Ask HN: What would America look like if there was less government?
15 comments
What you're seeing is the result of decades of efforts on the part of post-Eisenhower Republicans to discredit the very notion of government of the people, by the people, and for the people -- and you're falling for it. Good job!
"Rabbi Chanina, deputy to the kohanim, would say: Pray for the integrity of the government; for were it not for the fear of its authority, a man would swallow his neighbor alive."
It's important to remember that Rabbi Chanina saw the destruction of the Second Temple and still made his statement that has come down to us in the Pirke Avot.
It's important to remember that Rabbi Chanina saw the destruction of the Second Temple and still made his statement that has come down to us in the Pirke Avot.
Well. we wouldn't have TESLA. or SolarCity. or SpaceX. Modern genomics may still be a decade out. There would be no Silicon Valley. We would probably have something sort of like the internet, but it would be a pay per packet and net neutrality wouldn't even be discussed; we would probably just be kvetching about how expensive it is to email stuff between PRODIGY and COMPUSERV.
There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new york. There would be no rural phone service; heck, there probably wouldn't be an electrical grid in rural areas.
There would be no enforcement of labor laws, so there would be no weekends (not that there are weekends now...)
Each bank would be issuing it's own currency, but it probably wouldn't be TOO horrible, cause it's in each of the bank's best interest to publish exchange rates between east coast and west coast banks (probably on PRODIGY.) And yes, the federal reserve is not perfect, but manipulating monetary policy to avoid credit crises and to at least try to encourage full employment and low (or at least stable) inflation is sort of cool.
We could all use bitcoin, of course, but deflationary currency is even worse than fiat currency.
There would be no affordable medical insurance for the poor, sick or old.
No national parks, but maybe there would be land trusts. Hard to say if private land trusts would be better or worse, but they would certainly be more expensive to consumers.
And sure, Xe/Blackwater are great, but if I'm going to have someone fight a war, I'm putting my money on the Marines (and begrudgingly, I have to admit the Air Force is pretty ossm as well.)
There 'aint no way anyone on wall street is going to police themselves, a "privatized" SEC is sort of laughable.
There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new york. There would be no rural phone service; heck, there probably wouldn't be an electrical grid in rural areas.
There would be no enforcement of labor laws, so there would be no weekends (not that there are weekends now...)
Each bank would be issuing it's own currency, but it probably wouldn't be TOO horrible, cause it's in each of the bank's best interest to publish exchange rates between east coast and west coast banks (probably on PRODIGY.) And yes, the federal reserve is not perfect, but manipulating monetary policy to avoid credit crises and to at least try to encourage full employment and low (or at least stable) inflation is sort of cool.
We could all use bitcoin, of course, but deflationary currency is even worse than fiat currency.
There would be no affordable medical insurance for the poor, sick or old.
No national parks, but maybe there would be land trusts. Hard to say if private land trusts would be better or worse, but they would certainly be more expensive to consumers.
And sure, Xe/Blackwater are great, but if I'm going to have someone fight a war, I'm putting my money on the Marines (and begrudgingly, I have to admit the Air Force is pretty ossm as well.)
There 'aint no way anyone on wall street is going to police themselves, a "privatized" SEC is sort of laughable.
That's a lot of speculation with little or nothing to support it.
"Little or nothing"?
SpaceX, and all of the private space companies, are built using the results of government research, primarily during the space race. Potentially better systems, like the aerospike engine, are too expensive for a commercial company to develop (eg, https://youtu.be/K4zFefh5T-8?t=567 )
"Modern genomics" because human genome project started in the 1980s as a DOE project, then switched over to NIH. Celera had a private venture which finished at about the same time as the public one, but that was in part because it depended on public data. The publicly funded genomic effort really pushed the development of the genome sequencing field.
Silicon Valley started because of the government funding for aerospace and microwaves and electronics through military/industry contracting in the Bay Area. Eg, Lockheed Missiles Division in Sunnyvale in the 1960s was the largest employer in what became Silicon Valley. - https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ .
