services and — da-dum — the MAFIA (that’s why you said “choice is good,” remember?). Now, you say, well, maybe that’s not so much true but who cares about efficient results anyway — these people have choices whether YOU agree with them or not.
Who the hell ever said that these people can’t have whatever freaking collection system they want? NO ONE. Cole’s initial post was just for the point of saying that even this local small issue becomes larded down with TPers raging about “trashcare.”
Darnell
Goddamnit, you are truly a moran.
I try to put up with your sillier than shit, annoying contrarian nonsense, but I’m done.
Can’t you go blog over at the Altantic, or Slate, or something?
maya
People. You’re all overlooking the most significant question about this garbage service issue: How much does it cost in Bachmann dollars?
corwin
Did anyone think that trash collection companies wouldn’t do the job if they didn’t have a city contract? Their trucks are enormous and expensive, they need at least 2 or 3 crew for each truck, fuel, maintenance, and so on. If they don’t have guaranteed work at a reasonable rate, why would they be inclined to go around and collect trash for 12 people?
Then there is the issue of liability. You’ve got three people on a large, heavy truck, with lots of moving parts driving around neighborhoods all day long. It’s a lot easier to get insurance when it is one company doing the pickup and is certified to do the job by a city with a uniform bidding process.
I guess of course the opt out is to let people pile their trash in their back yard, but that has consequences for the neighborhood, or take it the dump themselves. All in all, my time is too valuable to waste going to the dump or looking at other options.
MobiusKlein
@MattR: Fair ’nuff. Consider it a lemma to your theorem.
Calouste
@Joel:
I can list quite a few monarchies that are significantly more free societies than this republic you are so proud of :
If, for example, we look at the Press Freedom Index, we see that the monarchies
the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, Japan, Belgium, Luxembourg, Australia and the United Kingdom all beat the United States.
Vlad
*Sigh*
I’m sorry, but there’s been a really remarkable amount economic illiteracy, and ignorance on competition policy and theory, in these posts.
First, as someone has already pointed out, awarding an exclusive contract does not make the contract winner a monopolist in any important sense of that word. If you buy your dinner tonight at McDonald’s, McDonald’s has become the “monopoly” provider of your dinner in the sense you’re using the word. The reason no one would use the word “monopolist” to describe McDonald’s in that situation is because it’s meaningless. Monopolies happen when there’s some kind of market feature, or failure, that allows a firm to have an entrenched ability to control output or raise prices. It can be control over a scarce input, or network effects, or high capital requirements, or other barriers to entry. Contracts almost never create a true monopoly, because contracts can be broken, or renegotiated, and they all have fixed terms. Exclusive dealing arrangements, like the one you’re talking about, can raise their own antitrust issues, but not because the winner of the contract is a “monopolist” in any important sense of that word.
Second, you seem to be operating under the idea that the opposite of government involvement in a market is perfect competition. That is really, really, not the case; the magic free market fairy really doesn’t exist in every market. The idea that trash pickup — a textbook example of a public good — will lead to an efficient market solution in which a host of competitors push prices down to some otherwise unobtainable low price if the government just keeps its nose out of things ignores the last, I don’t know, 300 years of economic thought? Have you heard of oligopolies? You know that some markets tend towards control by just a few firms, who are able easily to coordinate supracompetitive prices? And that capital-intensive, undifferentiated services like trash pickup are likely to tend towards that model of competition?
Dennis SGMM
@everybody
Does E.D. ever post anything that isn’t both verbose and wrong?
Darnell
@mistermix:
To whom it may concern:
Can you please stop letting E.D. Kain waste space on this otherwise wonderful blog with his complete and utter nonsense?
Seriously.
trollhattan
Hoo boy, this maybe wasn’t the topic to double-down on. Too late now.
I once lived in Stockton, CA, where privatization of the public water system was orchestrated by an overly ambitious mayor against public opposition. You’re probably asking yourself, “What could possibly go wrong?”
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/private-vs-public/usa/price-of-privatization-stockton-ca/
http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-08-05/opinion/17257284_1_omi-thames-water-privatization-stockton-city-council
Calouste
@Dennis SGMM:
I’m not 100% sure about the “verbose” bit.
Halteclere
For the love of Pete. I can rattle of a dozen long-term contracts handed out by government entities to private business that directly affect the general population, that would result in disaster if the contracts were broken up between competitors. The argument that privatizing trash collection would result in better and cheaper individual service is nothing more than making shit up to meet a preconceived notion.
By the way, I live in a energy-deregulated state (TX) where there are dozens of energy companies I can buy electricity from. According to Free Marketers I should by paying the minimum in electricity. But my parents, who live in Missouri and get electricity from a rural coop (damn communists!) pay half the price per kilowatt as I. Amazing how that works.
Alex S.
