So I wonder...should I point and laugh or sit down and cry. It's not my country, and I would never want to live in the US. How a country treats it's least fortunate says a lot about the country in general.
I don't think lowering the standard of living is going to get us very far in this world. What we desperately need is for everyone to contribute to society. This is usually done by having healthy citizens with a high level of education so we can find better ways of solving today's problems.
This isn't a matter of how the country treats it's least fortunate. The issue is biggest county bankruptcy in the history of the country. And the issue that caused that is a level of fraud of massive proportions. The county has $4.1 billion dollars of debt.
Unfortunately services provided by private companies are not a right. You can call access to water a "right" and that's a reasonable claim. Now what does that actually mean. Do I have the right to demand free water from a private company riddled with debt? Do I have the right to demand free water from you personally? Or for you to pay my bill? Or for my bill to be reduced to zero? Or for someone to work at a utility company for free so that the utility company can provide a free service? Does that then mean that the utility company has a right to demand free parts from local supplies companies so that the can provide a free service?
Maybe the utility companies should be nationalized and all citizens can contribute tax dollars to the service. It wouldn't surprise me if that's how it's done in a lot of Eurozone countries? I'm not sure. I don't even really understand how the fraud occured and who is on the hook for the bill. It is however fair to say that it's way more complicated than "how a country treat's it's least fortunate".
I'm confused - are you suggesting the sewer is provided by a private company? The sewer system in Jefferson County is publicly run.
And maybe that's part of the problem. Presumably a private sewer company could declare bankruptcy, sell its infrastructure, and let someone else provide the service. But with a public utility, we're stuck.
So I wonder...should I point and laugh or sit down and cry. It's not my country, and I would never want to live in the US. How a country treats it's least fortunate says a lot about the country in general.
You did notice that this was bout 'a' county, in 'a' state. And that there was no data in the article about how many people this problem affects.
Thinking this is representative of the country as a whole would be a big mistake.
Two steps back (lack of affordable clean water and lack of affordable sewage), hopefully the one step forward is going to be lack of government.
The leading problem in the western world is that the free market doesn't extend to government. I want to choose my politicians based on lowest expense and highest reward, because the electoral system seems to keep giving me the highest expense and the lowest rewards.
But why is this true? Why does the politician with the most money almost always win?
Personally I find this a failing in the electorate, not the system. The fact that more votes are almost a guarantee with more advertising dollars spent tells me that the electorate isn't doing their job, they are just voting for whomever they see more.
From the article:
"Six of Jefferson County's former commissioners have been found guilty of corruption for accepting the bribes, along with 15 other officials."
This shows an obvious pattern, but to me that doesn't mean "the government is broken" it means "the electorate is either not paying attention or gullible".
The problem with finding fault with the electorate themselves is that there is no real way to fix that. How do you make the electorate more attentive or less gullible? (Education is a convenient answer but it just raises the question of how to get the electorate educated.)
The electoral system is something with rules and processes that can be changed to try to reach an outcome that produces less corruption.
I don't see that as a problem. If that majority of the electorate can't be arsed to pay attention then they deserve a true representative of that populous.
Trying to coheres the electorate into making the 'correct' choice is to say that Democracy has failed, your population is 'dumb' and now a minority has to manipulate the system to get a reasonable result. This all assumes that such manipulation is in good faith, poor assumption.
A minority has always established and manipulated any political system that has ever existed in any modern nation to my knowledge.Tweaking funding rules or candidate disclosures is not admitting that democracy has failed, it is continuing maintenance on the inner workings of democracy.
I believe that any political (and judicial) system that delegates authority ultimately has to have an element of good faith from the people that receive that authority. It is unfortunate that it has to be that way, but I don't know what alternative is available.
In light of that I think that saying that the need to trust someone else is a "poor assumption" and thus negates any options for change may work as a rhetorical device to win an argument but it does not offer any way to make any progress. That makes such a position not very useful.
Yup, the free market is a strategy. How it's applied depends on the values of the people participating in that market. A free market of thieves isn't going to result in any good outcome.
I don't think lowering the standard of living is going to get us very far in this world. What we desperately need is for everyone to contribute to society. This is usually done by having healthy citizens with a high level of education so we can find better ways of solving today's problems.
But sure...two steps back, one step forward.