The Government Vs Private Charity

Modern governments manage services that in the past would have been entirely operated by the private sector, services which political philosophers would never have imagined would be connected to government. From health care to arts funding to scientific research, governments do it all, and sometimes they do things quite well. This poses an interesting question: does government occupy a particular domain or can it literally undertake any project that it wishes? Is there an optimal space for government to occupy or are such limits unnecessary and perhaps hurtful to society? By depending so much on government, are we missing out on the benefits offered by the private sector?

There are definitely spheres of activity that I consider should be occupied by the government alone. In particular, all areas connected to the law are governmental responsibilities in my view. The three branches of the American government are all connected to the law: the legislative branch writes laws, the executive branch executes laws, and the judicial interprets laws. I see no reason to think privatized police forces or courts would deliver better justice despite how flawed their public counterparts can be. For profit institutions always tend to cater towards their better paying customers (which would obviously lead to unequal justice) while nonprofit legal institutions might struggle to survive given the often antagonistic relationship between citizen and state. It also makes sense for war to be the domain of government given that it is always effectively waged on a nation-state level; Mexico might say it is declaring war only on Military Inc. of California, but the moment its troops march across the border or its planes start bombing everyone in the way is in danger. Perhaps most importantly, laws and wars have the power to affect every citizen's life -- surely each citizen deserves an opportunity to help determine the laws and decide when to go to war. Ineffective as it sometimes is, voting does give each citizen a meager voice in democratic countries. Theoretically, there is perhaps nothing that couldn't be decoupled from what we think of as a government, but allowing the government to control some basic functions is highly convenient and is an experiment that has been tested again and again for thousands of years. However, it's certainly true that some services have become quite traditionally associated with government that aren't really core government responsibilities at all...postal services are an example. If nothing else, the examples of such services show that governments are capable of performing many functions -- the question remains if that is a desirable thing or not.

When it comes to services, the key factor that tends to separate the public sector and the private sector is how they are funded. Public services are usually funded by force via taxation; private services are funded either by paying customers or voluntary contributions from the charitable. There are hybrid services, of course -- the United States Postal Service and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation are run like corporations and are theoretically self-sustaining but are still considered part of the government. I tend to favor privatization because I believe people generally have the right to spend their money as they wish...public services funded by taxes take away that granular level of choice in spending though presumably voting citizens still have a voice in what services are provided and to what extent they are funded. Because of the existence of consumer and donor choice, private services are rarely offered by only one provider -- there is competition for funding which encourages both quality and affordability as service providers seek to outdo one another. Government services, however, tend to be monopolies because they do not have to fight for funding from countless individual sources. Public services can improve in quality and become more affordable, but only through good oversight...there is no equivalent to the market's invisible guiding hand save perhaps in some extreme cases the ire of the public. Of course, all isn't sunshine and light in the private sector either: things can get hairy there when for one reason or another competition doesn't emerge and also when a service is particularly vital -- it's the latter situation that I particularly want to discuss in this post.

As I see it, there will always be a need for free health care and education. It's true that competition in these sectors can bring prices down, but at the end of the day there'll always be people without a penny in their pocket who need medical services and there'll always be people without a patron who need education. The default option around the developed world seems to be for government to provide these free services to those who need them. The United States has received a lot of global criticism of late for not providing universal health care coverage to its citizens, but yet government does fund an enormous amount of health care even in the United States: Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Health Administration, the Indian Health Service, health benefits for state and federal employees, etc and public education is universal. All in all, I think this is rather an unfortunate state of affairs because there is such a level of dependence on government for these vital services even in the richest countries. I have a long-term goal to at least contribute as much money to health care charities as I spend on health care services (including insurance) for myself, but the truth is health care charities are nowhere near as developed as they need to be in order to be a major player in the health care industry. I believe strongly in supporting free clinics and charitable hospitals, but there are no local institutions of the type I can support -- it's not that I'm not happy to support institutions around the country that do good work, but it bothers me that there is no alternative to for-profit (and frequently government-funded) health care in my area and so many other areas. Free private schools are even harder to track down. That such alternatives SHOULD exist seems like a no-brainer to me, but it makes me wonder if there isn't enough collective will to provide these free charitable services on a wide scale. This seems hard to believe given the great successes of private charities in other endeavors and given that health care and education are such universally needed services, but it's even harder to ignore reality.

Given the need for free vital services and the lack of success of private charity in providing these services, government involvement seems inevitable. Indeed, I have a hard time opposing it -- it's better for government to pay for or even run health care than for people to suffer and die unnecessarily. However, I can't help but feel society has failed by having to rely on government force to provide vital services that could certainly be performed by the private sector. The likely penalties are harsh: limited competition between institutions, high taxes, government influence on treatment options and school curriculums...but what can be done? Perhaps we've already laid our bed and have no choice but to lie in it for now.