Quote: "I think you have confused "publicly owned" with "government run""
No, I'm not confusing the two, they are two different things. However there is one thing to consider. Here in the States, any entity that is given funding by the federal government, either through a contract to provide a product\service or through outright funding, then opens itself to federal regulation. This includes such things as break times, working hours, and so on that end up making a job take longer or become more expensive.
Quote: "Stuff that is publicly owned is the stuff that has the pressure to spend money wisely."
If this is the case then why do publicly funded programs almost always end up costing the tax payer more than government said they would? Why do privately funded programs usually come in at least on budget and sometimes earlier than promised? Speaking from experience in working for government, if a public or private entity is given public money, the entity will milk it for as much money as they can, while ensuring they only do the minimum required in order to obtain said money. With that said, the private entity will usually use the money more wisely because it wants to keep the most profit for itself, but there is still waste in that there was more funding given than was required. Give me one example of a publicly funded program which used its funding wisely and with minimum waste.
Quote: "If the head of Harvard wants to build a gold statue of himself in the middle of a lawn (or more realistically, give huge bonuses to a few top people) then they can totally do that"
The gold statue is just ridiculous, how many private companies do you see with such crap? Compare that with the opulence you see in government and the waste you see in public programs. As for the huge bonuses, a company gets what it pays for. Whether the recipient of bonuses deserves them based on their performance is up to what their contract says, and contract details are not often reported in mainstream news outlets - both left-leaning and right-leaning. Most people are too lazy to find this information out for themselves, or are happy to just sit and complain about things but won't go research the causes of the things they constantly complain about.
Quote: "if they tried doing that at Cambridge then we would have a very real chance of stopping it and getting the money spent directly on education."
Would you have a real chance of stopping it? Just how many people do you know that follow such things, let alone care enough (or aren't lazy), to write their people in government or what-have-you. For example, I'm as involved as I can get in politics (can't get too involved being in the military) but I really don't care about what's happening in my town's public schools even though I pay a hefty property tax to support the schools. I don't have kids (and wouldn't put them in a public school anyway); there are more pressing issues to fight over; and there are several other reasons not to care at this point in time. My neighbors, who have kids and also pay property tax, don't keep track of what's going on with the school's finances either. There may be some parents who track such things, but most I've met from all backgrounds don't.
Quote: "They pay $1,000,000,000 and no one else gets to be taught by the best teachers. Obviously this would make finacial sense for Harvard, and so "the market approves of it" (or whatever sentience you want to give "the market"), but it is clearly not the fairest or most efficient (in terms of quality of Harvard grads) solution."
So what? Harvard gets $1,000,000,000 and some guy gets a supposed top-notch education. What do you think Harvard is going to do with all that money? Eat it for breakfast? It is in the school's interest to invest a good portion of the money back into the school. As for "fairness", I'm not going to get deep into that on these forums, but who are you or I to determine what is "fair" in a private organization?
Quote: "I wish more people realised it is not a black/white choice between Marx and Hayek"
It is indeed a black-and-white choice, but again not for these forums. You've got my yahoo username a few posts back if you want to continue.
Anyway, I'm going to self-moderate and end the large amount of political talk here so as not to anger the mods. I've got to get back to my gov't job and stop wasting money sitting here being unproductive. Oh, wait, it's time for lunch.
Keep your Hope & Change to yourself, I choose Liberty! Stop by for a chat! [IXE]Nateholio on irc.maxgaming.net:6667 #GarageGames