@JRon:
Yep, and capitalism also strives for efficiency. Companies merge if they expect synergy effects. The monopoly is the natural target of any company. The question here is whether this monopoly would be too harmful for citizens. And I would say no, I would say that it is too exaggerated if you turn it into a question of democratic values. It’s more a question of capitalism (I don’t like how people get forms of government and economic states mixed up).
In this situation, a trash disposal monopolist would be the most efficient way to handle this situation. It requires too many resources to have multiple companies go to the same neighborhoods to collect the trash. And it would be a very limited business.
Darnell
@El Tiburon:
Dear John Cole:
Please stop the madness.
Cermet
Ed, like all right-wingers you are blind to the simple fact that the Earth is not the universe – it is very finite and as population grows and resources (that are ‘free’) become polluted/limited – we are all interconnected whether you like it or not – for example: russia and china have a nuclear war, only they get blown up but wait, we all share the same atmosphere and we all die from radioactive poisons. Air is not free – it takes a huge, complex eco-system to create and maintain in a manner that makes our lives pleasant (and the ability to dump billions of tons of toxins into it is what we do to save money but others pay in their health for that discount) is not free in all senses of the word – just that until recently, most people were too stupid to realize this (but damn if AGW isn’t proving what stupid shits we all were on that subject.)
Capitalism sucks and is far from efficient when it comes to the ‘commons’ resources because the greedy (rich) have the power to steal its benefits to advance themselves at the cost of others and save profits by stealing our health at no cost. The careful control of the ‘commons’ is what government does best when the common good takes first priority (ie business is not allowed to have the first/strongest say.)
This relates directly to the trash issue: Trash collection is like this – your garbage is yours but when it needs to be dumped into our shared environment, then I get a say in how it is done – not just you and your town.
Pangloss
So now even OUTSOURCING is a commie plot? Didn’t see that coming.
wengler
I’ve never lived in a place with competition in the trash collection industry. I’ve lived in places where it was a function of the city and places where the city contracted it out to a private contractor. In both instances we had both trash and recycling and also the ability to get rid of big stuff on certain days of the year. I had no complaints with either one.
ED Kain, trash collection has nothing to do with democracy. You seem to be confusing democracy with competition. The debate is whether having 5 different trash collectors each serving a small segment of the community is better than having one serving everyone. Like I said, I’ve never had 5 competing trash collectors before, but having one that worked well was really good enough for me.
BGinCHI
Don’t taze me, bros and gals, for saying this, but if Kaine argued this about slavery in 1855, he’d have been in plenty of company with states-rights folks who argued that the Federal Gov’t had no right to tell people how to do things in their towns, in their states, on their plantations.
A nation is a nation, in part, because it imposes particular practices on its citizens. If you suddenly try to opt out of this you have to do it specifically, through laws and legislation. You can’t just say “we don’t have to do what we don’t want to do.”
That may be what children do, but it’s not how this constitutional republic works.
suzanne
Let’s not lose sight of why the people of Fountain Hills flipped their collective shit: because now they have to RECYCLE. Fucking liberal hippie shit.
And the idea that government should get out of this is stupid. Residents already have an opt-out option. It’s called not putting your fucking trash on the curb. You can send your kid to private school, or not have kids at all, but that doesn’t exempt your ass from paying property taxes, because you benefit from everyone being educated. This is not different,
I hate Fountain Hills. I hate my new Congressman.
Nylund
One of the premises behind works like Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose,” is that, with choice, the efficient outcome will be chosen. This comes mainly from the assumptions that people are rational.
Here we have Kain arguing that people may be irrational and should be free to choose inefficient outcomes should they want.
Its sort of funny to see someone arguing in favor of choice being good while simultaneously undermining the whole principle of why choice is assumed to be good in the first place.
But, in particular to this case, people still have a choice. They can vote out the people that made these decisions, or heck, they can even move. So there, you still have your magical choice.
But, for some of us like outcomes that increase efficiency, reduce government costs (and thus the need for taxes), and minimize negative externalities outweigh our desire for our irrational dumbass teabagging neighbor’s “choice” to make our lives worse just because he feels like it. It would hardly be the first time society decided that some personal choices should play second-fiddle to what’s best for the group as a whole.
Bob Loblaw
So I’m assuming that now that the election is over with, and it’s apparently cool to be a right-leaning jackass again, E.D. is feeling frisky?
Because this post is content-less tripe. The people have a right to be stupid, and we should respect that because yay, liberty? Wow, thanks for the sterling contribution.
Just Some Fuckhead
Jesus, have these fapfapfap worshippers at the altar of free enterprise ever actually worked for a corporation?
sukabi
@Nylund: they can also haul the garbage to the landfill themselves, cutting out the government and “corporate monopoly”… but most won’t do that because it’s more costly, takes time and is messy… but bitching about the “service” is free and feels sooooo goooood!!!
Joel
@Calouste: All of those countries are essentially parliamentary republics. I hope you’re not arguing that the Queen of England wields actual power over New Zealand and Australia or that Carl Gustaf has more responsibilities than sitting in at the Nobel ceremony.
