Our choices of the areas of life where governments will more regulate or directly provide services are some of our most important policy choices. But while on the surface we hear a great many different arguments on these topics. and awful lot of them seem to come down to this claim:
I find you blanket quoting of statistics unconvincing. You use the term 'trust' regarding government agencies, but you do not qualify what a 'government agency' is. Police, military, fire fighters, paramedics, IRS, EPA, DOJ, Energy, public primary schools, public state funded universities?
By tossing an argument out there 'trust the government because their employees are more civic oriented' and attributing it to people who argue that government organizations may be better suited to public good than private ones, you are standing right on the border of a strawman.
Not many people would argue that the fire department or the streets department should be privatized. Are you using the same justification that people use to decry unneeded regulatory or project bloat to say that we should privatize prisons and elementary schools and fire departments?
What is your point exactly and who exactly are you arguing against?
For every locality A the term "the government of A" names the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber). You can, without introducing significant error, model government as a territorially defined extortion racket or as a giant shopping mall operator with an armed in-house security service. Government employment has no spiritually transformative power. Quite the opposite; guns attract thugs. "Pro Social Motivation", like Social Justice, sounds like a conceptdesigned by State-worshipful social psychologists to facilitate arrival of a pre-determined conclusion. In the real world, an altruistic Math teacher might just as well prefer to work in an independent school, where he can actually teach, over a government school where his real job is to pump enrollment statistics and justify inflated salaries of central office bureaucrats.
And sometimes you have to be cruel to employees to be kind to taxpayers.2 of the worst teachers I had in k-12 schools my mother had had about 30 years earlier. In a private system they'd have been moved to non-teaching jobs or fired within a year.
We seem to favor employees over consumers, like Dan Price is lauded for paying more that the market would bear to some employees but had he instead lowered his prices to consumers would he have gotten as much praise?This is a problem for Gov as many programs become part jobs programs. Even like the ethanol program.
I expect that having a secure, well-paying job will make most individuals nicer than they otherwise would be.
However, selection effects also matter. I'd expect such jobs to attract people who tend to worry about being fired. That includes some selection for people who deserve to be fired.
It's not obvious, a priori, what we should expect to be the net effects of these forces.
Reading the article in which the 40% number is found, I came across the following paragraphs on PSM (Pro-social motivation):
There is cross-sectional evidence of more prosocial value orientations and behaviors among public than private employees (Crewson 1997; Houston 2006, 2011; Lewis and Frank 2002; Piatak 2015; Van de Walle, Steijn, and Jilke 2015), but little direct evidence on selection to public employment. Studies of students attending specific programs such as law or physiotherapy have yielded mixed results, suggesting that the effect of values on sector choice could be mediated to a greater or lesser extent by educational choices (Choi and Chung 2017; Kjeldsen and Jacobsen 2012; Wright, Hassan, and Christensen 2017). In a relatively broad sample of university students, however, Holt (2018) found that prosocial values were associated with later public sector employment.Using unpaid overtime work as an indicator of prosocial behavior, a study by Gregg et al. (2011) also provides some evidence on selection to the public sector of people with high levels of prosocial motivation. Gregg et al. (2011) found more unpaid overtime work in the public than in the private sector, suggesting more prosocial motivation in the public sector. However, sector switchers were not found to do more overtime work when they were in the public sector than they were in the private sector. The lack of a behavioral change among switchers was interpreted as evidence that the overall sector difference was not due to current work or employment conditions, but instead to a selection to the public sector of individuals with a high level of prosocial motivation.
The article then goes on to suggest reasons for the discrepancy between pro-social behavior (which is observed to be higher in the public sector than in the private sector) and absenteeism. One possible reason is that people with high pro-social behavior will come to work when sick, and will overwork themselves and burn-out, causing later absences for themselves and others.
Of course, another possible reason is that people in the government sector are harder to fire, and therefore under less pressure not to take sick days when they are sick.
The cite I gave for that number said "In the United States, the incidence of absenteeism is 40% higher in the public sector than in private services (D’Amuri 2017)." Doesn't seem to have anything to do with Italy.
While I've never worked in the public sector, I have had such agencies as clients and seen some of how they conduct work. The internal accounting measures are quite different from the private sector on matters like work fraud and absenteeism.
For example, even the most banal federal buildings usually deploy digital access mechanisms that would make absenteeism easier to detect. Regarding work fraud, I would suggest that excessive project accounting is also common. If anything, I've seen public agencies hamstrung by a web of "accountability" designed to never let an embarrassment of the past recur (without regard to harm to the overall mission).
