
Ask HN: What would America look like if there was less government? - MuffinFlavored
When I think of the public sector, I think of:<p>education - student debt crisis; uneducated people stuck in poverty<p>gas&#x2F;oil&#x2F;electricity - global warming&#x2F;climate crisis<p>healthcare - obesity crisis, diabetes crisis, people dying in the streets due to unmanageable healthcare costs<p>law enforcement - police brutality&#x2F;abuse of power; mass shooting epidemics<p>What would the country look like if some of these responsibilities were shifted to the private sector? Famously, UPS&#x2F;FedEx are better than USPS. What are some other examples of the private sector being more efficient the the public sector?
======
Porthos9K
What you're seeing is the result of decades of efforts on the part of post-
Eisenhower Republicans to discredit the very notion of government of the
people, by the people, and for the people -- and you're falling for it. Good
job!

------
HarryHirsch
"Rabbi Chanina, deputy to the kohanim, would say: Pray for the integrity of
the government; for were it not for the fear of its authority, a man would
swallow his neighbor alive."

It's important to remember that Rabbi Chanina saw the destruction of the
Second Temple and still made his statement that has come down to us in the
Pirke Avot.

------
retrocryptid
Well. we wouldn't have TESLA. or SolarCity. or SpaceX. Modern genomics may
still be a decade out. There would be no Silicon Valley. We would probably
have something sort of like the internet, but it would be a pay per packet and
net neutrality wouldn't even be discussed; we would probably just be kvetching
about how expensive it is to email stuff between PRODIGY and COMPUSERV.

There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads
that went between los angeles and new york. There would be no rural phone
service; heck, there probably wouldn't be an electrical grid in rural areas.

There would be no enforcement of labor laws, so there would be no weekends
(not that there are weekends now...)

Each bank would be issuing it's own currency, but it probably wouldn't be TOO
horrible, cause it's in each of the bank's best interest to publish exchange
rates between east coast and west coast banks (probably on PRODIGY.) And yes,
the federal reserve is not perfect, but manipulating monetary policy to avoid
credit crises and to at least try to encourage full employment and low (or at
least stable) inflation is sort of cool.

We could all use bitcoin, of course, but deflationary currency is even worse
than fiat currency.

There would be no affordable medical insurance for the poor, sick or old.

No national parks, but maybe there would be land trusts. Hard to say if
private land trusts would be better or worse, but they would certainly be more
expensive to consumers.

And sure, Xe/Blackwater are great, but if I'm going to have someone fight a
war, I'm putting my money on the Marines (and begrudgingly, I have to admit
the Air Force is pretty ossm as well.)

There 'aint no way anyone on wall street is going to police themselves, a
"privatized" SEC is sort of laughable.

~~~
mindcrime
That's a lot of speculation with little or nothing to support it.

~~~
eesmith
"Little or nothing"?

SpaceX, and all of the private space companies, are built using the results of
government research, primarily during the space race. Potentially better
systems, like the aerospike engine, are too expensive for a commercial company
to develop (eg,
[https://youtu.be/K4zFefh5T-8?t=567](https://youtu.be/K4zFefh5T-8?t=567) )

"Modern genomics" because human genome project started in the 1980s as a DOE
project, then switched over to NIH. Celera had a private venture which
finished at about the same time as the public one, but that was in part
because it depended on public data. The publicly funded genomic effort really
pushed the development of the genome sequencing field.

Silicon Valley started because of the government funding for aerospace and
microwaves and electronics through military/industry contracting in the Bay
Area. Eg, Lockheed Missiles Division in Sunnyvale in the 1960s was the largest
employer in what became Silicon Valley. - [https://steveblank.com/secret-
history/](https://steveblank.com/secret-history/) .

The interstate highway started because of Eisenhower. As
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System)
points out, "Some large sections of Interstate Highways that were planned or
constructed before [the Federal Aid Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as
toll roads".

"Rural phone service" and "electrical grid" is because of legislation like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act)
and its later amendments (eg, "1949 - extended the act to allow loans to
telephone companies wishing to extend their connections to unconnected rural
areas"), and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934)
. See [https://www.ntca.org/ruraliscool/history-rural-
telecommunica...](https://www.ntca.org/ruraliscool/history-rural-
telecommunications) for more details.

