Public vs private: what's the difference?

For years, we’ve been told by left and right alike that the state is a vehicle for socialism whilst the private sector embodies free enterprise and self-reliance. It looks like this is pure bull.
Exhibit one. Cath Elliott describes the class conflict in the public sector:

It's pretty hard to remain objective when you see your work colleagues being shafted, year-in and year-out, by politicians and chief executives who haven't got the faintest idea of what it's like trying to survive on close to minimum wage incomes.

Exhibit two. Vanni Treves, chairman of Equitable Life, tells us that the fund management industry was nationalized years ago. The Equitable’s management, he says, was only “in part” responsible for the company’s collapse.

It was the job of the regulator to supervise what the [Equitable] management was doing…the government must pay the bills for its own failings.

In other words,  fund managers were really just civil servants working under government supervision. And like civil servants, they expect the tax-payer to pick up the bill for their own failings. At least Fannie and Freddie had the honesty to admit they were government-sponsored firms.
So, the state is capitalistic in the sense that bosses and their hangers-on rip off workers, whilst what we all thought was the market sector was really a branch of government.
Confused? You will be if you think left=state=socialism and right=market=self-reliance.
But as I said, the real divide isn’t between “left” and “right”  but between those who believe in spontaneous, undirected order and those who believe in top-down management, be it in government or business.
And what these two instances show us is that management (as distinct from administration), in the state or “private” sector, is much the same - an inherently corrupt activity aimed at ripping off workers, customers or tax-payers.

Comments

[Bob B]

As for class conflict in the public sector, grant credit where it is due:

"Mayor of London Boris Johnson is increasing the Living Wage for London to £7.45 per hour.

"The new pay level is almost 35% higher than the national minimum wage set by Government which currently stands at £5.52 an hour for workers aged 22 years or over, falling to £4.60 for 18 to 21-year-olds and £3.40 for 16 to 17-year-olds.

"The new figure will apply to all Greater London Authority Group staff and also to all new contracts as soon as possible."
http://www.hrzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=186254

Cutting down London Development Agency sponsorship activities will be one way of paying for the wage hike:

"London's economic development agency, the subject of a fraud investigation by police, was mismanaged and failed to deliver value for taxpayers during the administration of former Mayor Ken Livingstone, said a panel appointed by his successor, Boris Johnson.

"The audit panel, chaired by journalist Patience Wheatcroft, in a report issued today blamed failings in the London Development Agency's management and financial controls. The report didn't say how much of the agency's 740 million-pound ($1.5 billion) annual budget was misspent and didn't suggest criminal wrongdoing."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=amAy_DQnJNrA&refer=uk

[Luis Enrique]

"the real divide isn’t between “left” and “right” but between those who believe in spontaneous, undirected order and those who believe in top-down management, be it in government or business"

I'm not sure that this is a much more sensible divide that the old left / right. I can't say I've thought this through much, but my immediate response is to 'believe in' (advocate?) spontaneous order in some contexts, and top-down management in others.

[reason]

Luis,
I think this is another case of Chris being provocative for the sake of it. He doesn't really believe the statement in the bald way he states it here, and almost certainly wouldn't make it unqualified in a more formal context (teaching or a newspaper article for instance). I think the left/right access is a dangerous oversimplication but so is managers (with horns, spiky tails and all) versus the rest. And I'm an anti-manigerialist. But it is managerialists not managers that are the enemy. Managers have a role, just like engineers and nurses have.

[reason]

(P.S. Managers have a role because of the TIME dimension in decision making. Spontaneous order doesn't create infrastructure that is only necessary in the future.)

[Bob B]

With the subprime mortgage debacle, the prospect of more spontaneous order doesn't look very encouraging to me. But I agree that the distinction between right-wing and left-wing in politics has become altogether obscure and mostly irrelevant apart from historic references.