I mean, broadly speaking, you want staples and basic lifestyle needs provided at-cost by a public functionary. Leaving groceries and housing and health care and education to the free market has created enormous amounts of waste, a maze of barriers to entry, and ballooned administrative overheads.
Countries with much lower cost of living tend to be where utilities are owned and operated by the state as a social amenity, while luxuries and economic frontier advancements are left to private experimentation and entrepreneurship. But even then, the intention is to glean the wheat from the chaffe, incorporating the best of the frontier into the interior with an eye towards efficiencies of scale.
USA operates the exact opposite of this. We use the government to do the big things that aren’t/won’t be profitable immediately to set things up for big business to rake in all the benefits later by building their businesses on that foundation. Of course, all those business owners “did it on their own,” neverminding the fact that the ground they walk on only exists because of everyone else.
I mean, broadly speaking, you want staples and basic lifestyle needs provided at-cost by a public functionary. Leaving groceries and housing and health care and education to the free market has created enormous amounts of waste, a maze of barriers to entry, and ballooned administrative overheads.
Countries with much lower cost of living tend to be where utilities are owned and operated by the state as a social amenity, while luxuries and economic frontier advancements are left to private experimentation and entrepreneurship. But even then, the intention is to glean the wheat from the chaffe, incorporating the best of the frontier into the interior with an eye towards efficiencies of scale.
USA operates the exact opposite of this. We use the government to do the big things that aren’t/won’t be profitable immediately to set things up for big business to rake in all the benefits later by building their businesses on that foundation. Of course, all those business owners “did it on their own,” neverminding the fact that the ground they walk on only exists because of everyone else.