Tag: privatization

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

A Million Jobs, Gone

You’re fired! Now get a real job.

Does this sound mean?

It’s just what Cuba’s biggest employer plans to say between now and March — fire half a million workers and tell them to find other jobs, or (better yet) go to work for themselves.

After March, another half million will be given pink slips.

Or so say the Castro Bros., who are, in effect, the chief employers in Cuba.

Just like a despot, you might say. But hey: The country is broke, and the initial hiring of everybody by the government (which Fidel ran for scores of years, and his brother, Raul, now runs) was, itself, despotic. Thankfully, as more and more outlets of the “Cuban Communist Corp.” go under, the Cuban commissars say they will ease up on the regulations that now prohibit small, entrepreneurial businesses.

Of the many comments I’ve read about this, I was amused most by Tom Knapp’s. After drily noting that it is the Castros who will build down government, not Republicans in the U.S., he explained how the commies had kept their transportation going all these years: By maintaing old American cars from the ’40s and ’50s. Now that trade restrictions will likely be eased, those well-kept-up vintage cars could help “finance an explosion of economic prosperity just by tapping the U.S. classic car collectors’ market.”

Hope so.

And I hope the newly fired will transition to a slightly freer economy without too much trouble.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

The Right Stuff Needs No Subsidy

When the president, in a rare fit of fiscal sanity, proposed cutting back on NASA, the subsidized sector of the high tech industry — the military-industrial complex — felt a shiver.

The first, I hope, of many.

NASA has long had a special, high-toned place in that hierarchy of government-funded industries. It’s the civilian wing of the military’s industrial juggernaut. As if to prove that government can accomplish things, NASA actually landed men on the moon. And it kept an ungainly shuttle program going long after its rightful expiration date.

But it’s time for private enterprise to take over in the space industry.

High time.

Still, questions remain — at least in the public mind. As a fascinating MSNBC article put it, “Can private companies build and operate space vehicles safe enough to carry astronauts?” The article’s author, James Oberg, focuses on the emerging market of space taxis, but does ponder the possibility of putting real astronauts out in space, privately. He consulted skeptical NASA engineers, who wondered how unsubsidized, for-profit businesses could mimic NASA’s record.

Where’s their collective experience?

Answer: Let most of NASA go, and that experience would be up for hire.

Our hopes for the future conquest of space depend, in part, on ceasing to subsidize it. Congress and the president should embrace that future, and realize that it is time to relinquish their control over another whole industry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Trashy Governance in Britain

Talk about treating citizens like trash.

According to a New York Times report, garbage removal is getting worse and worse in Great Britain. Many local governments now pick up the trash only every other week, instead of every week.

And there are thousands of rules to obey:

  • About recycling.
  • Exactly when to deposit your garbage.
  • Against depositing “too much” garbage.

Special enforcement officers go around to check – and fine residents who fail to comply.

One victim of the trashy regime is Gareth Corkhill, a Whitehall resident fined £215 for leaving a garbage lid ajar. Then he got socked with another fine, for £225, when he couldn’t pay the first fine. Neighbors got together and paid the fine.

And complained.

The town rector, Reverend John Bannister, says receiving a criminal record “for leaving your wheelie bin open by three inches has, I think, really gone beyond the bounds of responsible behavior.”

That’s British understatement.

It’s not the ability to dispose of garbage that has disappeared in Britain. It’s the permission to do it. What really needs dumping is the authoritarian mentality.

First, stop punishing recipients of mediocre service who imperfectly submit to the mediocrity.

Second, privatize garbage pickup. Let entrepreneurship and competition freely work throughout the land.

Hey, people with extra garbage might be charged a little more. But there is no good reason to treat them like outlaws for providing “too much” business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.