Oops. Permit me to redo. Carlos is absolutely correct. Best case scenario is the regulatory agency will regulate to the standard big business has agreed to... public interest, well, not so much.

I wrote some grants for our state EPA a while back. They seem to be doing a good job in some areas, such as waste management/land fills and such. But, when it comes to curtailing the big corporations their hands are tied by the legislature. The lobbyists win pretty much every time. Best I can tell, Washington is no different.

And that is the source of the problem. Fix that, and you fix everything.

Yup. I often feel sorry for the bureaucrats. They take a lot of heat for incompetence, stupid rules, and no action, but the truth is they have no choice but to implement the stupid stuff that got passed in Congress. They're really in a no win situation. They can't change the stupid rules or act outside the enabling legislation. And all the agency heads are, of course, political appointees.

Well there is the FCC, and isn't there some sort of anti trust section of the government?

Well, you have private companies running prisons, as far as I know.
And then again, there is Blackwater ...in its sector. Oops

You can't keep Congress/lobbyist out of anything government.

From today's wire service:

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin defended the agency's rule-making procedures and management practices on Wednesday, a day after a congressional committee said it would investigate."

I didn't ask for an investigation. Suspect we can guess who had enough vested interest and pull to get one.... and brow beat the FCC into doing things their way. It never ends.

Private schools consistently out-rate public, libraries are outdated and useless any more, and I've lived where fire was run by a private company and everyone paid for service, there was nothing wrong with that. Police...yeah, dial 911 and see what kind of "service" you get.

The problem is that we "privatize" but keep government's hands in it, with the mercantilism that comes with that. Funny that the post office was mentioned though, since it's actually a private for-profit corporation and now that they have to compete with free-market companies like UPS, they actually deliver good service. They were horrible before the market forced them not to suck.

On the subject of VoIP, which is rather important to me since we bought out a company that provides local hosted PBX service last year, I'm just waiting for the day that we are regulated like a phone company. It's a nice wild-West time now; we're free to offer exactly what the customers want and not what some clueless bureaucrats want them to have, but the Telcos are rather upset by this. Rather than push for their own liberty, they are looking to control us and force us down to their level. I have no idea how long it will be before that happens, but we have little power and they have a lot. I think the only thing on our side right now is complete ignorance and fear.

Sure, VOIP providers are free to provide what customers want, so why don't they? I've had Lingo, and now I"ve got Vonage. Both have plans limited to what they want to sell, with very little to no flexibility to do it my way, and their tech support is as bad as any company I've ever seen. I could probably come up with a long list of things they do wrong, but for the fact that I've avoided dealing with either to keep my head from exploding. Wild west is right.
I went to a private school in high school, and it was better than the public schools in the area for one important reason: trouble makers were expelled. If you privatize education, you're going to have to require private schools to take, and keep, everyone. They'll fail quickly then.
For every example like the Post Office, - which is still controlled by the government and is much better now - there are dozens of examples like Haliburton or Blackwater, where private business is pulling the strings of government, not the other way around. That's the problem.

Both private and public schools are rated pretty crappy so outrating crap isn't something that a private school should put on it's brochure.

Last time I was at a library (last week) it was pretty hopping. There were computer classes, computers, books, people, people reading books and this is all on cut budgets where they are not open for a full work week and they must stretch every dollar.

I thankfully can not speak for fire, but the police in my area are rather responsive. I have to say I would trust them over Dog The Bounty Hunter any day and I am not fond of many of the laws they are asked to uphold.

After all my disagreement above I can not agree more with this statement.

We provide a completely custom solution and tech support is done by networking experts. We're not as cheap as Vonage though. Quality, service, cheap, pick any two.

The market would respond with "special" schools.

Nobody would disagree. Haliburton is able to do what it does because we allowed our government to have excessive power.

Not possible. We're not talking about people with special needs. Trouble makers can't be separated out with tests.
That's a wonderful example of circular reasoning. Haliburton is a private company doing work for the government - essentially doing what the government cannot - and it is controlling how the government awards the contract. Your solution is to require the government to do less, which means that Haliburton (or, in theory, some other company) would do more. That would mean more private work, the awarding of which is controlled by: Haliburton!

No matter how you look at it, your solution is to give total control to the corporation. In the case of Haliburton, you'd be giving US government powers away to a foreign corporation based in the Middle East.