Stefan
We live in a democracy, and in a democracy people have the right to make stupid choices. If the people of Fountain Hills don’t want a monopoly trash collection service even if it will save them money and cut down on pollution, then they have every right to be pissed off about this decision. It’s not your town, it’s their town, their street, their choice even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about your own street and they can make choices about theirs.
We live in a democracy, and in a democracy people have the right to make stupid choices. If Typhoid Mary doesn’t want to get the typhoid vaccine even if it will save her life and cut down on her infecting other people with a deadly disease, then she has every right to be pissed off about this decision. It’s not your body, it’s her body, her infectious disease, her choice even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about your own body and she can make choices about hers.
policomic
Others have made the important points about the nature of representative democracy, and the true definition of “monopoly” (not yours, E.D.).
The other thing that bugs me about your argument, though, is the invocation of “principle” as if “competition,” “choice,” and “democracy” are 1.) ends in themselves, and 2.) tangible but fragile “things” we must be careful not to scratch or dent.
This is libertarian “thinking”–which is not really “thinking,” since it’s all about defining points at which thinking should stop. It’s like elevating the idea of “freedom” above any kind of freedom that is worth having: the kind of “freedom” that ends at “I shouldn’t have to do anything I don’t want to do” (like paying taxes) without considering how roads, prisons, public schools, etc. are paid for.
Principles are supposed to guide us, not lock us in. Hell, sometimes some of our principles come into conflict with others. A key example can be found within the phrase, “liberty and justice for all.” What happens when justice for you gets in the way of liberty for me? Or, to bring it back to the issue at hand, what should be done when “choice” and what the preamble calls “the general welfare” are at odds? Making these decisions is what democracy–also not an end in itself–is for.
You, and libertarians generally, don’t seem to understand the difference between a principle and what Emerson (oh, yeah, I went there) called “a foolish consistency.”
Nellcote
I made a wrong turn on the intertubes and ended up at a winger site that declared we are not a democracy but a “constitutional republic”. I’ve seen this coming from wingers in a few places. Can anyone explain what this could possibly mean or are they just makin’ stuff up again?
Roger Moore
@JRon:
Being able to do whatever they want is useful only in as much as they want to do something good. The obstructionism that people complain about in democracy is a huge annoyance until it’s obstructing a catastrophic decision. There’s a good reason that the worst government decisions of the past century were uniformly made by authoritarian governments; nobody is willing to tell the big boss that he’s making a mistake. Part of the reason the Chinese are so desperate to play catchup is because they lost a lot of ground to Mao’s monumental screw ups.
scarshapedstar
I am so sick of the Bureaucrat Dodge. Any discussion with a right-winger proceeds in two stages:
1) The Empirical Bullet: In which you point out to the right-winger that they are ignoring the unintended consequences of their position, and/or arguing something that multiple real-world studies have disproven.
2) The Bureaucrat Dodge: They admit they are wrong, but “well the government runs the post office and it sucks, everything those gubmint bureaucrats touches turns to shit, so I’m right and you’re wrong.”
Even if you point out to them that many “free market” enterprises like insurance companies are nothing but well-paid bureaucrats, they will insist that anything government has the government virus and besides bureaucrats, government, IRS, post office, fannie and freddie, welfare queens, Nancy Pelosi’s plane, spotted owls, military toilet seats acquisitions… and by the time they start bitching about the lady who burned herself with McDonald’s coffee, you’ve forgotten what the hell you were even discussing.
JPL
Ed, How many folks are actually complaining about city or town garbage collection? Why let one town create havoc for the rest of us? I mentioned before that I pay $22.00 a month for weekly recycling, trash and yard waste pickup. I feel like it is a deal. We can’t burn yard waste so can you imagine the pileup of limbs and leaves.
El Tiburon
@Just Some Fuckhead:
What? Enron was extremely efficient. At fucking over millions of lives.
And BP? Very efficient. At fucking over millions of lives.
What has the government ever done? It’s not like they could ever put a man on the moon.
Stefan
I could point out that the contractor granted trash collection rights in Fountain Hills is a corporation and that this sort of thing is a corporatist’s wet dream and something liberals especially should be wary of endorsing.
You could point that out, and I would then go “huh? Why are you pointing that out? Do you imagine you’re making some kind of point? Maybe you assumed I’d only be in favor of garbage collection if it was carried out by an anarcho-syndicalist lesbian collective?”
Here’s a hint: liberals are not reflexively anti-corporation. Many of us work for corporations — some of us even own them! A corporation per se is not considerend an absolute evil in liberal circles.
Dusty
Isn’t more accurate to say that a vocal and potentially small subsection of the people of Fountain Hills are opposing this decision? If it’s really 100% of the citizens, fine, but I assume there are residents who either think it’s a good decision or don’t give a shit, as long as their trash gets picked up. Not everybody’s going to be happy with every communal decision that gets made by our elected representatives. That’s not their job, to make everybody happy all the time.
