NB: I ended up accidentally wiping out this comment in the process of editing it on 2019-12-30, so I rewrote it
One of the reasons why Europe has a much more all-encompassing welfare state than the USA is that in the US government services are poorly run. Whether it’s providing healthcare , building high speed rail , or Issuing Drivers Licenses, the typical American’s experience with government services is one of incompetence, corruption and failure to innovate.
I disagree with this statement for a variety of reasons. First of all, most Americans get their health care through private corporations, so it seems strange to me to say that the US government is incompetent at providing health care. The parts of the US government that do provide health care, like the Veteran’s Administration, seem to be ratherwellregarded.
I don’t have much of an opinion on high-speed rail except to note that the US is much more geographically sparse than Europe. As a result, high-speed rail makes much competitive with air travel in the US, given that air travel is lower cost for distances of more than a few hundred miles.
Thirdly, I’d like to note that I’ve always had rather pleasant experiences with the DMV. Even when I’ve done things like accidentally mis-fill a form, they’ve gone out of their way to help me. In fact, the worst customer service experiences I’ve had have been with private entities. For example, when I moved into my home, and set up gas service through Center Point Energy, I accidentally typoed my bank account number. Rather than informing me that they were unable to charge my account, and ask me to reconfirm the account details, they locked my account. I had to spend multiple hours on the phone with customer service to get the account unlocked, and then, even after I’d got my account unlocked, I was banned from paying with a bank account for twelve months. Rather, I was forced to pay with a credit card and accept a $3.75 “convenience fee” for doing so.
Likewise, when I moved from Seattle to Minneapolis, I canceled my Comcast account in Washington, because I was moving out of state and I was planning on living with my parents while I bought my house in Minnesota. After I purchased the house, I found that I couldn’t activate Comcast service at the new address. When I tried to enter my information, it said that I already had an account. Moreover, there didn’t seem to be any way to “un-cancel” my existing account and change the address to reflect my new Minnesota location. It required multiple trips to a Comcast (XFinity) location to get someone who possessed the necessary privileges to create a new account on my behalf. Overall, my experience with the government is has been far more pleasant than my experience with private monopolies.
I’d also like to add that the US government (like most governments) is many times larger than even the largest private-sector entity. The vast majority of it runs out of sight and out of mind. The only times we hear about many government departments is when there’s a scandal or mismanagement that begets news coverage. As a result, most people have strong a availability heuristic that favors a view of the government being incompetent or corrupt, when the reality is that they only see the times when the government is incompetent or corrupt but not all the times when the government does what it should.
A contributing factor to this is that the government is a public entity. As a result, its failings, whether large or small are public and are available for public scrutiny. A private corporation (even if it is publicly traded, on the stock market), on the other hand, does not have the same transparency requirements. As a result, the amount of waste and mismanagement in the corporate world is very difficult to estimate, which makes any comparisons with government rather dubious.
Seconding this. My experience with the DMV has always been pleasant. I’ve also recently had to deal several times with the Social Security Administration, which impressed me with how efficiently their offices are run (the personnel were polite and helpful as well). I’ve had experiences dealing with other government (federal, state, and local) organizations as well, and cannot easily recall anything I might reasonably complain about.
On the other hand, private companies are, routinely, absolutely horrific to deal with. Cablevision (now Altice) might be the single worst company I have ever had the profound displeasure of interacting with—their customer service practices are, very obviously (and confirmed by their own custserv reps) designed to mislead and screw over the customer. Capital One (the banking company) does give them a run for their money, though. I’ve heard similar horror stories about Comcast. Many others (like Citibank or Samsung) are simply bad, in a way that doesn’t quite rise to “horrific” but which no sane person tolerates if they have a choice in the matter.
One might speculate that, while government service organizations lack the profit incentive to improve (though they may have other incentives!), they don’t have any particular incentive to do anything particularly bad, either; whereas private monopolies have every incentive to wring as much money out of their captive customer base as they can, and no incentive not to do so (much less to improve customer service). But, speculations about causes aside, the facts on the ground are clear.
I think “private monopolies are worse than government ones” is probably true in my experience as well. Although some of this is the subjective experience of having to pay money to be treated badly.
I think this makes me believe more strongly in competition as the main reason why the USPS is comparatively well-run.
Edit:
I would still expect private monopolies to be run more cost-efficiently than government ones. Although I’m not sure about cases like utilities where their profits are directly tied to their costs by government regulations.
“subjective experience of having to pay money to be treated badly”
Is this perhaps a bias view? I’m thinking about the reactions (I think this was documented but don’t have links to provide) to airline that were pricing for bags and, I think. even meals. This actually made it cheaper for many to fly but everyone hated having the line item pricing model compared to the bundled (and so largely hidden) pricing model.
