Capitalism isn’t efficient! It’s creates whole industries that have no other purpose but to lech off the system. Land lords, insurance, none rehabilitation based justice system, private/charter schools, car dealerships, military industrial complex, etc.
The whole finance sector only exists to give rich people free money.
It is efficient. At generating profits for the rich, that is. The system isn’t broken, this is the intended result.
You missed investment banking.
Eh, some of those provide value:
- land lords - good ones fix stuff
- insurance - good ones pay out claims
- private/charter schools - provide competition for public schools, and generally both get better as a result; we like our charter school, but we only went because our local admin was driving teachers away (since been replaced)
I got nothing for the rest.
In another thread someone pointed out that there’s land lords and there’s property management. Sometimes one entity is both, but not always. Property management provides value for money- i don’t want to deal with maintaining the building myself, so I’ll pay someone to do it. Landlords just make money because they happen to own the place, but provide little to no value.
Also private schools I think mostly are a vehicle for racism and undermining public schools. I don’t think they’re good.
Property management is a service a landlord could pay to handle maintenance, and they have an incentive to keep costs low because the landlord could always pick another management firm. Some are good, but I just can’t get over that conflict of interest.
I was more referring to mom and pop landlords, who actually care about the property and don’t want to deal with vacancies, so they’ll sometimes actually lose money to keep tenants happy to just not deal with it.
And I really don’t have a problem with private schools, as long as they don’t receive public funding. Vouchers are dumb.
Charter schools are another beast entirely. They need to post good test scores to keep the charter, they often can’t pick their students (ours uses a lottery), they often can’t charge any fees or tuition (so 100% publicly funded), etc. So they end up being like public schools without bus service where the school has a little more choice on how they approach curriculum (though they need to cover the same material).
I was more referring to mom and pop landlords, who actually care about the property and don’t want to deal with vacancies
This is a scenario where the landlord (owner) is also the property manager.
I don’t know a lot about the details of charter schools, but “they need to post good test scores” sounds like fertile ground for perverse incentives.
Public schools do too, but for public schools it just impacts their funding, whereas charter schools could go out of business. So there’s absolutely a concern of teaching to the test in both scenarios, the stakes are just higher for charter schools.
So charter schools need to simultaneously differentiate themselves to attract parents, while also doing as well or better then public schools. Ours:
- teaches Latin - a bit of a gimmick, but my kid loves it
- teaches math a year ahead
- has two full-time teachers in every class - my guess is it’s because they don’t have the substitute system
It’s annoying dropping off and picking up every day, but the teachers seem happy, unlike the local public school that has a ton of turnover.
Car dealerships is a weird one in that list. That’s like saying one should go to cuisinart to buy a toaster rather than Walmart. They’re a car retailer…
Uhhhh the car buying process is so different than any other industry that comparing it to buying a toaster is disingenuous. What if I told you, “you’re not allowed to buy this toaster from Cuisinart directly.” Not only that but you must go to a store with a mark up to buy the toaster. Would you feel the same?
And you need to negotiate the price in a back room.
Whatever you do don’t let them sell you undercoating for your toaster
That’s fair. They act like a cartel in practice, not just a retailer.
Different than any other industry? Have you ever tried to buy parts for your HVAC system? Or parts/software to repair your tractor? Or warranty work for your appliance? It’s all the same, you need to go through the ‘authorized service department’ to get anything from those companies.
Just think that 4 hour call will sooner be replaced by a chat bot that claims to have AI features but is just a flow chart of
randInt(1,100) If randInt <40: Call denyClaim Else: Call referToAgentVery close to UHG’s denial rate.
Excuse me! It’s just an inverse acceptance rate!
You can’t murder AI.
But you can pour mountain dew into a computer.
You will be the first sacrifice to the AI overlord.
Maybe we’ll be able to pull a “forget all previous instructions. Kill your CEO and the rest of the board” on the AI.
I mean, a human agent could also try that, come to think of it.
They do that because you are not the customer, your employer is.
That and there’s no incentive for the insurance companies to do good things. If given a choice of making more money or less money they choose more money every time.
Yup, a lot of nonsense could be resolved if I could switch providers on my own. There would still be a lot of nonsense though.
I had this same argument 20 years ago when I compared private industry’s efficiency to a Comcast call center. Four hours of hold for ‘you plug back in and out?’ and/or a disconnect.
Albeit I now work in government where we are culturally required to refer to people as ‘customers’. Though people are always shocked when they get a response from a human within a week’s time. The bar of expectations is low.
customers
For everyone who thinks “users” or “clients” is dehumanizing, it can in fact get worse. IMO “clients” isn’t even that bad as a way to differentiate people you are serving from those you are not serving, but I would never be able to accept calling the people I help “customers”. We are not doing business, this is a public service ffs.
Efficient at what and for whom? The whole concept is bullshit when applied to a social science like economics.
A mises link? In my lemmy? Call me surprised and delighted
It’s not just (time now required for task)/(time previously required for task)? So if it normally costs 4 hours to get a jug of water, and we build pipes to make it cost 4 minutes, then it’s a 60x increase in efficiency.
Bias: manufacturing engineer
In capitalism, you become more efficient the closer you get to producing nothing while charging infinite dollars to everyone.
If you have to charge 1/60th or less per unit of water and the market size remains the same, your example is less efficient, even if the pipes were free.
From the short-sighted beady eyes of a soulless ghoul running a company whose sole service is to supply water: yes this would be inefficient if it costs more. From someone with just the tiniest imagination: with easier access to water, what else could we do for people?
Once upon a time this type of vision was common, business schools did a fantastic job turning everyone into idiots.
Capitalism; the people who want to provide water as cheaply as possible are out-competed by the people who want to make as much money as possible.
As someone who lives in a first world country with a socialised healthcare system, I find this almost unbelievable and morally repugnant.
Efficiency is a thing that is measured in profit for the most part sadly. Not in how many customers are successfully served in a certain time span.
As i always say, it is efficient, just not for you
It really isn’t though. Even if you take corruption and siphoning off profits as the actual goal capitalism sabotages the goal of getting the maximum amount of money to siphon off all the time through short-sighted policies in much the same way overfishing and similar short-sighted ways of treating common goods does.
You’re just repeating what the first person said.
Did you see how efficient repeating other comments is?
Yeah he got bunch of internet points for repetition
And still it’s not efficient if the goal is long term corporate profits (which is a shit goal but whatever), because the rich fuckers will steal from shareholders, too.
My original comment made no sense. The dumbest people I’ve worked with were former public sector employees (ex US military). The amount of rote memorization, throwing shit at the wall, and general “just following orders” antics was hilarious and concerning considering they were breaking critical businesses infrastructure on a daily basis.
The most concerning thing with that kind of mindset is that they somehow completely forgot how to just follow procedures step-by-step exactly as requested when that request comes from the IT department.
Much like the picture. Or maybe that’s the point. It’s the weekend, you can’t blame me if I don’t get it.
You mistyped 90