The interstate highway started because of Eisenhower. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System points out, "Some large sections of Interstate Highways that were planned or constructed before [the Federal Aid Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as toll roads".
"Rural phone service" and "electrical grid" is because of legislation like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act and its later amendments (eg, "1949 - extended the act to allow loans to telephone companies wishing to extend their connections to unconnected rural areas"), and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 . See https://www.ntca.org/ruraliscool/history-rural-telecommunica... for more details.
"enforcement of labor laws" is because of the NLRB.
"Each bank would be issuing it's own currency" - that's certainly true. Look at the "free banking era" of the mid-1800s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking_in_the_Unit... ) when banks could and did print their own money.
Now, you could certainly argue that there are other ways to get to where we are, but claiming retrocryptid's comments have little or no support seems more a statement of ignorance about history than a solid position.
SpaceX, and all of the private space companies, are built using the results of government research, primarily during the space race. Potentially better systems, like the aerospike engine, are too expensive for a commercial company to develop (eg, https://youtu.be/K4zFefh5T-8?t=567 )
"Modern genomics" because human genome project started in the 1980s as a DOE project, then switched over to NIH. Celera had a private venture which finished at about the same time as the public one, but that was in part because it depended on public data. The publicly funded genomic effort really pushed the development of the genome sequencing field.
Silicon Valley started because of the government funding for aerospace and microwaves and electronics through military/industry contracting in the Bay Area. Eg, Lockheed Missiles Division in Sunnyvale in the 1960s was the largest employer in what became Silicon Valley. - https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ .
The interstate highway started because of Eisenhower. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System points out, "Some large sections of Interstate Highways that were planned or constructed before [the Federal Aid Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as toll roads".
"Rural phone service" and "electrical grid" is because of legislation like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act and its later amendments (eg, "1949 - extended the act to allow loans to telephone companies wishing to extend their connections to unconnected rural areas"), and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 . See https://www.ntca.org/ruraliscool/history-rural-telecommunica... for more details.
"enforcement of labor laws" is because of the NLRB.
"Each bank would be issuing it's own currency" - that's certainly true. Look at the "free banking era" of the mid-1800s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking_in_the_Unit... ) when banks could and did print their own money.
Now, you could certainly argue that there are other ways to get to where we are, but claiming retrocryptid's comments have little or no support seems more a statement of ignorance about history than a solid position.
The thing is, for every thing you said that includes "was because of" or some variant, the reality is that we don't have access to the counter-factual cases. We don't have any way of knowing, for example, if we would have Interstate Highways or not, had the federal government not been involved.
The same can be said for electrification, the Internet, etc.
statement of ignorance about history than a solid position.
I'm very familiar with the history. My point is that that is irrelevant, because, again, we don't know - and can't know - anything about the counter-factuals. To say, for example "we wouldn't have the Internet today without the USG" is speculation.
The same can be said for electrification, the Internet, etc.
statement of ignorance about history than a solid position.
I'm very familiar with the history. My point is that that is irrelevant, because, again, we don't know - and can't know - anything about the counter-factuals. To say, for example "we wouldn't have the Internet today without the USG" is speculation.
Your view appears to reject the study of history as a valid means of inquiry.
I may assert that the US Civil War was due to slavery, and point to, for example, documents at the time which say that slavery was the reason for succession. Eg, https://portside.org/2013-11-04/absolute-proof-civil-war-was... .
But then you reply with "we don't know - and can't know - anything about counter-factuals." Who knows - perhaps the South would have succeeded anyway even if there hadn't been slavery.
I may assert that the Manhattan Project was a result of Einstein and Szilárd's letter to Roosevelt. You can reply with the same quote. Maybe someone else besides the most famous physicist in the world would have written a similar letter, and started the effort. You might be right, but the existing causal chain is pretty clear.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Is there any description of likely historical causation which you cannot respond to with a claim that it's "a lot of speculation with little or nothing to support it"?
I may assert that the US Civil War was due to slavery, and point to, for example, documents at the time which say that slavery was the reason for succession. Eg, https://portside.org/2013-11-04/absolute-proof-civil-war-was... .