MattR
@Nellcote: Well, we are a constitutional republic. It used to be that liberals had to point this out to conservatives when the majority of some (usually southern) state tried to do something like put the Ten Commandments on the steps of the state capital. I am not sure why conservatives are trotting that line out now, but I would guess it might have something to do with overturning health care as government overreach not granted by the constitution
MTiffany
Fucking fantastic! The less efficient government is, the less of it people want! Woo-hoo! Smaller government! Soshulist trash collection! It’s a win-win!!!!!
Zach
It’s not whether individuals can make choices. It’s whether individuals have a right to make choices within a democracy that have already been ruled out of bounds by said democracy. Obviously, you draw the line somewhere. I can’t field my own army or apply capital punishment (within a subset of the community that consents to that sort of thing), etc. These folks can’t hire trucks to come in and pick up their residential trash because there’s an external cost to doing so.
Is it even remotely clear that the pro-private-collection sentiment is held by the Fountain View majority? From the original article it looked like a few angry people on the Internet.
And where’s the evidence that competitive bidding leads to crony capitalism more often than not? And, should we be able to chose to buy happy meals that contain toys that could injure children? Or happy meals with burgers that aren’t tested for E. coli?
Stefan
But this is government we’re talking about, and government can’t always be efficient because we don’t live in a totalitarian state where everything is done by technocratic acolytes of the gods of efficiency.
WTF? How much technocratic efficiency does it take to run a garbage pickup? Twice a week you roll a truck down a street, you pick up the garbage that’s been put out by the residents, and then you repeat. It seems to work just fine where I live, even if the NYC Dept. of Sanitation isn’t necessarily run by the technocratic acolytes of the god of efficiency. I mean really, how much more efficient is any private service going to make this?
Redshift
“The people”? Is there anything in any of the news reports that lets you deduce that there is an overwhelming popular uprising, rather than a vocal minority? And you have the gall to call that “democracy”?
Democracy is electing representatives to run a government, and identifying with the loudmouth yahoos who are objecting to the actions of their legitimately elected government is the exact opposite of democracy. This is exactly the same sort of idiocy that proclaims the TPers to be a mass movement whose whims should dictate the direction of the country, no matter how many people vote (and demonstrate) on the opposite side.
Nothing in this is about the right of “the people” to make stupid decisions. (If any of us actually believed they don’t have that right, we would be arguing that last Tuesday’s election results should be nullified.) It’s about idiots loudly declaring themselves to be the representatives of “the people” and insisting that the actual results of the democratic process are immaterial.
El Tiburon
@policomic:
Because libertarians, at some level, realize their ideology will never come into play. They only have to defend their ideas – never the reality of seeing it in practice.
Being a libertarian like being part of a huge circle jerk where everyone professes to be the ultimate ladies’ man – while they are getting yanked by some dude to their left.
Bunch of jack offs.
BGinCHI
@MattR: That’s right. And yes, contrary to the right wing, we are also, too, a democracy. Just not a direct democracy. We elect representatives, and so are a representative democracy, which is how we retain control (I hope) over the gov’t (that’s what makes us a republic).
Man, right wingers always know about half of anything and use it to explain everything. Dumbasses.
Calouste
@Joel:
Well, the last Queen of England died almost 300 years ago, so it’d be a bit hard for her to wield power over countries that hadn’t even been claimed for the Crown yet at her death. But I’ll keep an eye out for ghost appearances of Anne in the antipodes.
Most monarchs do have some serious influence and power. Not in day-to-day politics as much as in things like the formation of coalitions and circumstances out of the ordinary. See for example how the Governor-General in Canada (Queen Elizabeth’s representative) allowed the parliament to be shut down for three months when the PM asked for it.
Stefan
We live in a democracy, and in a democracy people have the right to make stupid choices. If the people of Fountain Hills don’t want a monopoly trash collection service even if it will save them money and cut down on pollution, then they have every right to be pissed off about this decision. It’s not your town, it’s their town, their street, their choice even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about your own street and they can make choices about theirs.
We live in a democracy, and in a democracy people have the right to make stupid choices. If the people of Baggerville want to spew massive amounts of carbon into their town’s atmosphere and dump mercury into their town’s rivers, then they have every right to do so. It’s not your air and water, it’s their air, their water, their choice to pollute it even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about the air and water on your land and they can make choices about theirs.
rageahol
for fucks sake, can someone write a pipes filter or something so that i don’t have to see this Reasonoid asshole on one of the few blogs i enjoy reading?
Keith G
My god. I knew this was going to be entertaining.
So it has been.
Pongo
I didn’t get the sense that anyone was suggesting it wasn’t their choice. Just as it was their choice to appoint the people who made this decision on their behalf. No one has taken away their freedom to cast a vote for different officials, so their rights as citizens in a representative democracy are not being threatened (and neither are the rights of people in San Fran who can no longer buy Happy Meals).
