mekka okereke 15h ago

They pay $34 for burgers. Should their fire department service be free? Opening a new fire department in one of NYC's richest neighborhoods has some of America's pettiest journalists asking silly questions in headlines again.🤡

The article acknowledges the fire department analogy, then blows past it.🤷🏿‍♂️

The solve for "Sometimes when a service like free childcare is available to all, marginalized communities get squeezed out," is "Address that racism."

It's not "Therefore waste incredible amounts of time and money trying to means test something that society should just make available to all.🤡"

Show threadmhoye
@mekkaokereke one of the core lessons of public health is that bureaucracy is _expensive_. The entire “Who should pay what!?” Exercise slows the systems down and costs a ton of money and basically all it produces is spreadsheets that cruel selfish people use to be cruel and selfish, and that crowd can’t wrap their heads around the fact that the other thing that’s great about public services being public services is that it’s cheaper.
2:00pmWeb
Show threadPaul_IPv69h ago

@mhoye @mekkaokereke

all sorts of services. education, food programs, health, public transportation, postal services.

they are public goods. they don't need to "make a profit". any decently run program won't have enough fraud to make it worth charging money and tracking the use. what they will save in costs and result in overall improvement in quality of life for all will more than make them worth it.

problem is, as soon as you say anything like that (or universal health care, UBI, etc.) there are screams of "that's communism" (no it isn't) or "socialism" (not exactly). capitalism (which we don't really have either) is a sacred cow. no one dares to criticize capitalism.

sigh...