But then you reply with "we don't know - and can't know - anything about counter-factuals." Who knows - perhaps the South would have succeeded anyway even if there hadn't been slavery.
I may assert that the Manhattan Project was a result of Einstein and Szilárd's letter to Roosevelt. You can reply with the same quote. Maybe someone else besides the most famous physicist in the world would have written a similar letter, and started the effort. You might be right, but the existing causal chain is pretty clear.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Is there any description of likely historical causation which you cannot respond to with a claim that it's "a lot of speculation with little or nothing to support it"?
Your view appears to reject the study of history as a valid means of inquiry.
I certainly agree that a lot of the apparent causal chains that we take for granted are very suspect. But it's deeper than that. One can say "The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the cause of WWI" and maybe that's true in a sense. But if Ferdinand had not been assassinated, would there still have been a great war in Europe? I think there are a lot of reasons to suspect so.. maybe it would have started a few months or years later, and maybe the details would have worked out different... who knows? That's the problem with history: by definition we only get access to one view of things.
Now, IF the universe truly is strictly deterministic and things can happen only one way, then I guess it's all a moot point. But I'm not sure I accept that.
I certainly agree that a lot of the apparent causal chains that we take for granted are very suspect. But it's deeper than that. One can say "The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the cause of WWI" and maybe that's true in a sense. But if Ferdinand had not been assassinated, would there still have been a great war in Europe? I think there are a lot of reasons to suspect so.. maybe it would have started a few months or years later, and maybe the details would have worked out different... who knows? That's the problem with history: by definition we only get access to one view of things.
Now, IF the universe truly is strictly deterministic and things can happen only one way, then I guess it's all a moot point. But I'm not sure I accept that.
You'll note though that Wikipedia's entry starts "The causes of World War I remain controversial." and says:
> The immediate causes lay in decisions made by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of 1914. This crisis was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by the Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip who had been supported by a nationalist organization in Serbia.
While in the example I gave, it's certain that defense of slavery was the primary reason for the US Civil War. Or, are you really not willing to accept even that?
Go back to retrocryptid's statement "There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new york"
We can look at the interstate system and see that "Some large sections of Interstate Highways that were planned or constructed before [the Federal Aid Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as toll roads".
This lends support retrocryptid's statement, while you said there was little to no support for any of those statements.
> The immediate causes lay in decisions made by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of 1914. This crisis was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by the Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip who had been supported by a nationalist organization in Serbia.
While in the example I gave, it's certain that defense of slavery was the primary reason for the US Civil War. Or, are you really not willing to accept even that?
Go back to retrocryptid's statement "There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new york"
We can look at the interstate system and see that "Some large sections of Interstate Highways that were planned or constructed before [the Federal Aid Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as toll roads".
This lends support retrocryptid's statement, while you said there was little to no support for any of those statements.
"Famously, UPS/FedEx are better than USPS."
This a red herring. First off, USPS is nearly as good as those, and those others don't have nearly the geographical breadth requirements of the USPS.
This a red herring. First off, USPS is nearly as good as those, and those others don't have nearly the geographical breadth requirements of the USPS.
>education
One of the Libertarian propositions to public schooling is giving a check to all children to redeem at any private school that passes some bar set by the government. I love this solution, since it removes the requirement for residency for admittance to quality education, and strongarms the schooling system to be more efficient and competitive in how they produce students (assuming that the primary reason to choose one over another is test scores). Primary efficiency would come from reducing the amount of faculty required to hire.
>gas/oil/electricity
I don't see how this is tied to the public sector directly, unless you're talking about the military and Pentagon specifically.
>healthcare
It's complicated, not going to flesh that out. In general, we have a fairly privatized health care sector compared to a lot of other countries.
>law enforcement
Mass shootings have a lot more to do with the overuse of social media and the underuse of meaningful in person relationships than it has to do with law enforcement.