Minor disagreements about the decisions of local government are not going to rend the fabric of American society asunder (‘give me french fries or give me death!’). If they continue to cry wolf over every nonsense bit of mundane municipal minutiae that confronts ordinary people every single day, pretty soon they’ll seem even more irrelevant than they already do. They may have created enough noise to elevate their candidates to Congress for a term, but real people with real jobs and real lives can’t sustain this level of outrage over stupidity forever.
va
To paraphrase Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, if you want to have a reasoned argument about the principles of public v. private garbage collection, do it at home with a warm, moist towel.
Stefan
The questions simply becomes – do we, as a people, have the right to make stupid choices?
Well, it depends. You can make all the stupid choices you want to as long as they affect only you (and I have the right to mock you as an idiot for making those stupid choices).
However, when your stupid choices begin to affect others, then no, you don’t have an unqualified right to make them — because we live in this thing called society, and in society we sometimes have to conform our behavior so as not to inconvience those around us.
If you want perfect freedom, move to the wilderness. But if you want to live in a city or town with roads and electricity and police, etc., then no, you don’t always have the right to make stupid choices.
BGinCHI
This trashy subject is the fucking top fucking story on HuffPost right now.
Jesus, I guess Arianna didn’t get invited to India or something.
JGabriel
E.D. Kain:
Huh. That’s exactly what I, and others, argued in your previous thread on the subject.
As for the argument that people have the right to be stupid and come to other conclusions — yeah, sure, they have that right.
But your post was in response to John Cole mocking this:
When people protest trash collection for 5 freaking hours, “liken it to Obamacare,” anthropomorphize it with “an intimidating, cigar-chomping man,” and claim that the Fountain Hills Green Police will want take people in “for questioning,” THEN they deserve mocking and crazy is not just a pejorative, but an accurate assessment.
.
Stefan
We live in a democracy, and in a democracy people have the right to make stupid choices. If the people of Fountain Hills don’t want a monopoly trash collection service even if it will save them money and cut down on pollution, then they have every right to be pissed off about this decision. It’s not your town, it’s their town, their street, their choice even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about your own street and they can make choices about theirs.
We live in a democracy, and in a democracy people have the right to make stupid choices. If I don’t don’t want a monopoly speed limit on the roads and highways even if it will save lives and cut down on pollution, then I have every right to be pissed off about speed limits and drive as fast as I want to. It’s not your car, it’s my car, my need for speed, my choice even if you think it’s a stupid one. You can make choices about how fast you drive your own car and I can make choices about how fast I drive mine.
Stefan
Well, the last Queen of England died almost 300 years ago, so it’d be a bit hard for her to wield power over countries that hadn’t even been claimed for the Crown yet at her death. But I’ll keep an eye out for ghost appearances of Anne in the antipodes.
Queen Victoria died in 1901, at a time when Australia and New Zealand were already in the Empire. And the current Queen of England is alive and kicking.
me
They way ideology seems to trump rationality with Kain (and his blog buddies), I wonder if he’s a creationist too.
Nerull
Or running municipal trash collection?
Auguste
Allow me to Cooks-Source myself:
Honestly, this post is indefensible.
Nellcote
@MattR:
It’s usually along the lines of we are a constitutional republic NOT a representative democracy. I’ve always thought we are the latter so I don’t understand what they mean by the former.
slag
I read this thread and all I got was a lousy 15 IQ points stupider.
And I really needed those IQ points.
Thanks a lot, Balloon Juice. And Arizona. Maybe I’ll find myself ending the day by draining my oil pan onto my driveway or something. Because, apparently, democracy makes me stupid. And isn’t a little stupidity/petroleum runoff just the price we pay for living in a free country?
I, for one, am feeling freer already.
arguingwithsignposts
@Stefan:
I would be in favor of that.
Seriously, Kain, that is some weak-ass argument there.
BobS
Maybe John Cole would consider replacing E.D.Kain on the front page with any one of several dozen more capable people who appear on these threads.
Jane2
Good grief. Your “argument” is roundly refuted and you respond with vague pap about liberty and stupidity?
And learn what a monopoly is. If Dell has a five year contract to supply my government with desktops, it has a CONTRACT for five years. Not a monopoly. The government down the road may have a contract with HP. The government on the other side of me may multi-source and have one with Dell AND HP. And when the contract is up, we may all switch to another supplier. It’s called procurement.
Just Some Fuckhead
Where I live you have to register your pets with the city and pay a fee. It never occurred to me this is just the first step in commie libs coming to take away my precious squirrel assassin.
They’ll pry Fluffy from my cold dead fingers! Fight the power, down with FurryCompanionCare!
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
No, but if someone wants to be fucked up the ass with a red hot spiked dildo, let them be fucked up the ass with a red hot spiked dildo.
