This is gonna be a very American-centric rant, sorry, but any politician who says that government should be run âmore like a businessâ should be immediately barred from serving in public office, because theyâre either an idiot who doesnât know how government works or theyâre a grifter who is planning on ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of public infrastructure and selling it to their rich friends. Possibly both. Probably both.
Governments are not businesses. A businessâs number one goal is to make a profit. Thatâs it. A governmentâs role is, ideally, to collect an amount of resources that its citizens collectively decided was fair, then use those resources (usually taxes) to provide services the People decided was necessary. Water, roads, electricity, busses, trains, libraries, education, and (if youâre not American) medical care.
Public services are exactly that: a service. Their sole mission is to provide said service to the public. Full stop. Profit isnât a factor because their goal (ideally) isnât to make money, itâs simply to provide the service for which they were created.
The post office is not a business. The library is not a business. Public transportation is not a business. K-12 schools are not a business. Any money you pay them outside what is given to them by taxes is to help cover costs. Thatâs why using the printers at a public library is cheaper than printing the same amount of pages at a for-profit print-shop. Itâs why there are some places in the United States, such as communities in Alaska, where private companies like DHL, UPS, and Fedex simply refuse to make deliveries because it makes zero business sense to ship parcels at great expense to isolated, low-population areas.
The Post Office however, has a Constitution Mandate that every American is entitled to mail service. It is, in the parlance of conservatives, a God-Given Right. Thus, they are the only ones that deliver things out to those isolated communities. When you take profit motive out of the equation and focus purely on the service it was created to provide, you have a system that is built to work for everyone.
Are these institutions perfect? No, of course not. Theyâre large, bulky, aged, bureaucratic behemoths that are constantly underfunded and are making due with the bare minimum of resources to stay functional.
Thereâs a reason that the United States Postal Service for years has been actively sabotaged by conservatives who had a financial interest in private package carrier companies and are hostile to the idea of mail-in voting. Thereâs a reason that libraries and schools for years have been struggling for funding, and why theyâre now targets of âculture warâ fanatics who think privately run but tax-funded schools should teach kids more about Jesus and librarians offering free books to children is âgroomingâ
Thereâs a reason Americans pay the most for healthcare but have some of the worst healthcare outcomes of any western country.
School cafeteria workers used to be unionized, directly-hired employees of a school district. My best friendâs mom raised three kids and could afford a house on the salary she used to make doing that job. Now most cafeteria workers are contractors that get paid much less to do the same work, serving lower-quality food. Your taxes still pay for it, but their employer - the private third-party service company - is the one pocketing the difference. Janitors and cleaning staff are also a heavily âoutsourcedâ occupation.
Taxation is theft? No, taking public infrastructure that was built by unionized employees and paid for by public tax revenue only to sell it off to private corporations so they do a shittier job, pay the workers less, and charge us all more for the privilege is fucking theft.
âJust run it like a business,â says the businessman who didnât build it, never used it, doesnât depend on it, and will make money from dismantling and selling it.
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