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Bill: National Post Bill
Details
Submitted by[?]: Ogden Sinclair Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: March 2139
Description[?]:
| To nationalise the postal service of Jakania |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The government's policy concerning the post office
Old value:: Only private post agencies exist, and the services they provide are regulated.
Current: There is a nationalised post office agency. Private post offices are allowed to exist but the services provided by them are regulated.
Proposed: There is a nationalised post office agency in the nation. Private ones are banned.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 17:12:53, November 07, 2005 CET | From |  Ogden Sinclair Party | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | The national post office will run all over Jakania to every corner, from the most isolated mountainside to the most bustling city street the post will get there. The inter-region cooperation of nationalised service will be very beneficial to the country. |
| Date | 19:31:24, November 07, 2005 CET | From | Jakanian Liberal Socialists | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | We'd support this, but ideally we'd appreciate private ones to be legal as well. |
| Date | 01:40:06, November 08, 2005 CET | From |  Islamic Nationalist Front | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | How can you say that? A nationalized institution is always twice as efficient as a private one. Haven't you ever heard of Friedman's Law? |
| Date | 02:41:49, November 08, 2005 CET | From | Jakanian Conservative Party | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | shh...don't destroy idealistic dreams... |
| Date | 09:25:35, November 08, 2005 CET | From | Ogden Sinclair Party | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | All I know is nationalised services run for the people not the profit. The last few industries privatised in my country have been disasters. Friedmans law: Inflation follows excessive monetary growth with a long (about two years) and variable lag. Or the rate of price change follows the rate of monetary growth. How does that prove anything. |
| Date | 03:41:13, November 09, 2005 CET | From | Islamic Nationalist Front | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | I was referring to the law David Friedman theorized in The Machinery of Freedom. It states that it costs any government twice as much as it should to do anything (: |
| Date | 14:00:19, November 09, 2005 CET | From | Ogden Sinclair Party | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | It would cost private companies twice as long as well if they provided a equal and ethical service |
| Date | 14:54:25, November 09, 2005 CET | From | Jakanian Liberal Socialists | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | Doesn't the private system demand that there be at least two bodies doing the same thing anywho? Wouldn't that counter the point of double costs? |
| Date | 03:17:34, November 11, 2005 CET | From | Islamic Nationalist Front | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | I'm getting tired of arguing on the basis of utility... "It would cost private companies twice as [much] as well if they provided a[n] equal and ethical service" What is there to suggest that private companies offer services that are not as equal or ethical as a public organization? Actually, the post office is the perfect example of the OPPOSITE being true. Private companies have every reason to make sure they offer the best service possible, hire the most trustworthy employees and avoid any kind of unethical practices. That's because if your package gets damaged or lost, you'll go to the competitor. Or, even worse, you'll complain to your family, friends, neighbors and maybe even the local paper. The company then acquires a bad reputation and loses even more costumers. Unethical practices are bad for business. Now, consider a national post office. Those same incentives do not exist. If private companies exist, you can always switch to them but what does the national post office care? It's not there to make money. It can be making a negative profit and continue to exist because the taxpayers as a whole will foot the bill. And what if private companies are banned? Then you're even more screwed because you can't even switch to a private service provider. There's a reason my family does not even send post cards back home to Poland -- employees of the nationalized post office there open any envelopes they suspect might have money in them. The extra costs do not come from being unethical, but from being inefficient. Nationalized institutions do not have the profit motive or the pressures of competition that private companies do. These two factors encourage new means of cutting costs (new technology for example) and discourage wasteful spending. Governments usually estimate very broadly when it comes to the exact costs of their programs (insert Medicare joke here), resulting in too much (or, less frequently, too little) money going to the government-funded institution. This is rarely the case with private companies, who do all they can to keep excess costs down and also have a much greater vested interests in making sure any estimates they make are accurate. "Doesn't the private system demand that there be at least two bodies doing the same thing anywho? Wouldn't that counter the point of double costs?" LS, if we were to accept that logic as true, we should just go along with all of the OSP's proposals and nationalize all industries. I do understand the way you were thinking, and it's a good question, but there's an issue here: two companies would not be "doing the same thing." A company will only offer one more unit of a good (or one more minute, hour, etc. of a service), including all the extra costs associated with providing that extra unit, if it is profitable. If a customer is already buying a good or service from a different company, and there's no way the company can get the customer to buy from it instead (say, by lowering the price), then it's not profitable for it to produce that product anyway. So, each company only supplies only enough of a good or service to meet a portion of the total demand, with the total supply of all the companies offering the good or service being equal to the total demand for them. Now, your argument, LS, holds up better for natural monopolies, where the economies of scale are large and the cost of entry is too big for other companies to enter the market. In those cases, you could argue that there would be excessive supply if more than one company operated and that is exactly why only one company "naturally" emerges as the sole provider of the good or service. Of course, it is debatable which industries are natural monopolies (if you bothered to read Cato's #301 like I suggested, you'd see why I think power grids are not) and there are still other arguments for why a privately-owned, natural monopoly is still preferable over a state-owned one. But that's a debate for another day ;] |
| Date | 04:50:47, November 11, 2005 CET | From | Ogden Sinclair Party | To | Debating the National Post Bill |
| Message | OOC: I live in a rural area, the privatised cellular phone system is basicly non-existant, before privatisation it was perfect. Trains in Britain have become a joke with privatisation, one company decided to solve this problem by making anywhere within an hour of the advertised arrival time as "on time". National services serve all the nation not the only the most profitable parts. This bill will also help to ease urbanisation and the emigration of rural Jakania which will come with services based on profit rather that national good. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 35 | ||||
| no |
Total Seats: 183 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 32 |
| Random fact: Voters have an extra appreciation for bills that actually get passed, so if you want to maximally take profit from your votes, make sure you compromise with others. |
| Random quote: "The proletarians of the world have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of all countries: unite!" - Karl Marx |