"enforcement of labor laws" is because of the NLRB.

"Each bank would be issuing it's own currency" \- that's certainly true. Look
at the "free banking era" of the mid-1800s
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking_in_the_United_States#1837%E2%80%931863:_%22Free_Banking%22_Era)
) when banks could and did print their own money.

Now, you could certainly argue that there are other ways to get to where we
are, but claiming retrocryptid's comments have little or no support seems more
a statement of ignorance about history than a solid position.

~~~
mindcrime
The thing is, for every thing you said that includes "was because of" or some
variant, the reality is that we don't have access to the counter-factual
cases. We don't have any way of knowing, for example, if we would have
Interstate Highways or not, had the federal government not been involved.

The same can be said for electrification, the Internet, etc.

 _statement of ignorance about history than a solid position._

I'm very familiar with the history. My point is that that is irrelevant,
because, again, we don't know - and can't know - anything about the counter-
factuals. To say, for example "we wouldn't have the Internet today without the
USG" is speculation.

~~~
eesmith
Your view appears to reject the study of history as a valid means of inquiry.

I may assert that the US Civil War was due to slavery, and point to, for
example, documents at the time which say that slavery was the reason for
succession. Eg, [https://portside.org/2013-11-04/absolute-proof-civil-war-
was...](https://portside.org/2013-11-04/absolute-proof-civil-war-was-about-
slavery) .

But then you reply with "we don't know - and can't know - anything about
counter-factuals." Who knows - perhaps the South would have succeeded anyway
even if there hadn't been slavery.

I may assert that the Manhattan Project was a result of Einstein and Szilárd's
letter to Roosevelt. You can reply with the same quote. Maybe someone else
besides the most famous physicist in the world would have written a similar
letter, and started the effort. You might be right, but the existing causal
chain is pretty clear.

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Is there any description of likely historical causation which you cannot
respond to with a claim that it's "a lot of speculation with little or nothing
to support it"?

~~~
mindcrime
_Your view appears to reject the study of history as a valid means of
inquiry._

I certainly agree that a lot of the apparent causal chains that we take for
granted are very suspect. But it's deeper than that. One can say "The
assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the cause of WWI" and maybe that's
true in a sense. But if Ferdinand had not been assassinated, would there still
have been a great war in Europe? I think there are a lot of reasons to suspect
so.. maybe it would have started a few months or years later, and maybe the
details would have worked out different... who knows? That's the problem with
history: by definition we only get access to one view of things.

Now, IF the universe truly is strictly deterministic and things can happen
only one way, then I guess it's all a moot point. But I'm not sure I accept
that.

~~~
eesmith
You'll note though that Wikipedia's entry starts "The causes of World War I
remain controversial." and says:

> The immediate causes lay in decisions made by statesmen and generals during
> the July Crisis of 1914. This crisis was triggered by the assassination of
> Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by the Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo
> Princip who had been supported by a nationalist organization in Serbia.

While in the example I gave, it's certain that defense of slavery was the
primary reason for the US Civil War. Or, are you really not willing to accept
even that?

Go back to retrocryptid's statement "There would be no interstate highway
system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new
york"

We can look at the interstate system and see that "Some large sections of
Interstate Highways that were planned or constructed before [the Federal Aid
Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as toll roads".

This lends support retrocryptid's statement, while you said there was little
to no support for any of those statements.

------
ImaTigger
"Famously, UPS/FedEx are better than USPS."

This a red herring. First off, USPS is nearly as good as those, and those
others don't have nearly the geographical breadth requirements of the USPS.

------
derrick_jensen
>education

One of the Libertarian propositions to public schooling is giving a check to
all children to redeem at any private school that passes some bar set by the
government. I love this solution, since it removes the requirement for
residency for admittance to quality education, and strongarms the schooling
system to be more efficient and competitive in how they produce students
(assuming that the primary reason to choose one over another is test scores).
Primary efficiency would come from reducing the amount of faculty required to
hire.

>gas/oil/electricity

I don't see how this is tied to the public sector directly, unless you're
talking about the military and Pentagon specifically.

>healthcare

It's complicated, not going to flesh that out. In general, we have a fairly
privatized health care sector compared to a lot of other countries.

