I think there needs to be an understanding of what we determine is 'privatization'

Privatization may not be to where people pay a direct amount of money to hire people to provide services. Privatization may be to where companies compete for government contracts to provide services, rather than the government forcing the assignment to themselves.

For example, a private police force would (and we have these in various ways such as rent-a-cops and other security systems):

The government requires each area to have a staffed police force with an X-to-Y ratio of cops to citizens. How the police force is developed is through contracts and bidding by private security forces. The public can be informed on which have offered their services, the prices it would cost (which would be funded through income or other taxes), and their records for service.

The government then awards the private firm with the best offer the contract to police the district. In this way, it forces competition. If the police provide bad service, or cause issues, they can be fired. Unlike government police forces, entire teams could be fired or removed without worries about police coverage, as other firms would be available for immediate deployment, should a police force be considered too inept.

If no private forces are available for conctract in the district, then the government provides services using a general fund.

In such a system, it provides much competition where and when available, while ensuring that everyone gets police forces as needed. In America, we have private EMS services that work alongside public EMS/911 services - how and why would police be any different?

Oh, and highwaystar - you can have privatized roads, too. We do this in America for certain roadways. It saves the government billions of dollars a year. Also, when roads are repaired, in some cases, private construction companies offer bids on the projects. Under those systems, the yield is a much cheaper price than if you have a nationalized department of transportation doing it (again, I know this...I worked for a city government before).

Many systems can be privatized in a hybrid 'socialized private' system - where private companies are contracted via public funds, such as the concept of school vouchers.

You want to solve the problem of spending too much money by spending more money?

I like this idea. If they need the money, they'll quit. Hopefully.

Oh God No.

Government contracting is even less efficient (and has far more scope to be run badly and have deals behind closed doors) than either a free market or government services. Worst of both worlds. Ever read the UK's Private Eye? Every two weeks, it has like 30 pages of news about how govt contracting fails hard.

It gives them a great excuse to spend public money, but not provide a breakdown of the expenses or the methods used, in the name of corporate security. And when it all goes wrong (see also: Britain's train franchises, the NHS IT contract) the company can just dissolve (or worse, demand a bailout and THEN dissolve) with no contract done, no penalty to the owners (who get hired under a new name next week), no bad press for the government even though it was ultimately their fault, and no company still in existence to blame.

This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons.

1) What are these people now going to live off? We're going to have homeless people everywhere begging for money. This also leads to an increase in deaths from exposure and the suchlike.

2) Taking away the money supply of an addict doesn't stop them being an addict. It just means that they will have to find other ways of funding their habits. This probably involves robbing your house.

The real solution is in rehabilitation, try and get them off drugs by funding programs for it, give them vouchers instead of cash so its far more difficult for them to spend it on drugs.

Everyone loves the indignant solution of 'fuck you, you're spending my tax dollars on drugs so you don't get them anymore' but they don't think of the consequences of doing so.

Oh i whole-heartedly agree some things only the government can do; like as you said police, fire, military, etc. It wouldn't be fair if you're being robbed and you don't have $500 to pay to police to stop the burglar. But certain things the private sector are much more efficient at providing. I'll have to look up some examples.

The drug users who are heavy enough users to be unable to hold down a steady job are already resorting to crime at a very high level to pay for their habit; and in most cases the amount of money provided by the government is tiny compared to their criminal activity. The increase in criminal activity to support themselves would be negligible, and very few would be forced to live on the street. The drug users who have a smaller problem will have the choice to clean up and/or get a steady job.

People are always willing to use the arguement that we need to import fresh slaves (immigrants) because they will do the work the natives are unwilling to.

No job is low paying if it needs to get done and no one is willing or able to do it. Constantly inporting fresh slaves to work cheaply is the reason why many native citizens are poor or unemployed.

Wow, that might be the dumest thing you have said.

Did you use the world slave for shock value, or do you just not know what it means?

We do not import anything, we allow people to chose to come to the US on there own, by paying them more then they would make in there country.

How you can consider that "importing slaves" is beyond me. Go back and take a look at when we really did import slaves, and tell me where there is a parallel.

Not that anyone really cares, but I've revised my previously stated stance on this: I can't really be for this at all. In fact, I'm quite a bit against it for several reasons:

1) Why illegal drugs only? Alcohol and Tobacco are far more devastating than any illegal drugs combined, and excluding them and other things like (unauthorized) prescription drugs seems perplexing to me. Does a drug become "good" only because a government has the sanity to tax it?

2) First-strike out seems very harsh to me. If someone falls on hard times and errs exactly once, they stand to lose everything just because? Something like a three strike-rule would seem far more appropriate - and even if someone strikes out, they should be given other options, like rehab or community service instead of straight out exclusion.

Also - I can't understand the reasoning behind the sentiment that you should be owned by the government as soon as you can't find a job for a few months.

3)As far as I can tell, this has never been tested or implemented on any significant scale, so there's really no way to tell whether this would work or not. It certainly might, but it could also backfire horribly and cause far more humanitarian and financial damage than its alternative.

On the other hand, countries like Portugal have experienced much success in fighting drug problems (both personal and national) with very lenient stances towards drug abuse:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

4) Several consequences of this program have already been addressed in the thread, but there's one more: You'd also get flagged as an addict due to this failure and automatically presented as an undesirable and a liability, which would make even honest attempts for cleaning oneself up much harder than they should be.

Absolutely I agree with that.

If you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't care about taking the test. If you've got something to hide, either quit the habit or don't get the help.

I don't see how people that don't actually use drugs call something like that an invasion of privacy.