So, it seems like there's a risk of oversampling in the public sector simply due to more consistently deployed measures that one could use to measure absenteeism.
Source for ~50% more violent incidents in private prisons (table 13 on page 48)
Privatized prisons lead to more inmates, longer sentences, study finds
Study finds private prisons keep inmates longer, without reducing future crime (about three months longer)
Staff to inmate ratios "When considering staff to inmate ratios, the private sector reports an average 6.7 inmates per correctional officer and 3.7 inmates per staff member. The public sector, in comparison, reported an average 5.6 inmates per correctional officer and 3.1 inmates per staff member" This source goes on to excuse private facilities for this on the basis that they are more modern and therefore need fewer officers. However, that excuse isn't consistent with the increased rates of violent assaults in private prisons.
Same source, for amount of training, public vs private: "The private sector required correctional officers to undergo an average 174 hours of pre-service training and 42 hours of annual in-service training. In comparison, the public sector required correctional officers to undergo an average 232 hours of annual pre-service training and 42 hours of in-service training
Another interesting quote from that source: "This suggests that the private sector experienced officer turnover rates approaching three times that of the public sector."
The claim about twice the prison term in private prisons was probably misinterpreted, as it was from a secondary source and I can't find it in the cited primary source, and it doesn't seem in line with other data. I've edited my earlier post to remove that claim.
Your second, revised fraud link about 26% fraud is the wrong number. Your source says "Forty-four percent of the victims were private companies and 26% were public companies" - public companies are not government.
China's Chief Censor's job hasn't changed in 2000 years: keep the bullshit out and useful information in. Our Tiananmen story is bullshit. Why should they perpetuate it?
I didn't know about Clinton's speech. Can you link an article about it, describing how many Chinese were reached by the address, and whether the address was approved by the CCP? It's not easy to search for.
I know that most Chinese are aware of Tiananmen square, but it's also something illicit - China censors it on the internet, and vanishes prominent people who talk about it. There's also the social credit score that China is starting to use to control what less-prominent people say.
The basic problem with China is that they are a single-party government that controls the media, which means they have no external accountability. If the ruling party does something bad, there's no one to call them out on it or punish them for it other than... the ruling party.
I find you blanket quoting of statistics unconvincing. You use the term 'trust' regarding government agencies, but you do not qualify what a 'government agency' is. Police, military, fire fighters, paramedics, IRS, EPA, DOJ, Energy, public primary schools, public state funded universities?
By tossing an argument out there 'trust the government because their employees are more civic oriented' and attributing it to people who argue that government organizations may be better suited to public good than private ones, you are standing right on the border of a strawman.
Not many people would argue that the fire department or the streets department should be privatized. Are you using the same justification that people use to decry unneeded regulatory or project bloat to say that we should privatize prisons and elementary schools and fire departments?
What is your point exactly and who exactly are you arguing against?
For every locality A the term "the government of A" names the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber). You can, without introducing significant error, model government as a territorially defined extortion racket or as a giant shopping mall operator with an armed in-house security service. Government employment has no spiritually transformative power. Quite the opposite; guns attract thugs. "Pro Social Motivation", like Social Justice, sounds like a conceptdesigned by State-worshipful social psychologists to facilitate arrival of a pre-determined conclusion. In the real world, an altruistic Math teacher might just as well prefer to work in an independent school, where he can actually teach, over a government school where his real job is to pump enrollment statistics and justify inflated salaries of central office bureaucrats.
And sometimes you have to be cruel to employees to be kind to taxpayers.2 of the worst teachers I had in k-12 schools my mother had had about 30 years earlier. In a private system they'd have been moved to non-teaching jobs or fired within a year.
We seem to favor employees over consumers, like Dan Price is lauded for paying more that the market would bear to some employees but had he instead lowered his prices to consumers would he have gotten as much praise?This is a problem for Gov as many programs become part jobs programs. Even like the ethanol program.
I expect that having a secure, well-paying job will make most individuals nicer than they otherwise would be.
However, selection effects also matter. I'd expect such jobs to attract people who tend to worry about being fired. That includes some selection for people who deserve to be fired.
It's not obvious, a priori, what we should expect to be the net effects of these forces.
It is true that D'Amuri 2017 is primarily about Italy, but I checked and it does contain the 40% figure for the US.