Either they’ll see the damage it did and stop wanted to be fucked up the ass with a red hot spiked dildo, or they’ll die.
arguingwithsignposts
@Calouste:
LOLWUT?
arguingwithsignposts
@Jane2:
Or they could do us all a favor and use Macs.
/ducks head
BGinCHI
@arguingwithsignposts:
Is everyone getting this? I didn’t know half this stuff!
(the above is a paraphrase of a brilliant Doonesbury)
MattR
@Nellcote:
Personally I would say that we are both. But my guess is still that they mean that the will of the people (via their elected representatives) cannot violate the rules of the nation enshrined in the constitution.
matoko_chan
HAY ED!
ARE THE FETUSES STILL SLAVES?
J
@Midnight Marauder:
To be fair to ED and his silly monopoly argument, I do believe that for many, many years the Government gave/permitted AT&T to have essentially such a monopoly — they were permitted only to “lease” phone models and everyone with phone service had to lease their telephone from AT&T. Link
MattR
@matoko_chan: Keep fucking that chicken.
Cheryl from Maryland
@DJAnyReason: Yes. Fountain Hills has no right to make me pay more for air clean-up from their multiple garbage trucks.
Ailuridae
@J:
For the love of Peter how does the ability of the government to grant a monopoly over a public good in one instance in any way imply that the mere act of bidding a contract is a monopoly? ED Kain has libertarian economics disease (you start from an ideology and reach a conclusion while ignoring all contrary evidence) but that doesn’t mean that the commenters on this blog should have to cut him some slack for what amounts to either a clear logical error or not understanding what a monopoly is. Especially when he won’t acknowledge here or elsewhere that he is ever in error. And, no, this isn’t an issue of differing opinions.
ED made an exceptionally misinformed post from a point of reflexive poorly thought out ideology. He was corrected patiently by many people here and elsewhere. Instead of owning up to his error as many other front pagers have in the pastwhen being far, far less incorrect, he’s doubled down while trying to move the goal posts. It is nothing short of a complete lack of intellectual integrity that demonstrates a contempt for the readers of the blog.
themann1086
/facepalm
A few years ago, under some pretty heavy campaigning by supporters, we got our township to run a trial period single-stream recycling; it was so successful and liked that it’s now permanent. This was done under an all-GOP town council (and mayor), too, with the supporters primarily being activists in the Democratic party. Opposition focused on the fact that it would cost slightly more, and that people could already recycle, they just needed to take it to one of a few private collecting companies. Recycling in my town is up something ridiculous like 100-200%, because it’s easy to do.
Joel
@Calouste: Are you really correcting me? Queen of the Commonwealth, if that suits. It doesn’t matter.
And yes, some lackey with a monarchal title can interfere with representative government, just like appointees can in the United States. None of this changes the point that the governments you listed are essentially Republics.
AnotherBruce
@JRon:
It’s not like it, it is the Republican wet dream. The corporate overlords never really hated totalitarianism as much as they’ve claimed. They just wanted to be the ones who controlled the action.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Now that the Election is over, can we get a “Think Economics” donation bin where we can all donate to E.D.’s economic education so he’ll stop calling limited, time restricted, open bid government contracts “monopolies”.
Srusly.
xyzxyzxyz
My understanding of the way any municipality works is that services are sent out to bid. Companies (private companies….that’s good!) bid on that service, and the company that submits the low bid (with demonstrated competence) gets to provide the service. You elect people to oversee this process (that’s the democracy part of the equation) so that you can go about your business of…..say…..earning a living rather than dealing with fucking minutia like garbage pickup.
Instead, it sounds like we have a town full of retired folks who have nothing to do but stand on the curb in their shorts and white socks, scratch their ass, and bitch about socialism while they collect social security and stroke their dogeared copy of “Atlas Shrugged”. Why would anyone waste any time thinking about any logic behind the actions of these ‘baggers?
Judas Escargot
@JRon:
Communism today is, somewhat ironically, a Republican wet dream.
Or, to phrase the same point otherwise: Authoritarian Communism turned out to be more efficient at exploiting labor than Liberal Capitalism ever could be.
Which is probably why our current crop of “capitalists” just can’t seem to export our jobs and livelihood to the “communists” fast enough.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Mike G
You missed Queen Margarethe’s decree regarding trash collection policy in Copenhagen? It was in all the papers…
JGabriel
@Ailuridae:
To be fair, I honestly don’t feel contempted. I just think Erik’s wrong. People are wrong sometimes, even when they have intellectual integrity.
.
MattR
@JGabriel:
Jon Stewart, is that you?
Jules
So i live in an area where everyone is free to do whatever the fvck they want with their trash.
So we use one service a few other on our street uses another and then there are the 2 assholes who choose to haul their own trash to the dump and/or burn it.
Because they have the right to choose the rest of us get to see their trash pile up until they haul it and/or burn it.
