Ive broken the slavery discussion into its own thread in the debate room... its an interesting topic, but not one that's relevant to the OP
What's the difference between a private contractor hired by the government and a government employee?
A private contractor will charge the gov't $20 for a small bottle of water and pay someone $20 and hour to deliver it. The gov't will get the water for $1 from a municipality and pay two people $20 an hour each to go get it, one to drive and the other to navigate. No seriously, there are some things the gov't does well but often the bureaucracy and sense of job security lead to some inefficiencies in certain departments.
The private contractor will work faster, harder and more efficiently because they want to finish the contract and move onto the next one. And they're competing against a slew of other contractors for the same, limited pool of jobs/money. A government worker gets paid X no matter if they go a good job or not, finish the job in five minutes or five days, work 10 jobs a year or work 100. There's no incentive for government worker while a private contractor has to work to get paid. There's a reason why advanced nations all move from nationalization to privatization... namely that governments suck at getting anything done.
In other words, the consensus is that this doesn't make sense: "the State guaranteed a basic income to all citizens in exchange for the citizen’s service in various orders ranging from agriculture, arts and manufacturing to the military and legal professions. In practice, the Empire had a healthy and robust free market economy though one much smaller than the public sector." For the Empire to have a healthy and robust economy, those serving the government need to be contactors and not direct employees of the Empire to achieve appropriate levels of efficiency, innovation, and specialization. However, people drive markets. People are not bias-free, rational beings. Therefore, people break markets. Hence the need for market oversight and government intervention, which often pulls economies away from free markets anyway -- because governments are not bias-free, rational organizations. In the end, there is no way to have a free-market economy for too long when various human market players are either trying to take advantage of it or trying to regulate it.
Correct. And watching public highway work compared to private is a never-ending source of amusement/amazement. You know all the old jokes about you know it's a government job when there are five supervisors watching one guy dig a hole with a shovel? They are basically true. I'm an architect, and I've been involved in some "infrastructure" projects. The same road that a private developer would get done in a month would take a contractor to the government six months to a year to build -- all because of the bureaucracy and red tape involved. I sometimes notice odd things. Such as, my state's highway department patches potholes in concrete bridge decks with asphalt cold patch. That's a monumentally stupid thing to do, but wait -- it gets worse. The same state highway department patches potholes in asphalt with -- concrete.
There is a deep rabbit hole with the understanding that "government" as an idea is just one convincing way to cheese the free market in the first place.
well I’m joining the conversation a little late. I think it needs to be address, what do you mean by function? Unless people are literally dying from starvation, it’s going to function at some level or another. It’s really up to you how much functioning makes sense- is there widespread famine or can everyone afford their own millennium falcon?
