Charlie Baker Quotes
The biggest difference between the private sector and public sector is in the private sector, there's a sense of urgency because you have customers and you have competitors. Whereas in government, one of your major objectives is to not make any really big mistakes.
Baker, Charlie. Interview by Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. Boston Public Radio, WGBH, 2015.
This is a noteworthy quotation because it illustrates—to a slightly exaggerated degree—a major difference between the public and private sectors. However, Conrad fails to point out that when government does try and establish several competitive programs and approaches, conservatives like him are the first say that the government officials do not know what they are doing and then they object to the “duplication” and “waste.” Further, usually, when a government entity does experiment as the private sector competitive system does, it is chastised by liberals and conservatives alike for having had attempts that failed or did not succeed well. Experimenting requires a cultural tolerance for failure or imperfection. Only very courageous executive politicians like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt have been able to initiate many programs aiming at the same objective with the society keeping the best—like Social Security and rejecting the worst like the National Recovery Administration. See {631419} for his view.
the legal and regulatory system While this is generally true, the same very efficient private organziations sometimes act very efficiently against the interest of the public, or a part of the public in a discriminatory manner. There are other functions which for one reason or another no private organization chooses to take on, and we are left with government doing the best it can. And there are some areas where th cost of private service is just too high, and government assumes it for reasons of affordability. However sometimes there is a major problem created by competitive private organzaitions in such heated competition that the servie is terrible. In early America, Fire Fighting was assumed by private organzations, who would often fight with one another over who would handle the fire while entire neighborhoods burned down. The result was public fire service which is now the norm despite the fact that there might be better ervice in with a private company. America has attemted to balance this problem and tends to have done so better than most countries athough the issue is in contant debate in American politics.
This is a very interesting quotation in that right wing parties are usually opposed to any kind of Government ownership and control of business and industry. However, Fascist parties have usually wanted to commandeer business and industry for the central purposes of the dictatorial state. The French National Front Party had its roots in the WWII French Vichy Government—which was allied with the Nazis to bring Fascism and racism to France.
Von Mises was one of the few right wing conservatives who would admit that private business could not operate government functions well. It was the very nature of government service and operation which makes its operation inimical to profit making business practices and methods.
Charles Duane Baker Jr. is an American politician and businessman serving as the 72nd governor of Massachusetts since January 8, 2015. He was a cabinet official under two governors of Massachusetts and served ten years as CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
