I have an idea which is similar to the zero based legislation suggested at the end of this article. That would be to constitutionally provide a sunset for all statutes and regulations. The sunset could be fairly long, for example, somewhere between 20 and 50 years, maybe less for regulations. We don't need legislators and regulators readopting non-controversial laws and regulations every few years. But every new statute would receive the sunset and all existing laws would receive the sunset as well, at the time the amendment is adopted by the states. This solves the issue presented not only on a one-time basis, but going forward as well.
-- Robert Girard, March 16, 2010
"Germany has adventure playgrounds that are stocked with scrap lumber, nails, and hammers, so children can come and build things, and then tear them down and build something else."No it doesn't. As the parent of a six year old in Munich, I would have noticed. (OK, I can't speak with total authority on every single adventure playground in Germany. But I can say that what the author is describing certainly isn't the norm)
The general point, though, is valid. What Germany does have is proper playgrounds with proper things to swing and climb on at heights from which a small child could hurt itself, not the ridiculous little six-inches-off-the-ground things I've seen on visits to new York.
-- Alan Little, March 17, 2010
Alan: The movie "7 Up" about English 7-year-olds circa 1970 has a scene where all of the subjects are running around just such an "adventure playground". So maybe the author got confused about Germany versus England.
-- Philip Greenspun, April 7, 2010
What's so discouraging about this review is Greenspun's uncritical acceptance of the factually-challenged fruit of Libertarian think tanks. For example he asserts "A government job, on average, pays twice as much as a private-sector job."
This is, of course, a lie, or at best, bullshit. See Robert Reich's correction to this whole line of thinking, for just one example.
The truth: When comparing government employees with the private sector employees in reality, that is comparing similar jobs (apples to apples, attorneys to attorneys, and total compensation including benefits), the public sector pays 4-9% less than the private sector. If Greenspun gets his way, odds are that discount will disappear because government workers will not have the job security that previously made them willing to accept lower pay.
Notice that there's no mention of the historic reason civil service exists: Elections used to mean the wholesale re-appointment of all public employees down to local postmasters, both politicizing jobs, and discarding expertise.
Reading the likes of Howard, one would assume the locus of incompetence in the world was the public sector, but the private sector certainly has its incompetence too. Why else would Dilbert be on the comic pages?
Interestingly in the previous review of Howard's work, Greenspun even blames Enron's collapse on government action. It couldn't have been fraud, exposed...?
Finding government malfeasance is like shooting fish in a barrel, too. Enron's board meetings weren't public. Could the perception of public incompetence be magnified because so much private malfeasance is under the radar? And do the words Enron, Adelphia, Worldcom, Silverado Savings and Loan, and Goldman Sachs mean nothing?
Also conspicuous in their absence are the many examples of government bureaucracy that are *more* efficient than the private sector. Social Security and Medicare have far lower costs than their private equivalents. Single-payer, government-managed health care worldwide is roughly half as expensive as the U.S.' mostly privatized system.
Outcomes are far better too, whether comparing life expectancy or infant mortality, publicly-managed health care beats a privatized system. The comprehensive comparison of health care delivery systems world wide conducted by the WHO ranks the U.S. 37th in outcomes, between Costa Rica and Slovenia. McClatchy news reports that it's as though the U.S. has the health care of Costa Rica, but pays six times more for the privilege.
One should note also that traditionally the anti-libertarian de-privatizing of goods and services was taken as the direction of real progress. Not having to pay a toll to use a road amounted to a good thing.
Of the specific items in these reviews of Howard's work, I don't know which is worse: the conclusions about housing or schools.
Howard believes that building codes prevent the homeless from building shanty towns that, while ugly, would at least keep out the weather. So building codes are really the culprit when we look at the homeless, right?
Except for the actual history back here on planet earth. What really happened? The giant state-run warehouses for the insane and disabled were shut down, with the promise that smaller, more humane "half-way houses" would be funded within communities. Except the Reagan administration didn't authorize that funding. After all, those patients now wandering the street were probably faking, or behaving like crazy people on purpose...right?
Add that to Reagan's 1986 tax law removing a subsidy for building rental housing, and voila! An epidemic of homelessness. Check for yourself. The charities dealing with the homeless often started their work in the mid-'80s, not when building codes were introduced decades earlier.
Meanwhile, shutting down public education has been a goal of the oligarchs for decades now. Their clever propaganda seeks to cast teachers as greedy bureaucrats, while ignoring the far larger greed of, e.g., the oligarchs funding such propaganda.
A classic case of "straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel."
Previously, these "masters of the universe" have tried to make "school choice" the driving force behind this privatization campaign, sponsoring multiple school voucher initiatives throughout the nation. These generally fail because it becomes clear they are simply subsidies to those already using private schools. In a typical state where education costs roughly $8,000 - $10,000 per student, and the proposed vouchers are $2,000.
The current propaganda seeks to solve school's "problems" by adopting merit pay for teachers, testing to see what value teachers have added, and making charter schools...all of this primarily to bust unions, who fund the campaigns of their public sector opposition.
Literally none of these proposals withstand any scientific scrutiny. The "best" teacher, according to tests one week can turn into the "worst" teacher according to tests the next. Yet the propaganda, with the very best of production values, makes news with the likes of "Waiting for Superman"... a film about super teachers and their impacts.
Those debunking such propaganda note that "Waiting for Superman" ignores anything that contradicts the conclusions desired by the privatizers. For example, childhood poverty rates are far more accurate in predicting educational outcomes than testing. Omitted from the film: Althought the schools in Finland are "Waiting for Superman's" ideal, teachers there are tenured, well paid and unionized. Finnish childhood poverty is 3%. U.S. childhood poverty is 23%.
What's discouraging about this kind of review is Greenspun's uncritical acceptance of so much, and his ignorance about the history. If someone as clever as Greenspun can be fooled so thoroughly, what chance does the American public have?
Of course Libertarianism itself is a puzzling combination of heartlessness and narcissism that would have real difficulties raising a child, for example. It's recent failures (See Ravi Batra's Greenspan's Fraud, for one example) in managing the financial sector have lead to the "Great Recession," but the funding for Cato, Heritage and AEI certainly hasn't dried up, so the propaganda continues.
-- Adam Eran, March 5, 2011