Oh, and quality cannot exist without service and vice versa. They're one. The two I want are quality/service and cheap.

Since my mom worked at such a school, I can point out with great confidence that you are wrong. I myself was transferred to a different type of school since I simply refused to attend certain classes, to do any homework, or really to follow any rules that I didn't care for. While most people going to that school were there because they were idiots, the school did let you learn and excel at ANY level that you chose for yourself, thus ending my boredom with school.

Nope, my solution is to give the corporation the control that consumers are willing to give it, and to remove all help that it gets from government. Without licensing schemes and such to stop competition, there will be competition. Laws against social disorder and environmental damage can stand without federal intervention if we remove the laws that protect companies from local charges. Also, removing the "corporate" protection that lets CEOs get away with gross negligence would be great.

I have purchased very high quality products very cheaply from vendors who provided no service at all to speak of. I've purchased things for more money from vendors who provide valuable services to go with them. I frequent a tool supplier who has fantastic service but sells tools of highly questionable quality, but they are dirt cheap. I can return them as needed since they provide great service.

LOL! My mother taught for thirty years. I substitute taught in the same school system after college. You CANNOT remove trouble makers from public schools without changing the Constitution. It's not going to happen.

Consumers are sheep, easily manipulated and fooled. That's why MS has the market share it does, why the Ford Pinto was the number 1 selling car in its day, why cigarettes are still around, why reality TV won't go away, etc.

Your definitions of quality and service are very different from mine. I see no quality in a well made product that isn't backed up with service, and I see no service in providing a lousy product.

There is certainly a place in the world for these. I do the same -- when I need a tool I'm not likely to use very often (a strange vise-grip, say), I go there to buy it knowing that it will be cheap crap. If it breaks soon, they replace it, but I know it will wear out if I use it much. What not to buy there: batteries which might well fail by leaking.

I went to private school in the beginning of my education. It was a Catholic private school, and I hated it. I hated it so much that I pleaded to get out, so my family finally put me into public school systems, which was way better. No uniforms, no religion in school, etc.

What do you think will happen if they privatize education? Pepsi and coke will have schools, microsoft, etc. What is going to make them regulate education?

My problem with privatizing everything is there will be no one to regulate them, and when you say the consumer will I disagree. The consumer will have no choice a lot of the time. Big business just buys out the competition. Look at how many companies Google and Microsoft buy out each year. Coke and Pepsi have already been trying to sponsor schools for years, and if education got privatized they would be all over it.

Maybe, it would be better in some ways. Or maybe it would get worse. I just can't see it happening because I think education should be free in our country and that everyone should have the right to these opportunities of education.

The problem is that our tax money is shifted around for personal gains a lot. Where does all the money go that is generated from the Lottery? It goes into a general fund, and is used for some very questionable things.

I'm just looking for clarification-- Is the idea being batted around here that some things ought to be privatized, but still regulated. Or just strictly privatized. I can't tell what's being argued...

Microsoft basically does have private education in the form of Comptia certification. While it works well for Microsoft's interests as a form of indoctrination, creating a cult of IT techs who only know Microsoft products can't honestly be considered successful education.

I'm arguing that what's missing — especially over the last 8 years — is proper regulation. I believe that with money and power comes responsibility, and deregulation frees the wealthiest people and corporations from their responsibilities. We should all be responsible for our actions, but if we are going to treat people of means differently, we should hold them to a higher standard than the common man, not a lower one as deregulation does. The government doesn't need to run businesses or control markets, but it does need to understand that there is at least as much crime in corporate board rooms as there is on the street, and corporate crimes affect many more people in long lasting and devastating ways. To ask for deregulation is to ask the government to abandon one of its primary duties: to provide law and order.

You're really going to stick with that assertion even though I WAS THERE? Wow. I suppose then that anything else we debate is pointless; if you're willing to either call me a liar or just say that my life experience didn't happen, nothing I say will get through.

Two more: Fuses and hose clamps. There was a story recently about a near-fire when their fuses failed, and then a week later they did a recall on them. I just had a hose clamp leak coolant all over my keg fridge when it invisibly failed.

Some people assert that most things should be regulated but that they need to be regulated a certain way. I say that as long as government has power, there will be people trying to buy that power from them, and mostly succeeding. If we take away the government's power to limit competition, then competition will benefit the consumer.