One of the Libertarian propositions to public schooling is giving a check to all children to redeem at any private school that passes some bar set by the government. I love this solution, since it removes the requirement for residency for admittance to quality education, and strongarms the schooling system to be more efficient and competitive in how they produce students (assuming that the primary reason to choose one over another is test scores). Primary efficiency would come from reducing the amount of faculty required to hire.
>gas/oil/electricity
I don't see how this is tied to the public sector directly, unless you're talking about the military and Pentagon specifically.
>healthcare
It's complicated, not going to flesh that out. In general, we have a fairly privatized health care sector compared to a lot of other countries.
>law enforcement
Mass shootings have a lot more to do with the overuse of social media and the underuse of meaningful in person relationships than it has to do with law enforcement.
While I hate the solution. There are many problems with it.
1) Why do parents have the sole privilege in deciding where the money goes? It's my tax dollars. In the current system, I can go to school board meetings and try to change policy, even if I don't have kids going to school right now.
(Of the many possible scenarios, I might want to change things because I know my kids will be going to school in a few years, or based on experiences from having kids who just graduated.)
2) You write "some bar set by the government." Who sets that bar? Is it the local area, in which case how does it differ from a school board? Is it the entire state, in which case, how do local people affect what's going on in their school?
Or are their multiple organizations which can be authorized to provide oversight, in which case, can't the private schools pick the one with the least oversight? We see that already with some charter school systems.
3) Since these are private schools, can they decide to not accept someone? If so, based on which criteria? Can a private school decide that it's too expensive to school someone with emotional problems (a "disruption"), and expel that student?
Public schools are required to accept everyone, with a high bar for expulsion. What happens if private schools only accept the children which are cheapest and easiest to educate, leaving the more difficult children to the public school system?
What happens if no private schools are willing to accept a student, and there no more public school system which is required to accept everyone?
4) You mention that it's "competitive in how they produce students".
In many districts there is only one school. There may have been more schools before, but they merged in order to save costs, because it's cheaper to have one large building (and bus kids in) than many small building, each with its own staff.
Surely having several private school systems has its own overhead.
How do you know there there really enough economic savings in this competition to be able to overcome the economy-of-scale savings? Especially in districts where right now there is only one school?
Plus, the large public high school I went to offered a wide selection of courses. There was enough interest in Latin, for example, to have a Latin teacher. Break the school population into three, and no one school will be able to afford a Latin teacher. Sure, one might, but then that school might not have a jazz band class. A student who wants both Latin and jazz is unlikely to get that if there are many small schools instead of one large one.
This suggests there may be a natural monopoly, rather that competition, for many districts.
5) You assumed "that the primary reason to choose one over another is test scores".
Test scores are highly correlated with family income. If we choose schools based on test scores, then we send students to schools in rich neighborhoods.
Test scores are pretty worthless in the first place. Test prep is effective, but takes time away from all of the other topics (art, P.E., home economics, music, foreign language, shop) which are also important - if your goal is to produce educated citizens - but aren't tested.
6) Most good private schools are more expensive than good public schools. That check will end up subsidizing rich people to send their kids to expensive private schools. It won't poor people send their kids to good private schools.
7) How much of the school budget will be spent on marketing in the system you envision? In a public school system, there is very little marketing overhead.
1) Why do parents have the sole privilege in deciding where the money goes? It's my tax dollars. In the current system, I can go to school board meetings and try to change policy, even if I don't have kids going to school right now.
(Of the many possible scenarios, I might want to change things because I know my kids will be going to school in a few years, or based on experiences from having kids who just graduated.)
2) You write "some bar set by the government." Who sets that bar? Is it the local area, in which case how does it differ from a school board? Is it the entire state, in which case, how do local people affect what's going on in their school?
Or are their multiple organizations which can be authorized to provide oversight, in which case, can't the private schools pick the one with the least oversight? We see that already with some charter school systems.
3) Since these are private schools, can they decide to not accept someone? If so, based on which criteria? Can a private school decide that it's too expensive to school someone with emotional problems (a "disruption"), and expel that student?
Public schools are required to accept everyone, with a high bar for expulsion. What happens if private schools only accept the children which are cheapest and easiest to educate, leaving the more difficult children to the public school system?
