Topic: Municipal Government
Talking Trash Does privatization make garbage collection less reliable, or more?by George Dance
(libertarian)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Toronto, Ontario city workers walked off the job on Monday, June 22, 2009, in their second strike of this decade. The first was back in 2002. Here's a look back at that earlier strike that I wrote at the time for the Ontario Libertarian Party.
-
As I write, Toronto is in the middle of a strike by its outside workers, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 416. Uncollected garbage is piling up; pools are closed in the middle of a heat wave; pickets are everywhere; and CUPE is running radio commercials to get Toronto voters on side.
In one, CUPE tells us we can "count on" city workers to do their jobs. But this reliability is threatened by the city's plans to contract out some services to private firms. If we care about reliable services, we should oppose contracting out; and we should call our city councillors right now, to demand they have it stopped.
CUPE is saying that reliable service is in our interests; that's something we can all agree with. But there appear to be two other, more hidden premises: that there is something -- call it X -- that makes a service reliable; and that government-provided services have X, while private ones do not.
Those are less obvious. What could this X be? I can see just three possibilities:
(1) A service could be 'reliable' if those performing it were forced to do so. Here government has a unique power: to use force against its employees if they strike, by ruling them an essential service. But that cannot be X.. The workers of 416 are not an essential service (except for the paramedics), do not want to be one, and in fact are exercising their freedom to strike as we speak. We must seek X elsewhere.
(2) A service could be 'reliable' if there were strikes, but they did not hurt delivery. That requires alternate providers, as where there is free competition: If a strike hits a local store, I go to one nearby; a restaurant, I order take-out; a courier, I call another. But when a strike hits a legally monopolized service -- when it closes my local pool or library, or stops my mail -- I must go without. Similarly, where the city is already contracting out garbage pickup, it is less affected than where the only garbage workers are its own employees.
(3) A service could be 'reliable' if those performing it have a compelling incentive. A private firm has such an incentive: either it performs, or it isn't paid. I can count on getting what I buy in a store, because if I don't, the store gets nothing from me. But if a service is funded by my taxes, I have no such say. If the government is buying the service, the provider has such an incentive. But if government is itself the provider, there's not even that: the government gets 'paid' whatever and whenever the government wants.
Both competition and voluntary payment appear to make service delivery more reliable. But neither plays any significant role in the present system, which CUPE is urging us to support. Both would be better served by the city's plans for limited privatization. Both would be even better served by a program of full privatization, with free entry for all suppliers, and with consumers free to deal with either the city or the supplier of their choice.
Toronto voters concerned about reliable services would do better phoning their councillors to demand more privatization, not less.
-
Libertarian Bulletin, 22:4 (Summer, 2002)
-----
UPDATE, June 25: I posted the above in the wee hours of June 24. Riding to work 12 hours later, I came across the following in the free community paper, Metro:
It is an everyday scene that has suddenly become a novelty: Waste bins lining the curb, garbage trucks making their rounds.... Garbage pickup was contracted out in Etobicoke before amalgamation [in 1998], to the good fortune of residents who came home yesterday to empty bins.
"It's wonderful," said 70-year-old retiree Johanna Brett.... She credits the private contractor, Turtle Island Recycling, with saving her and her neighbours from the piles of trash that will soon fill the rest of the city -- and the vermin she fears will come with them.
Like many of her neighbours, she wonders whether people will dump garbage in Etobicoke, knowing pickup there will continue....
[Another resident], who did not want to give her last name, said it would be nice if the rest of the city had private companies picking up their trash, too....
["Tale of two city collections," Metro, June 24, 2009, 3]
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 10 thumbs so far
The views expressed in this
article are those of George Dance only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. George Dance is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
In Shelby Twp., Michigan were we live, garbage collection has always been private. 15 years ago government was totally uninvolved in it. You could choose from several different companies to pick up the garbage and you paid them directly. Some folks didn't like that because the companies picked up on different days, so everyday there were garbage trucks driving through the neighborhood. The city stepped in and selected one company. So now it's still private but you don't have a choice of companies anymore.
Now I can't say that I pay much attention to the garbage trucks but my wife does. According to her the service was somewhat more reliable before. Now they occasionally miss the recycle bin or the yard waste bin. The prices didn't change though. But we never had a strike with either system. Overall garbage pickup was good either way.
I live a few miles south from you, in Sterling Heights MI. The city has taken care of the garbage since before I moved here. The service is ok, I don't have any complaints. However, if they decide to strike like in Toronto, I have to still pay my property taxes without getting my garbage picked up and I will probably have to pay AGAIN for a private company to take the trash that the city is not collecting. So I would be forced to pay two times. So even if the service is ok, there still that issue and also that I would never know exactly how much I am paying for it as it is somewhere hidden in my property taxes. I am pretty sure is more than the $13 per month I used to be paying when I lived in Waterford MI where it was completely private.
When I was in Waterford, there was this small mom-and-pop garbage service that almost had all the customers there because their prices were much cheaper than any competitor. They pretty much had a monopoly on a lot of the streets. When I was single and alone, I only generated about two small grocery sized bags or less for trash. I did not even need trash bags. So my very nice next door neighbor told me to put my garbage in in her side at no extra charge. Other neighboring families, were splitting the cost by using one curb. The garbage company had a maximum of 12 bags, so two neighboring families with 6 bags each will split the cost. Very nice sense of community in that street.
We have private haulers here, but it is hardly competitive. There are only a couple of providers and they get together and divide up and bid the city every few years. There is no choice of servers, you get who is appointed and you pay what they determine. It is more of a "utility" like monopoly than anything else, hardly true competition.