>law enforcement

Mass shootings have a lot more to do with the overuse of social media and the
underuse of meaningful in person relationships than it has to do with law
enforcement.

~~~
eesmith
While I hate the solution. There are many problems with it.

1) Why do parents have the sole privilege in deciding where the money goes?
It's my tax dollars. In the current system, I can go to school board meetings
and try to change policy, even if I don't have kids going to school right now.

(Of the many possible scenarios, I might want to change things because I know
my kids will be going to school in a few years, or based on experiences from
having kids who just graduated.)

2) You write "some bar set by the government." Who sets that bar? Is it the
local area, in which case how does it differ from a school board? Is it the
entire state, in which case, how do local people affect what's going on in
their school?

Or are their multiple organizations which can be authorized to provide
oversight, in which case, can't the private schools pick the one with the
least oversight? We see that already with some charter school systems.

3) Since these are private schools, can they decide to not accept someone? If
so, based on which criteria? Can a private school decide that it's too
expensive to school someone with emotional problems (a "disruption"), and
expel that student?

Public schools are required to accept everyone, with a high bar for expulsion.
What happens if private schools only accept the children which are cheapest
and easiest to educate, leaving the more difficult children to the public
school system?

What happens if _no_ private schools are willing to accept a student, and
there no more public school system which is required to accept everyone?

4) You mention that it's "competitive in how they produce students".

In many districts there is only one school. There may have been more schools
before, but they merged in order to save costs, because it's cheaper to have
one large building (and bus kids in) than many small building, each with its
own staff.

Surely having several private school systems has its own overhead.

How do you know there there really enough economic savings in this competition
to be able to overcome the economy-of-scale savings? Especially in districts
where right now there is only one school?

Plus, the large public high school I went to offered a wide selection of
courses. There was enough interest in Latin, for example, to have a Latin
teacher. Break the school population into three, and no one school will be
able to afford a Latin teacher. Sure, one might, but then that school might
not have a jazz band class. A student who wants both Latin and jazz is
unlikely to get that if there are many small schools instead of one large one.

This suggests there may be a natural monopoly, rather that competition, for
many districts.

5) You assumed "that the primary reason to choose one over another is test
scores".

Test scores are highly correlated with family income. If we choose schools
based on test scores, then we send students to schools in rich neighborhoods.

Test scores are pretty worthless in the first place. Test prep is effective,
but takes time away from all of the other topics (art, P.E., home economics,
music, foreign language, shop) which are also important - if your goal is to
produce educated citizens - but aren't tested.

6) Most good private schools are more expensive than good public schools. That
check will end up subsidizing rich people to send their kids to expensive
private schools. It won't poor people send their kids to good private schools.

7) How much of the school budget will be spent on marketing in the system you
envision? In a public school system, there is very little marketing overhead.

~~~
derrick_jensen
Remember, this is in comparison to public schools, which are regional
gerrymandered monopolies. This system isn't perfect, but sets incentives in
place to make it better. I grew up near some sketchy neighborhoods, and
although I went to an average school, I know a lot of people who fared worse.

I'm not going to write a response to everything you said, but the tl;dr falls
into a few categories

1\. Privatization does not mean deregulation. Imagine Obamacare style
regulations to a private marketplace for schooling (price caps, cannot turn
away certain sets of people, etc).

2\. If we can't agree on some measure for effective education, then there's no
way to improve this, since we have no bar to go by. Everything is empirical
and mileage may vary from person to person. You can create a seperate class of
high school education (will flesh out in next point).

3\. Property values are strongly correlated with the quality of the public
schools (since all states help pay for public school with property taxes[1],
and you are locked into a public school depending on where you live). My main
motivation for supporting this is to help poor people have access to the same
quality education as everybody else, and maybe even allowing specialized
tracks that bias towards vocational schooling that funnels into direct
employment after school (universities can boast about employment post
graduation, why not high schools?)

4\. There is nuance with the specific numbers here, and if it is systemically
impossible for reasonable competition, then this price will go up.