What happens if no private schools are willing to accept a student, and there no more public school system which is required to accept everyone?
4) You mention that it's "competitive in how they produce students".
In many districts there is only one school. There may have been more schools before, but they merged in order to save costs, because it's cheaper to have one large building (and bus kids in) than many small building, each with its own staff.
Surely having several private school systems has its own overhead.
How do you know there there really enough economic savings in this competition to be able to overcome the economy-of-scale savings? Especially in districts where right now there is only one school?
Plus, the large public high school I went to offered a wide selection of courses. There was enough interest in Latin, for example, to have a Latin teacher. Break the school population into three, and no one school will be able to afford a Latin teacher. Sure, one might, but then that school might not have a jazz band class. A student who wants both Latin and jazz is unlikely to get that if there are many small schools instead of one large one.
This suggests there may be a natural monopoly, rather that competition, for many districts.
5) You assumed "that the primary reason to choose one over another is test scores".
Test scores are highly correlated with family income. If we choose schools based on test scores, then we send students to schools in rich neighborhoods.
Test scores are pretty worthless in the first place. Test prep is effective, but takes time away from all of the other topics (art, P.E., home economics, music, foreign language, shop) which are also important - if your goal is to produce educated citizens - but aren't tested.
6) Most good private schools are more expensive than good public schools. That check will end up subsidizing rich people to send their kids to expensive private schools. It won't poor people send their kids to good private schools.
7) How much of the school budget will be spent on marketing in the system you envision? In a public school system, there is very little marketing overhead.
Remember, this is in comparison to public schools, which are regional gerrymandered monopolies. This system isn't perfect, but sets incentives in place to make it better. I grew up near some sketchy neighborhoods, and although I went to an average school, I know a lot of people who fared worse.
I'm not going to write a response to everything you said, but the tl;dr falls into a few categories
1. Privatization does not mean deregulation. Imagine Obamacare style regulations to a private marketplace for schooling (price caps, cannot turn away certain sets of people, etc).
2. If we can't agree on some measure for effective education, then there's no way to improve this, since we have no bar to go by. Everything is empirical and mileage may vary from person to person. You can create a seperate class of high school education (will flesh out in next point).
3. Property values are strongly correlated with the quality of the public schools (since all states help pay for public school with property taxes[1], and you are locked into a public school depending on where you live). My main motivation for supporting this is to help poor people have access to the same quality education as everybody else, and maybe even allowing specialized tracks that bias towards vocational schooling that funnels into direct employment after school (universities can boast about employment post graduation, why not high schools?)
4. There is nuance with the specific numbers here, and if it is systemically impossible for reasonable competition, then this price will go up.
[1]: http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-th...
I'm not going to write a response to everything you said, but the tl;dr falls into a few categories
1. Privatization does not mean deregulation. Imagine Obamacare style regulations to a private marketplace for schooling (price caps, cannot turn away certain sets of people, etc).
2. If we can't agree on some measure for effective education, then there's no way to improve this, since we have no bar to go by. Everything is empirical and mileage may vary from person to person. You can create a seperate class of high school education (will flesh out in next point).
3. Property values are strongly correlated with the quality of the public schools (since all states help pay for public school with property taxes[1], and you are locked into a public school depending on where you live). My main motivation for supporting this is to help poor people have access to the same quality education as everybody else, and maybe even allowing specialized tracks that bias towards vocational schooling that funnels into direct employment after school (universities can boast about employment post graduation, why not high schools?)
4. There is nuance with the specific numbers here, and if it is systemically impossible for reasonable competition, then this price will go up.
[1]: http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-th...
It's precisely because they are monopolies that they can be forced to accept a wide range of students. Otherwise there will be schools which pick the best/easily taught students, and leave the others behind.
Those who fared worse in the current system may fare far worse in an all-private system.
1. In the current charter school system, privatization often does mean deregulation. So while I can imagine it, I assert that it's a dream.