To be honest, I’m not even sure I know how to price any consumption of public service beyond the directly observable but will not include portion of my tax paid in (though I suppose I could figure out something there).
NB: I ended up accidentally wiping out this comment in the process of editing it on 2019-12-30, so I rewrote it
I disagree with this statement for a variety of reasons. First of all, most Americans get their health care through private corporations, so it seems strange to me to say that the US government is incompetent at providing health care. The parts of the US government that do provide health care, like the Veteran’s Administration, seem to be rather well regarded.
I don’t have much of an opinion on high-speed rail except to note that the US is much more geographically sparse than Europe. As a result, high-speed rail makes much competitive with air travel in the US, given that air travel is lower cost for distances of more than a few hundred miles.
Thirdly, I’d like to note that I’ve always had rather pleasant experiences with the DMV. Even when I’ve done things like accidentally mis-fill a form, they’ve gone out of their way to help me. In fact, the worst customer service experiences I’ve had have been with private entities. For example, when I moved into my home, and set up gas service through Center Point Energy, I accidentally typoed my bank account number. Rather than informing me that they were unable to charge my account, and ask me to reconfirm the account details, they locked my account. I had to spend multiple hours on the phone with customer service to get the account unlocked, and then, even after I’d got my account unlocked, I was banned from paying with a bank account for twelve months. Rather, I was forced to pay with a credit card and accept a $3.75 “convenience fee” for doing so.
Likewise, when I moved from Seattle to Minneapolis, I canceled my Comcast account in Washington, because I was moving out of state and I was planning on living with my parents while I bought my house in Minnesota. After I purchased the house, I found that I couldn’t activate Comcast service at the new address. When I tried to enter my information, it said that I already had an account. Moreover, there didn’t seem to be any way to “un-cancel” my existing account and change the address to reflect my new Minnesota location. It required multiple trips to a Comcast (XFinity) location to get someone who possessed the necessary privileges to create a new account on my behalf. Overall, my experience with the government is has been far more pleasant than my experience with private monopolies.
I’d also like to add that the US government (like most governments) is many times larger than even the largest private-sector entity. The vast majority of it runs out of sight and out of mind. The only times we hear about many government departments is when there’s a scandal or mismanagement that begets news coverage. As a result, most people have strong a availability heuristic that favors a view of the government being incompetent or corrupt, when the reality is that they only see the times when the government is incompetent or corrupt but not all the times when the government does what it should.
A contributing factor to this is that the government is a public entity. As a result, its failings, whether large or small are public and are available for public scrutiny. A private corporation (even if it is publicly traded, on the stock market), on the other hand, does not have the same transparency requirements. As a result, the amount of waste and mismanagement in the corporate world is very difficult to estimate, which makes any comparisons with government rather dubious.
Seconding this. My experience with the DMV has always been pleasant. I’ve also recently had to deal several times with the Social Security Administration, which impressed me with how efficiently their offices are run (the personnel were polite and helpful as well). I’ve had experiences dealing with other government (federal, state, and local) organizations as well, and cannot easily recall anything I might reasonably complain about.
On the other hand, private companies are, routinely, absolutely horrific to deal with. Cablevision (now Altice) might be the single worst company I have ever had the profound displeasure of interacting with—their customer service practices are, very obviously (and confirmed by their own custserv reps) designed to mislead and screw over the customer. Capital One (the banking company) does give them a run for their money, though. I’ve heard similar horror stories about Comcast. Many others (like Citibank or Samsung) are simply bad, in a way that doesn’t quite rise to “horrific” but which no sane person tolerates if they have a choice in the matter.
One might speculate that, while government service organizations lack the profit incentive to improve (though they may have other incentives!), they don’t have any particular incentive to do anything particularly bad, either; whereas private monopolies have every incentive to wring as much money out of their captive customer base as they can, and no incentive not to do so (much less to improve customer service). But, speculations about causes aside, the facts on the ground are clear.
I think “private monopolies are worse than government ones” is probably true in my experience as well. Although some of this is the subjective experience of having to pay money to be treated badly.
I think this makes me believe more strongly in competition as the main reason why the USPS is comparatively well-run.
Edit:
I would still expect private monopolies to be run more cost-efficiently than government ones. Although I’m not sure about cases like utilities where their profits are directly tied to their costs by government regulations.
“subjective experience of having to pay money to be treated badly”
Is this perhaps a bias view? I’m thinking about the reactions (I think this was documented but don’t have links to provide) to airline that were pricing for bags and, I think. even meals. This actually made it cheaper for many to fly but everyone hated having the line item pricing model compared to the bundled (and so largely hidden) pricing model.
To be honest, I’m not even sure I know how to price any consumption of public service beyond the directly observable but will not include portion of my tax paid in (though I suppose I could figure out something there).