April 23, 2009
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Free education makes us smarter and more able to fight the boss class.
ReplyDeleteTo be brief about this, the public serves that many in our class use in our daily lives help to bridge the incredibly insange gap between the ruling class and the working class.
ReplyDeleteThe working class however, gets the five star treatment in all casses. Top noch service, shorter waiting lines in the private hospitals, etcetera, etcetera.
In my opinion, everyone shoud be able to access an equally superb education, both elementary, secondary and post secondary, the best medical attention available, including dental and optical, and nurturing child care services, which I believe France has the benifit of.
Just my two cents, mind you.
RichWilliams:
ReplyDeleteit has been said that "debt-financed home owners do not go on strike" because when you have a mortgage you can not afford to miss a paycheque. a parallel can deffinately be made between the relationship with a home-owner to his/her debt and a striking worker to his/her health. picketing/protesting/striking is too difficult coinciding with a sick child to attend to.
it is said that tax cuts are a sign of freedom; that cuts to public spending will allow an individual to have more power to decide how they want their salary spent. but when done responsibly, funding public services not only saves money for the individuals that have the least but public services give the individual the freedom to choose not to work in unfair conditions (freedom of dissent), whatever the conditions may be. both of these definitions of freedom are true to different circumstances, but which definition has the greatest freedom for all? privitized services, regulated or not, will charge as much as the market will allow, by nature, because private services serve the interest of the owner/board of directors, not only restricting the freedom of its customers into using his/her/their salary into other necessary services responsibly, but also restricting the freedom of its own workers to participate in the management of the service, which is by definition undemocratic. public services are not victim to market pressures, and so require no competition to stay relevent. public services serve people best not only because the majority of people, the working class, can afford to make responsible decisions about salary elsewhere, but also meet the definition of freedom (freedom of dissent) while not being in direct contradiction with the definition of democracy.
privitization disects the majority of people, the working class, youth, students, etc. by imposing competition on its customer's through the market dynamic. sometimes one might hear the argument that privitization makes services more efficient, making services more inexpensive for the individual. this argument does not take into account studies of American healthcare bureaucracy, which shows the countless millions of dollars required for an American healthcare insurance company to process even the most basic services, or at the very worst, the countless millions spent on finding reasons to deny that service.
privatization is an attack on people because it denies service, limits freedom, and is undemocratic.
Privitization is a direct attack on the working class. Public services (besides providing the actual services for workers) create thousands of decent jobs in every community in Canada and Quebec.
ReplyDeleteCrown Corporations and direct government ownership are one step closer to worker's control, and are all-inclusive in their scope. They also help breed the cooperative spirit needed to foster socialism.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Crown Corporations are being run as if they were private enterprises these days and downsized like a private business, the original purpose of them goes beyond making money.
ReplyDeleteThe Manitoba Telephone System (formerly Manitoba Government Telephones-now privatized as MTS allstream Inc.) was a good example of why public enterprise is able to give superior service. Private telephone companies did not build phone lines into rural areas because the rate of profit was not feasible under a market driven profit system.
So MTS as a crown corporation did build the infrastructure to provide service as the first mandate, not to to maximize share dividends.
Since going private, MTS rural phone rates have gone up more than the urban rates.
The same happened in the instance of The Manitoba Power Commission, now Manitoba Hydro: rural electrification. Via Rail tries to maintain passenger rail service.
The CNR in a bid to turn a profit closed miles of shortline tracks. Now public highways carry more freight traffic.
See the trend?