It's an impressive quirk of the system that you could end up with 2 million less votes and still win. That's a substantial margin of the expectorate, far more than on previous occasions. It wasn't that the Trumpasaurus was more popular than Clintron. It was just that he was popular in the right places....
And, unfortunately, governments are something of a necessity these days.
You can't privatise a police force. (The reason why should be obvious)
You could theoretically privatise the fire-brigade, but it's a public service for a reason. (Everyone benefits from shit not burning down)
You can't really privatise the military. PMC's are toxic where they're employed. (Mercenaries being far to unreliable, and being outside the Geneva convention so the enemy gets to have fun)
You can't really privatise the health service or ambulance service.
Public transport services that run at a loss, but are necessary for some parts of the country.
The same with infrastructure investments....
Where I see parasitism of the taxpayers money is in cases where a private organisation his hired to do something, and treats the government as a bottomless pit of money. Those are the true parasites. We had an utterly amusing one where a caretaker at a local school - which I used to attend - was telling me about how they had a company come in to quote to do a BMS system, and I asked him what he'd been quoted. He said, for arguments 100k or so - to which I told him he should've been paying a quarter of that. And the system was to be set up so that, if they even wanted to change the internal temperature of the building, it was an expensive callout charge to the company.
The real graft comes in to play when you realise all of this had been specified by a consulting engineer hired by the school, who was widely known to 'play golf' with the MD of the other company, and who wrote the specification for the project in such a way that no other competitor could comply. You can't prove it enough to call it graft or corruption, and the school, or the local councils, really don't know any better. They're trusting the outside contractor to do their job honestly.
That's where your fucking money goes.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
And, unfortunately, governments are something of a necessity these days.
You can't privatise a police force. (The reason why should be obvious)
You could theoretically privatise the fire-brigade, but it's a public service for a reason. (Everyone benefits from shit not burning down)
You can't really privatise the military. PMC's are toxic where they're employed. (Mercenaries being far to unreliable, and being outside the Geneva convention so the enemy gets to have fun)
You can't really privatise the health service or ambulance service.
Public transport services that run at a loss, but are necessary for some parts of the country.
The same with infrastructure investments....
Where I see parasitism of the taxpayers money is in cases where a private organisation his hired to do something, and treats the government as a bottomless pit of money. Those are the true parasites. We had an utterly amusing one where a caretaker at a local school - which I used to attend - was telling me about how they had a company come in to quote to do a BMS system, and I asked him what he'd been quoted. He said, for arguments 100k or so - to which I told him he should've been paying a quarter of that. And the system was to be set up so that, if they even wanted to change the internal temperature of the building, it was an expensive callout charge to the company.
The real graft comes in to play when you realise all of this had been specified by a consulting engineer hired by the school, who was widely known to 'play golf' with the MD of the other company, and who wrote the specification for the project in such a way that no other competitor could comply. You can't prove it enough to call it graft or corruption, and the school, or the local councils, really don't know any better. They're trusting the outside contractor to do their job honestly.
That's where your fucking money goes.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?