2. If we pick wrong measures - and standardized tests are wrong measures - then we end up trying to improve the wrong thing. Eg, we end up with two weeks dedicated to test prep, instead of teaching; we end up dropping art, music, and foreign language classes in order to focus only on those topics which are tested.
The regional gerrymandering is in part so that the local communities get to decide what the right measures are. Mileage absolutely varies from person to person .. people and communities vary too.
It's not like we didn't have a decent sense of what a good education meant back in the 1970s, before high-stakes testing.
3. Again, how do private schools get to decide which students to accept? Can they make policies which end up rejecting most poor people? If the private school education costs $10,000 and the state's check is for $5,000 then poor students aren't going to afford it. While the parents of middle class students can, subsidized by the state.
Which means poor people won't have access to the same quality education as everyone else.
Those who fared worse in the current system may fare far worse in an all-private system.
1. In the current charter school system, privatization often does mean deregulation. So while I can imagine it, I assert that it's a dream.
2. If we pick wrong measures - and standardized tests are wrong measures - then we end up trying to improve the wrong thing. Eg, we end up with two weeks dedicated to test prep, instead of teaching; we end up dropping art, music, and foreign language classes in order to focus only on those topics which are tested.
The regional gerrymandering is in part so that the local communities get to decide what the right measures are. Mileage absolutely varies from person to person .. people and communities vary too.
It's not like we didn't have a decent sense of what a good education meant back in the 1970s, before high-stakes testing.
3. Again, how do private schools get to decide which students to accept? Can they make policies which end up rejecting most poor people? If the private school education costs $10,000 and the state's check is for $5,000 then poor students aren't going to afford it. While the parents of middle class students can, subsidized by the state.
Which means poor people won't have access to the same quality education as everyone else.
Student debt is due in part to the government getting out of funding public schools. There is little student debt in those countries where the government pays for a college education.
Student debt is also affected by poor supervision of lenders. Among other things, student debt cannot be discharged (usually) during bankruptcy. This is a special law that does not affect most other types of debt. As a result, loan institution don't need to do as much diligence.
Student debt is also because of the rapidly rising costs of education. I think part of it is the belief that one must go to college to have a good career. Colleges look at the delta in earning potentials and say "I gotta have more of that." The argument is that if going to college is expected to net you $2 million in additional income, then it's worthwhile to spend an extra $100K on it.
"Uneducated people stuck in poverty" is a combination of factors. One is the dependency of most school system on local taxes. Poor neighborhoods don't have the tax base for their schools as rich ones do. Rich parents want their kids to go to well-funded schools, and will move to do so. Poor parents rarely have that option. This is also coupled with the long-lasting effects of racism, eg, red-lining and the white urban exodus to the suburbs during the 1900s, which segregated school systems among racial and economic lines. The modern charter school movements have also resulted in increased segregation.
"global warming/climate crisis" - widely accepted by the relevant scientists, including those at oil companies. Oil companies spent massive amounts of money on disinformation campaigns, and in buying the government. I don't see how "less government" would have improved the situation. More government - government which could reign in the imbalance of power by having $billions of oil money on hand - might have made a difference. Look now where other governments in the world are far ahead of the US on this topic.
"obesity crisis" - there are many reasons for the crisis. I don't see how less government would help. Certainly the government has many roles in the matter.
"diabetes crisis" - how would less government help?
"unmanageable healthcare costs" - most wealthy countries address this with national health care, either run by or overseen by the government. The US healthcare system is royally screwed up, but I think can be explained by the explanations including 1) most sick people can't shop around for the best care, 2) hospitals have little reason to publish their full costs, and 3) there's little competition because it's expensive to maintain duplicate medical support infrastructure for a given region. Further, since medical coverage is employer based, employers are the customer, not the employee, and since there are so many coverage options (in the name of 'customer choice'), it leads to a paradox of choice issue where people don't want to spend the time to figure out the right choice, much less as those plans change every year.
I don't see how less government would help the US system.
"police brutality/abuse of power" - Yes, US police are brutal and abusive. How does less government help change that? Allow non-police like private guards to take over more law enforcement? Won't that just shift the brutality and power abuse to those with even less oversight?