[1]: [http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-
th...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-the-property-
tax-and-public-ed.aspx)

~~~
eesmith
It's precisely because they are monopolies that they can be forced to accept a
wide range of students. Otherwise there will be schools which pick the
best/easily taught students, and leave the others behind.

Those who fared worse in the current system may fare far worse in an all-
private system.

1\. In the current charter school system, privatization often does mean
deregulation. So while I can imagine it, I assert that it's a dream.

2\. If we pick wrong measures - and standardized tests are wrong measures -
then we end up trying to improve the wrong thing. Eg, we end up with two weeks
dedicated to test prep, instead of teaching; we end up dropping art, music,
and foreign language classes in order to focus only on those topics which are
tested.

The regional gerrymandering is in part so that the local communities get to
decide what the right measures are. Mileage absolutely varies from person to
person .. people and communities vary too.

It's not like we didn't have a decent sense of what a good education meant
back in the 1970s, before high-stakes testing.

3\. Again, how do private schools get to decide which students to accept? Can
they make policies which end up rejecting most poor people? If the private
school education costs $10,000 and the state's check is for $5,000 then poor
students aren't going to afford it. While the parents of middle class students
can, subsidized by the state.

Which means poor people _won 't_ have access to the same quality education as
everyone else.

------
eesmith
Student debt is due in part to the government getting out of funding public
schools. There is little student debt in those countries where the government
pays for a college education.

Student debt is also affected by poor supervision of lenders. Among other
things, student debt cannot be discharged (usually) during bankruptcy. This is
a special law that does not affect most other types of debt. As a result, loan
institution don't need to do as much diligence.

Student debt is also because of the rapidly rising costs of education. I think
part of it is the belief that one must go to college to have a good career.
Colleges look at the delta in earning potentials and say "I gotta have more of
that." The argument is that if going to college is expected to net you $2
million in additional income, then it's worthwhile to spend an extra $100K on
it.

"Uneducated people stuck in poverty" is a combination of factors. One is the
dependency of most school system on local taxes. Poor neighborhoods don't have
the tax base for their schools as rich ones do. Rich parents want their kids
to go to well-funded schools, and will move to do so. Poor parents rarely have
that option. This is also coupled with the long-lasting effects of racism, eg,
red-lining and the white urban exodus to the suburbs during the 1900s, which
segregated school systems among racial and economic lines. The modern charter
school movements have also resulted in increased segregation.

"global warming/climate crisis" \- widely accepted by the relevant scientists,
including those at oil companies. Oil companies spent massive amounts of money
on disinformation campaigns, and in buying the government. I don't see how
"less government" would have improved the situation. More government -
government which could reign in the imbalance of power by having $billions of
oil money on hand - might have made a difference. Look now where other
governments in the world are far ahead of the US on this topic.

"obesity crisis" \- there are many reasons for the crisis. I don't see how
less government would help. Certainly the government has many roles in the
matter.

"diabetes crisis" \- how would less government help?

"unmanageable healthcare costs" \- most wealthy countries address this with
national health care, either run by or overseen by the government. The US
healthcare system is royally screwed up, but I think can be explained by the
explanations including 1) most sick people can't shop around for the best
care, 2) hospitals have little reason to publish their full costs, and 3)
there's little competition because it's expensive to maintain duplicate
medical support infrastructure for a given region. Further, since medical
coverage is employer based, employers are the customer, not the employee, and
since there are so many coverage options (in the name of 'customer choice'),
it leads to a paradox of choice issue where people don't want to spend the
time to figure out the right choice, much less as those plans change every
year.

I don't see how less government would help the US system.

"police brutality/abuse of power" \- Yes, US police are brutal and abusive.
How does less government help change that? Allow non-police like private
guards to take over more law enforcement? Won't that just shift the brutality
and power abuse to those with even less oversight?

"mass shooting epidemics" \- you'll again note that mass shooting epidemics
don't really happen in countries with significantly more government. What is
the mechanism by which less government would reduce the number of mass
shootings in the US?

You write "UPS/FedEx are better than USPS". This is outright not true. USPS's
mandate is to be able to deliver anywhere in the US. FedEx, for example, will
use USPS for rural delivery. Quoting [https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-
does-the-trick-for-fed...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-
trick-for-fedex-ups-1407182247?mod=WSJ_LatestHeadlines) from 2014:

> For FedEx alone, the post office delivers an average of 2.2 million packages
> a day, or about 30% of the express-mail company’s total U.S. ground segment.

So UPS/FedEx are sometimes better than USPS, and other times worse.

