And consequently politics is misdirected.

I am mostly not going to provide evidence, I am going to let you try to contradict me with yours.

Homo economicus: the idea that a person’s behavior is guided by maximizing self-interest. Together with the assumption that transaction costs are negligible this leads to incorrect modeling of real behavior. If you ever bought health insurance you know about transaction costs. Real behavior is satisficing, balancing good enough cost/benefit with least transaction cost (a.k.a. hassle).

The assertion that unregulated markets of many Homo Economicus actors will lead to optimal allocation of resources is false and not backed by evidence. The beer game provides evidence to the contrary.

https://beergame.org/the-game/

The assertion that private enterprise will always be more efficient and cost-effective than public operation is false and not backed by evidence. It was based on ideology and lies: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/10/27/1251175/-Milton-Friedman-and-the-US-Postal-Service. Every study of outsourcing of services from the US military showed higher cost and lower quality of service.

Also observe evidence-free ideology:

This document describes proposed privatization of British nationalized industries, with rationale and recommended ways to proceed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridley_Plan

On page 16 it notes some industries which would not particularly benefit anyone if they were privatized:
Gas
Electricity
Rail
Water
Post
Telephones
Underground railways (London Tube)
Thatcher did it anyway, because ideology.

 
About the Author

Tony Williams

physics nerd -> software geek -> progressive activist trying to make the world a better place.

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