The haulers are "required" to pick up recylables and profit tidely from it. We have gone from a state that voluntarily recycled a high percentage twenty years ago to a below average mandatory recycling program. Go figure!
Where it goes is also important. The two main "transfer stations" are municipal owned. The dump rates are set at random, lately they have been raising rates to encourage recycling, but they probably still lose money. The private dumps operate under the control of the county. They are told what they can do and the neighbors are told to shut up!
A true free market system with respect for property rights as far as where the stuff goes and who it affects would probably raise rates and encourage recycling. It would also help to "price" the raw resources, instead of "subsidizing" them, as this would raise the value of containers, etc.
Part of it here, is an attitude. Americans are fiercly proud of their ability to afford to throw away vast amounts of material every day. We might not have so much pride if we realized how much was the result of government intervention and subsidy.
gene: Good points. What I'm calling for here is a baby step, one that will solve only a few problems. The idea is that, once those problems are gone, people will be more amenable to addressing the rest by going further down the same route. It's the Fabian idea, which has been enormously successful for the socialists.
Of course, the danger with an incremental or Fabian approach is that the new problems that appear after the reforms get blamed on the reforms themselves, not on what remains of the old system. It reminds me of the boondoggle a few years ago of "privatizing" electricity.
trd: Good point. What's happened with garbage -- gov't subsidizing dumping, and coping with the overproduction of trash by subsidizing recycling in turn -- reminds me of what's happened in the health care industry: the gov't transfers wealth to doctors and pharmacy co.'s with legal barriers, and as a result 'has to' protect consumers from the resulting wealth transfer with subsidies. That's the Fabian approach (in the socialist direction, of course) in a nutshell.
""reminds me of what's happened in the health care industry: the gov't transfers wealth to doctors and pharmacy co.'s with legal barriers""
That comment reminds me of one of the many legal barriers that I encountered in over-regulated healthcare. Not related to trash but a minor example of a much bigger problem on the health care over-regulation: Three months after surgery I wanted to get a post-vasectomy sperm count to see if I am ready for some action. In essence to check if there are no more sperms on my semen. Pretty simple procedure for a lab. Take the semen, dilute it in the standard volume ratio of water or another solution established in their standard procedures, look into the microscope, see if there are no sperms. So I went to the lab with my sample and they asked me for.....get this....A PRESCRIPTION!!!!!! I was in disbelief that I needed a prescription for a lab to analyze a jerk-off sample. They dais that I was supposed to go back to the doctor who wanted to get paid another $200 for a 5-minute 'office visit fee' so that he can write in a piece of paper to authorize or give instructions to the lab to analyze my semen. What a bunch of bullshit!!! Then I told the lab that I wanted the results sent to my home. They said that they can only send it to the doctor who would want me to go there for another $200 visit to tell me the results. Once again I was in disbelief. I told the lab: I am the one paying for this lab service, why does somebody else needs to see the results first. WHAT A SCAM!!!!
I asked the lab: What if I want to get an STD testing, or a PSA (prostate cancer blood analysis) or any blood work? They told me that no matter what procedure, they still need a prescription from a doctor. I don't know if this is federal or state, but it is ridiculous that we have to get permission from someone who also needs a permission from the government through a license just to get a lab test done.
I should be allowed as a free man to go to any lab and get any test done that I am paying with my own money and get the results myself without a forced middleman. Then, based on the results, it should be up to me whether I seek professional medical help to interpret the results given.
It would have been cheaper to buy a microscope and see the semen sample myself.
Back to garbage pickup for a moment; our cost is $41.25 per quarter, or $13.75 per month.
trd your last comment is a classic example of excessive government. You are absolutely correct in asking; why can't you have the results sent to you and avoid the doctor bill. Big government is screwing up your life...again!
You're right George, peeling away the decades of special interest subsidies is not easy. Sometimes it is hard to know where to start. And, privitization for privitization's sake only, often produces negative results, like you mentioned.
Here's a couple more of our local utility issues that are actually so bizarre they are almost funny.............
1. if you own a rental house, you MUST provide garbage service for tenants and it is always in the landlord's name, so any unpaid service is billed to the landlord! 2. You CANNOT shut off water service [municipal utility] to any house within the city limits at any time. You will always be billed for water service and it will always be on!
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-06-25 13:37:28
Labor unions and reliable service are incompatible.
As long as there are no legal barriers to competition the occurence of strikes or high prices or poor-quality government bureaucracy provided service should spark competition.
No change is quick or easy. The key is to focus on the core policies and legislation that set up and enforce the rise of monoploy and government services.
The problem is that while folks are focused on national politics and international drama, the socialists have put these mechanisms in place at home.
Near clinton river rd & Schoenherr.
Maybe we can get together some time to chat. I don't know many people around here with libertarian leanings.
I own a non traditional advertising business and my phone is All Over that region.
If you are in the mood for a little scavenger hunt and a good laugh, you can find my phone number in all of the following locations:.
1. In an ad frame on top of the gas pumps of the Sunoco Station on Hayes & Hall Rd. Inside the ad there is an image of a guy inside a gear. Next to the gear you will find my number.
2. In an ad frame on top of every other gas pump of the BP gas station on Hall Rd. & Van Dyke in a black strip under my client Abuelo's Restaurant phone number.
3. In the lower left corner of the advertising frame inside the restrooms of the Texas Roadhouse on Mound or Art & Jake's.
4. Many other places too.
Is no joke, it really is there right now.
I am putting my phone number AllOver that region but I will not post it here.
If you don't feel comfortable that's ok too.
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