Reading the article in which the 40% number is found, I came across the following paragraphs on PSM (Pro-social motivation):
There is cross-sectional evidence of more prosocial value orientations and behaviors among public than private employees (Crewson 1997; Houston 2006, 2011; Lewis and Frank 2002; Piatak 2015; Van de Walle, Steijn, and Jilke 2015), but little direct evidence on selection to public employment. Studies of students attending specific programs such as law or physiotherapy have yielded mixed results, suggesting that the effect of values on sector choice could be mediated to a greater or lesser extent by educational choices (Choi and Chung 2017; Kjeldsen and Jacobsen 2012; Wright, Hassan, and Christensen 2017). In a relatively broad sample of university students, however, Holt (2018) found that prosocial values were associated with later public sector employment.Using unpaid overtime work as an indicator of prosocial behavior, a study by Gregg et al. (2011) also provides some evidence on selection to the public sector of people with high levels of prosocial motivation. Gregg et al. (2011) found more unpaid overtime work in the public than in the private sector, suggesting more prosocial motivation in the public sector. However, sector switchers were not found to do more overtime work when they were in the public sector than they were in the private sector. The lack of a behavioral change among switchers was interpreted as evidence that the overall sector difference was not due to current work or employment conditions, but instead to a selection to the public sector of individuals with a high level of prosocial motivation.
The article then goes on to suggest reasons for the discrepancy between pro-social behavior (which is observed to be higher in the public sector than in the private sector) and absenteeism. One possible reason is that people with high pro-social behavior will come to work when sick, and will overwork themselves and burn-out, causing later absences for themselves and others.
Of course, another possible reason is that people in the government sector are harder to fire, and therefore under less pressure not to take sick days when they are sick.
Have I ever made a comment that is false or misleading?
D'Amuri 2017 is a study about Italy, not the United States.
The cite I gave for that number said "In the United States, the incidence of absenteeism is 40% higher in the public sector than in private services (D’Amuri 2017)." Doesn't seem to have anything to do with Italy.
The 40% number you cite for the US is from a study on Italian responses to paid sick leave changes and has nothing to do with the US.
"Our" Tiananmen story? Your comment history makes me doubt that we share an "our."
While I've never worked in the public sector, I have had such agencies as clients and seen some of how they conduct work. The internal accounting measures are quite different from the private sector on matters like work fraud and absenteeism.
For example, even the most banal federal buildings usually deploy digital access mechanisms that would make absenteeism easier to detect. Regarding work fraud, I would suggest that excessive project accounting is also common. If anything, I've seen public agencies hamstrung by a web of "accountability" designed to never let an embarrassment of the past recur (without regard to harm to the overall mission).
So, it seems like there's a risk of oversampling in the public sector simply due to more consistently deployed measures that one could use to measure absenteeism.
Source for ~50% more violent incidents in private prisons (table 13 on page 48)
Privatized prisons lead to more inmates, longer sentences, study finds
Study finds private prisons keep inmates longer, without reducing future crime (about three months longer)
Staff to inmate ratios "When considering staff to inmate ratios, the private sector reports an average 6.7 inmates per correctional officer and 3.7 inmates per staff member. The public sector, in comparison, reported an average 5.6 inmates per correctional officer and 3.1 inmates per staff member" This source goes on to excuse private facilities for this on the basis that they are more modern and therefore need fewer officers. However, that excuse isn't consistent with the increased rates of violent assaults in private prisons.
Same source, for amount of training, public vs private: "The private sector required correctional officers to undergo an average 174 hours of pre-service training and 42 hours of annual in-service training. In comparison, the public sector required correctional officers to undergo an average 232 hours of annual pre-service training and 42 hours of in-service training
Another interesting quote from that source: "This suggests that the private sector experienced officer turnover rates approaching three times that of the public sector."
The claim about twice the prison term in private prisons was probably misinterpreted, as it was from a secondary source and I can't find it in the cited primary source, and it doesn't seem in line with other data. I've edited my earlier post to remove that claim.
Your second, revised fraud link about 26% fraud is the wrong number. Your source says "Forty-four percent of the victims were private companies and 26% were public companies" - public companies are not government.
I've fixed my 2nd fraud link. You don't cite sources for your prison claims.
China's Chief Censor's job hasn't changed in 2000 years: keep the bullshit out and useful information in. Our Tiananmen story is bullshit. Why should they perpetuate it?
For a good list of sources, see http://www.unz.com/article/...
I didn't know about Clinton's speech. Can you link an article about it, describing how many Chinese were reached by the address, and whether the address was approved by the CCP? It's not easy to search for.
I know that most Chinese are aware of Tiananmen square, but it's also something illicit - China censors it on the internet, and vanishes prominent people who talk about it. There's also the social credit score that China is starting to use to control what less-prominent people say.
The basic problem with China is that they are a single-party government that controls the media, which means they have no external accountability. If the ruling party does something bad, there's no one to call them out on it or punish them for it other than... the ruling party.