That’s a blanket statement that leaves too much wiggle-room. The UK’s NHS, for example, is partly private insofar as GPs and many other doctors work for themselves and contract themselves out to the NHS instead of being NHS employees. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a group of doctors could form an organization that forces its patients into binding arbitration for disputes while still being contracted to the NHS. It would result in a backlash of public opinion - but still possible.
The NHS also has other private components: it used to run its own logistics division which was scrapped in recent years and replaced with services provided by couriers like DHL.
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but a group of doctors could form an organization that forces its patients into binding arbitration for disputes while still being contracted to the NHS.
Could they? I thought the doctor's contract is with the NHS on standard government terms, and the patients are dealing with the NHS terms, the doctors have no direct contract with the patients or ability to impose legal terms on the patients differing from the NHS terms.
> Transportation. Communication. Food. See? I can do it too. The idea of non-privatizing things has to pass tests other than just "Everyone needs it."
Does it? Why? I'm 100% for all of the items you mentioned -- public transportation, public communication, and public food. Arguably we pay for crappier versions of all of those already (Busses, Lifeline Program, SNAP and Bridges or your state's equivalent)
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You can be for "public services that should never be privatized or outsourced", and still allow private services to exist too. That's not a conflict in any way.
(I'm aware of the letter ban) but a public USPS for package delivery, doesn't prevent FedEx from also delivering packages too. A public water utility doesn't prevent Nestle from also selling bottled water everywhere. Public elementary schools hasn't prevented private/religious schools from also existing in every state. PBS / BBC hasn't prevented NBC / ABC / CBS / Sky from existing. You can be pro "public utilities for things everyone needs, ban privatization of public services" and that does not have to hurt any private companies in any way.
I would have zero problem with those things being provided at the basic levels to everyone. No you aren't going to get t-bones, but some bread, eggs, potatoes, and shit? What is the problem there? They are already heavily subsidized industries to provide stability despite whatever else is happening in the markets, we aren't going to just stop growing them unless we are all dead.
Government is and has always been about law -- creating law, executing law, interpreting law, and enforcing law. Healthcare doesn't have a natural, direct relationship to law like prisons and courts do.
Government has always been about the legitimatized application of force; the use of law as one of the key components of the legitimization of force is very old, but not essential to the concept government (it's essential to modern, and even many older, norms or models of government, though.)
The principle of the rule of law says that all parties, even the government itself, are subject to the law. This would imply that any application of force on the government's part must only be done in the service of the law.
This is how government ought to be, and has been at least several times in the last 1000 years. The Magna Carta is famous for first codifying the rule of law principle.
If the principle of rule of law meant that a democratically elected government cannot use its powers to take care of its citizens, it would simply be a bad principle.
There needs to be a distinction between fundamental government functions (those that exist to establish the rule of law) and those that were created by law.
It's the fundamental government functions that should never be outsourced.
(If the people's will is that government take care of other matters, no problem. They can choose either way, provided the resulting laws are not unconstitutional.)
