nambit said:
you've obviously put quite some thought into this. reasoned debate, that's what i like
Actually, I've always been rubbed the wrong way by large social programs, but I had never spent the time to try and think of what might be a better method... just assumed that there
was one. The time that went into drafting my "privatized system" was the five minutes it took me to reply to your first PM.
But, if you feel it was reasoned and well thought out, then I feel a little better.
nambit said:
the marketting department realises that if they publicly state they will not treat anyone who has fallen ill due to the effects of illegal drugs, they will get more donations than the other charity.
and they *would* get more donations. for many people in this world, that would be enough to sway the decision between which company to support.
Precisely. If many people feel that this is "just," then those people will give a greater portion of their donations to that charity. I know it's taboo to say this, but capatilism is inherently democratic in its nature, and I like that. The people vote with their money, and that's as powerful as most elections. In this particular case, the company in tandem with dropping aid to illegal drug users would have to prove that the allocation of money by their system (which inclues not giving it to drug users, but instead giving it to others) is
better, whether that is by economic or moral standards (likely both, since some people care only about the economy, while others would view the distribution of charties as something that should be decided
entirely on a moral basis).
Remember, this is in a competitive system... if dropping aid to drug users offended too many people morally, or was too ineffective economically, people
wouldn't give their money to that charity. In essence, the charities that received the most funding would be those that reflected the opinions of the population. If the
people think prostitution is immoral, that might be reflected in the difficulty of prostitutes getting sufficient funding for work related diseases, which in term might be a very powerful deterrent that is not present with our (US) current health care and social support system. Not that they couldn't get
any funding though... which brings me to:
nambit said:
so, we have just excluded a section of society from health care.
No, not at all. Most people in the US hate driving tiny cars, but there's still a market for it. No doubt there will still be people who think ilicit drug users deserve pity and help, thus so long as there are people who believed that way there would be a market (niche perhaps, maybe not) for those charities that directed their funding in that direction. What you would
not see is a charity that directed their funds in a way that
no one agreed with, such as the "help multiple murder/rapists stay well fed on death row" charity. It would get no funding, therefore there would be no such charity, thus deathrow convicts would have to make due with pitiful state-provided food. How horrible. You see the point?
And remember, the government would still directly control the ultimate destination of a large amount of this charitable funding, due to the inherently large number of lazy people that wouldn't do it themselves and would just let the government take care of it for them. Personally, were it me writing the laws, I'd have an additional tiny fraction of a percentage tax break for those that controlled it themselves, since this makes logical sense seeing as how a portion of the charitable money going through the governments committee would necessarily have to pay for the operation of that committee... thus would be less efficient than private citizens doing it themselves.
And, there would probably need to be government
regulation of this private industry, just as there are form many, many others (another function of said committee), such as the FCC, FAA, etc. in the US. Naturally, the "make the wealthy more wealthy" charity, while having a good chance at survival economically due to the large funds at the disposal of the insanely rich and greedy, would not be allowed to exist under the proper regulations. Sure, governmental
regulation is often important, but government
control is just not necessary, but in fact unweildy, clumsy, inefficient, etc. Imagine if the government directly ran the airline business!?! Sure, ticket prices might drop, but taxes would be raised across the board to compensate for the horribly inefficient operation of the industry.
nambit said:
provision of social security; housing benefit, jobseeker's allowance etc however just isn't "sexy" enough to run effectively in a privatised system where companies must vye for attention from uninterested consumers.
Ah, but that's the beauty. Due to government
regulation, it is deemed necessary that all money making citizens
involuntarily pay a determined percentage of their income to socially directed charities. They have no choice, but if they are going to put their money somewhere, you can damn well bet that many will care where it's going, and what it gets used for (they have little control over this currently). And, for those that don't give a flip, the government gets to make the decision. Everyone's happy.
nambit said:
the government has set a level of taxes which is needed to support it's social welfare program.
Yep, and I can guarantee that were these social programs privately ran in a competitive environment, it would take much
less taxes for everyone to get the same amount of money into needy hands... but more importantly it would take much less taxes to do
much more good as far as actually helping people. I guarantee it.
nambit said:
the system you describe pretty much exists today, except with checks and balances where the government ensures that those cases where private charity would not provide adequate resources are taken care of.
The big difference is whether it is controlled by the private or the public sector, and that's a
huge difference in many different ways. But, checks and balances would still be there through governmental regulations, and as I said before the system should function in such a way that even unpopular charities received funding... whether that be due to a niche market or governmentally directed funds (and I remind you, if a government committee is evaluating charities and issuing a yearly report on where
they think the money should go - and thus where they send their controlled funds - don't you think many people that decide to appropriate their own charities would read that report and be influenced by it to give money to the "illegal drug users" anyway, despite their personal opinions of such people, simply due to the well thought out explanation in the report of why it is necessary to give them aid?).
I usually don't get my brain so involved in politics and economics, but this has been very interesting, and I'm glad you stimulated me into thinking along such lines. I'll have to do some more thinking about this now, and see if I can find any obvious pitfalls or shortcomings of a private sector social care industry.