"mass shooting epidemics" - you'll again note that mass shooting epidemics don't really happen in countries with significantly more government. What is the mechanism by which less government would reduce the number of mass shootings in the US?
You write "UPS/FedEx are better than USPS". This is outright not true. USPS's mandate is to be able to deliver anywhere in the US. FedEx, for example, will use USPS for rural delivery. Quoting https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fed... from 2014:
> For FedEx alone, the post office delivers an average of 2.2 million packages a day, or about 30% of the express-mail company’s total U.S. ground segment.
So UPS/FedEx are sometimes better than USPS, and other times worse.
Student debt is also affected by poor supervision of lenders. Among other things, student debt cannot be discharged (usually) during bankruptcy. This is a special law that does not affect most other types of debt. As a result, loan institution don't need to do as much diligence.
Student debt is also because of the rapidly rising costs of education. I think part of it is the belief that one must go to college to have a good career. Colleges look at the delta in earning potentials and say "I gotta have more of that." The argument is that if going to college is expected to net you $2 million in additional income, then it's worthwhile to spend an extra $100K on it.
"Uneducated people stuck in poverty" is a combination of factors. One is the dependency of most school system on local taxes. Poor neighborhoods don't have the tax base for their schools as rich ones do. Rich parents want their kids to go to well-funded schools, and will move to do so. Poor parents rarely have that option. This is also coupled with the long-lasting effects of racism, eg, red-lining and the white urban exodus to the suburbs during the 1900s, which segregated school systems among racial and economic lines. The modern charter school movements have also resulted in increased segregation.
"global warming/climate crisis" - widely accepted by the relevant scientists, including those at oil companies. Oil companies spent massive amounts of money on disinformation campaigns, and in buying the government. I don't see how "less government" would have improved the situation. More government - government which could reign in the imbalance of power by having $billions of oil money on hand - might have made a difference. Look now where other governments in the world are far ahead of the US on this topic.
"obesity crisis" - there are many reasons for the crisis. I don't see how less government would help. Certainly the government has many roles in the matter.
"diabetes crisis" - how would less government help?
"unmanageable healthcare costs" - most wealthy countries address this with national health care, either run by or overseen by the government. The US healthcare system is royally screwed up, but I think can be explained by the explanations including 1) most sick people can't shop around for the best care, 2) hospitals have little reason to publish their full costs, and 3) there's little competition because it's expensive to maintain duplicate medical support infrastructure for a given region. Further, since medical coverage is employer based, employers are the customer, not the employee, and since there are so many coverage options (in the name of 'customer choice'), it leads to a paradox of choice issue where people don't want to spend the time to figure out the right choice, much less as those plans change every year.
I don't see how less government would help the US system.
"police brutality/abuse of power" - Yes, US police are brutal and abusive. How does less government help change that? Allow non-police like private guards to take over more law enforcement? Won't that just shift the brutality and power abuse to those with even less oversight?
"mass shooting epidemics" - you'll again note that mass shooting epidemics don't really happen in countries with significantly more government. What is the mechanism by which less government would reduce the number of mass shootings in the US?
You write "UPS/FedEx are better than USPS". This is outright not true. USPS's mandate is to be able to deliver anywhere in the US. FedEx, for example, will use USPS for rural delivery. Quoting https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fed... from 2014:
> For FedEx alone, the post office delivers an average of 2.2 million packages a day, or about 30% of the express-mail company’s total U.S. ground segment.
So UPS/FedEx are sometimes better than USPS, and other times worse.
education - student debt crisis; uneducated people stuck in poverty
gas/oil/electricity - global warming/climate crisis
healthcare - obesity crisis, diabetes crisis, people dying in the streets due to unmanageable healthcare costs
law enforcement - police brutality/abuse of power; mass shooting epidemics
What would the country look like if some of these responsibilities were shifted to the private sector? Famously, UPS/FedEx are better than USPS. What are some other examples of the private sector being more efficient the the public sector?