It annoys me and I think I have a right not to be annoyed by red necks trash piles or suffer from the stink when they decide to burn their shit…which is always on a nice day day when I have my windows open.
Oh the joys of living out in an unincorporated part of the county.
These morons also like to shoot off their guns whenever they feel like it too, their right to be stupid on their street at their home….except it affects me on my street in my home.
Jane2
@arguingwithsignposts: Oh. My. God. Don’t get me started on iPads which every senior level male in government REQUIRES to do his work!
PeakVT
The questions simply becomes – do we, as a people, have the right to make stupid choices?
Yes, though it’s also other people’s right to point out that re-inventing the wheel wrt. to government services – which libertards like Kain insist on doing on a regular basis – is completely fucking moronic.
Ailuridae
@JGabriel:
At this point we are two posts in from ED without him bothering to take the time to understand what a “monopoly” is and continuing to make arguments about “monopolies” that insult the intelligence of anyone who understands what one is.
JohnR
You know, I think ED’s good for this place. Such an outpouring of relatively thoughtful argument! Such a coming together of squabbling commentators, all aligned against a common target! It does a body good to see. ED, face it; this particular choice of ‘argument’, while highly stimulating to the readers, is a crock of horseshit. I don’t know if you’re ever going to have kids, but here’s some free advice: pick your fights carefully, because in the real world, it’s important to win them as often as possible. This sort of silly-ass, arm-waving blathering doesn’t really impress anybody except maybe other “libertarians” that much. And once you get tagged as a ‘know-nothing bonehead’, it’s hard to beat the rap. Put a bit more thought into your next effort, OK? Cheers!
ino shinola
First post – “competition will keep prices down and quality of service high.”
Second post – “it is inefficient to have multiple trash collectors blocking up traffic, causing road damage, polluting the air, etc.”
So which is it?
If it’s the former, could you please share with us what cell carrier, cable service, and credit card company you use that provide the sterling service which competition inevitably ensures.
Stop digging Mr. Kain, it’s embarrassing. And I hate to tell you this but yes, Reagan did dye his hair.
Calouste
@Stefan:
You mean the Queen of Great Britain? England as an independent country ceased to exists in 1707.
Always fun to hear teabagger talking about the American independence from “England” while waving the Declaration of Independence around because the “King of Great Britain” is explicitly mentioned there.
Calouste
@Joel:
Those governments are democracies, not republics. The two words are not synonyms. Example: Norway, democracy but not a republic; North Korea, republic but not a democracy.
It would make more sense (if you’re going down that route) to say that some republics with a ceremonial president, Germany for example, are elected monarchies rather than the other way around.
matoko_chan
@MattR: im entitled.
i tole you guyz E.D. was a glibertarian poseur.
ED brought up reproductive choice in his ‘choice is good’ post….so i really wanna know….
HAY ED ARE THE FETUSES STILL SLAVES?
russell
works for me.
That might be what the question “becomes”, but it’s not the argument you were making.
Your argument was that, on substantive grounds, it was better if folks had a choice of trash hauler. The magic of the free market and competition would yield better service and a better price.
Long story short, sometimes that’s true and sometimes it’s not. It all depends.
But the Fountain Hills folks can do whatever the hell they like as far as I’m concerned. Mazel tov.
Just keep that libertarian claptrap the hell out of my town.
And Another Thing...
Everybody, including moi, makes mistakes, and I’ve always tried as a person, a supervisor and an executive to not judge them negatively for the mistake, but for what they did with their mistake. How long did it take before they realized and acknowledged the mistake? What did they do to fix the error? Did they continue to make that kind of mistake? etc. This has been a remarkably effective strategy.
Kain misses Cole’s point in the original post and writes a very flawed post which has some real stupid in it (contract = monopoly) which draws some good comments which Kain might have learned from. But no, he doubles down with a post that is larded with bullshit slogans and attempts at misdirects.
This is not the first time that this scenario has played out. It looks like we’ve got a learning disability on our hands.
All I’ve gotta say is, good luck with your day job.
alwhite
I finally realise why John brought you in E.D. – it is to provide balance to the front page.
Intelligent, well reasoned and thoughtful commentary can get boring and mundane so that you forget how good it is. You are an excellent antidote to all that quality stuff. Just know, we are not laughing WITH you.
sneezy
“Kip’s Law” is bullshit, and stupid bullshit at that. Lots of people — most probably including Kip himself if he’d stop and think for about 15 seconds — can see that many large, complicated endeavors do in fact benefit from centralized planning without envisioning themselves as the planner.
For example, do I think that the design, construction, and operation of a several-hundred million dollar data center benefits from centralized planning? Yup. Have I ever envisioned myself doing that planning? Nope.
By the way, coming up with bullshit laws that don’t stand up to 15 seconds of thought and then naming the “law” after yourself is the kind of thing that makes many people think “douchebag” when they hear someone describe themselves as “libertarian.”
fasteddie9318
ED, I try not to be antagonistic with you, but
what the fuck are you talking about? How in the blue hell is a town council contracting to a collection company to handle trash collection in any way, shape, or form more like “Dell wins a biddable contract to be the sole provider of all computers in the United States for five years” (which, as an example, is total gibberish; how the fuck would that even work?) than it is like “Dell bids for and wins the contract to provide hardware to the Education Department for five years”? According to you the former is Engels’ hand reaching from the grave to strangle our freedom, but the latter is OK, and the trash thing is more like the former because you said so, even though it seems an awful lot like the latter.
electricgrendel
I am presuming this city council was elected and did not seize power over the town in some sort of bloody Viking type raid in which houses were burnt, livestock slaughtered and the populace subdued. Because- you see. We do not live in a democracy. We live in a democratic republic. We elect representatives to make these decisions. If we lived in a true democracy (which as far as I know has never existed) then we’d all vote all of the time on everything. Instead these people, through a democratic process, elected these non-Viking-raid-having councilpersons to make the decisions regarding how to run this state.
And you know- we do have a right to make foolish decisions when they affect only us. This “I have a right to fuck everything up for everyone because that’s how I like it” argument is complete bullshit. It ignores the fact that we’re not a country of rugged individuals who are the only ones that suffer the consequences of our bad choices. We live in shared space. We live in communities. And this rabid individualism is killing that sense of connectedness which is necessary for a thriving, balanced community.
So no. If you want to make a stupid decision that affects only you, then I don’t care. But if you want to clog my streets with more trucks, pollute my air with my filth and live in some ridiculous fantasy that competition does more than enrich the people who are able to manipulate the game then I have to say fuck off. Petty selfishness masquerading as high minded political ideology is just petty selfishness in the end. And it’s killing this country.
iLarynx
If liberty and stupidity are close bedfellows, then libtards and stupidity are conjoined twins.
That ED conflates municipal trash collection with Dell computers shows a fundamental lack of understanding of this situation. ED is comparing a consumer electronic gadget with a public health and safety service – that’s nuts. It’s a dumb comparison, like apples and steel-belted radial tires. And he uses it TWICE! Why not the example of the government mandating a different consumer electronic gadget, like… dildos? It makes every bit as much sense as ED’s Dell comparison. That is, none at all.
This is an issue where everyone has an interest in maintaining good trash collection to prevent the spread of disease, and where just a few teabagger libtards exercising their god-given right to make stupid decisions can adversely affect the health of the entire community.
A very dumb argument. Stop digging ED.
Jason
We don’t? Assembly line what now? Or, per Christine O’Donnell, “Where in the Constitution is the
separation of church and stateguarantee of choice?”Discussions such as this are not really about choice between services, as they pretend to be. I tend to object more to the public/private distinction because the difference in both cases (many private entities vs. one private entity) is one of degree and not kind. The preservation of choice here is really an illusion: the only freedom you have is the freedom not to purchase; in this case, you must purchase, regardless of who provides the service, so that freedom does not apply. It’s not so much a false choice offered by E.D. as the illusion of choice.
If the American character were as complete as the rhetoric here suggests, then we wouldn’t even be having the discussion. And the idea that prudential decisions must take a backseat to the freedom of people to be stupid is reverse question-begging: oh we don’t have an educational system whose mission is exactly the opposite, so therefore Happy Meals for all the fat kids. It’s not a choice, it’s a child!
brantl
How long is John Cole going to keep letting you bring this weak shit?
It’s not crony capitalism if it goes to the lowest bidder, and there is no slight of hand going on. And you said highest bidder, knucklehead, freudian slip, much?
This is your problem, Kaine, you think that because you cast something in a particular light, that doing so makes it true for this argument; it doesn’t, if you’re full of shit. It isn’t true, and you are full of shit.
Vlad
@Vlad
Who are you, and why are you using my name? Not cool, bro.
Nathanael
Would you, E. D., prefer to have “choice” as to which county clerks’ offices to use for registering land ownership? I’ll go with Registry One and you can go with Registry Two. Sure, they’ll disagree on who owns what land, but we need “choice”.
“Choice” is not a good in itself.
Nathanael
FYI, I live in one of the dopey areas where there is no municipal trash collection.
There are two private haulers.
They’re both quite expensive.
So two garbage trucks come down the street every week.
I, saving money, drive my trash directly to the transfer station.
Wasting gasoline, emitting unneeded pollution, etc. But because there’s no single-payer trash collection, it’s rational — it saves money for each individual unless your household generates a *lot* of trash each week.
Now city collection would be cheaper for me than driving the trash to the dump. The overhead of profit and lack of economies of scale from two competing companies drive up the price.
This is an example of an economic “natural monopoly”, where it really should be run by a democratically elected government, because competition *makes it either worse or much more expensive*. Most goods are not natural monopolies. Most transportation goods are, however.