Chicago Mayor Considers Creating City-Owned Grocery Stores After Stores Leave City

[CivilDiscourse]

The government can obviously make a decision about how fairly the store it owns is going to play in the market. Obviously if they make different decisions on that topic, it will have different effects. I was suggesting they should decide to play fair. But if they decided something else, there would be different outcomes to my suggestion.

Again, if they make different decisions to the ones I was suggesting they make, they will get different results to the ones I was suggesting.

It seems to me much of your post boils down to "yeah, but if they don't do what you're suggesting, the outcomes won't be the ones you're advocating for." To which the answer is "yes, obviously, but that seems irrelevant to my point."

Sure. So lets say the government runs a relatively inefficient business. Other industry competitors would then need to outcompete it in the market. Presumably they are capable of that, since private industry has the potential to be more efficient. But the existence of a government owned company competing in the industry does force them to meet that minimum standard of efficiency and not be less efficient than the government owned company.

USPS is probably a bit of an unusual example, because people tend to view it as okay to run at a loss and provide services that otherwise might not be provided at all by private industry (because they'd never be cost effective or profitable). Obviously the government does control how independent a government owned company should operate, and there is a broad spectrum that can vary from the government just being a shareholder and the company operating in every way like a normal for-profit capitalist company, through to the government being quite active in dictating day to day company policy and appointing staff etc. Where on that spectrum it is preferable for a government owned company to fall depends on what kind of problem is trying to be solved.

I don't think anything you've said provides any evidence for that.

More importantly, you said it was simply a no-brainer. What you really mean is that "If they make all the right choices, it will obviously be good", but then again, the same can be said for corporate monopolies. "Corporate monopolies are a no brainer, provided they make all the decisions that would help rather than hurt." or even Drug cartels.

All you did was shift goalposts around, and naturally, didn't provide any evidence for your claim whatsoever.

[Cow Poke]

The government can obviously make a decision about how fairly the store it owns is going to play in the market....

Unfortunately, the "government" here is the city of Chicago, and they're the ones who got themselves in this mess in the first place with "bad government".

[rogue06]

Unfortunately, the "government" here is the city of Chicago, and they're the ones who got themselves in this mess in the first place with "bad government".

C'monman! Just because the government of Chicago in utterly inept at governing doesn't mean they can't run a business. Or at least they can't be much worse at it.

[Sparko]

Unfortunately, the "government" here is the city of Chicago, and they're the ones who got themselves in this mess in the first place with "bad government".

They will probably hire the shoplifters to run the store.

[Cow Poke]

They will probably hire the shoplifters to run the store.

$15/hr and all you can carry out!

[alaskazimm]

C'monman! Just because the government of Chicago in utterly inept at governing doesn't mean they can't run a business. Or at least they can't be much worse at it.

A quote I saw over on Reddit (about a completely different subject) seems quite appropriate here:

When the bureaucracy runs something, the bureaucracy runs and the something withers.

[Mountain Man]

The biggest problem with any government run operation is that money passes through so many hands that by the time it gets to the actual thing being funded, there are only pennies left for every dollar.

[Starlight]

C'monman! Just because the government of Chicago in utterly inept at governing doesn't mean they can't run a business. Or at least they can't be much worse at it.

Owning a business and running a business aren't the same thing. It would be their choice which of those they go for depending on how they set it up.

[Starlight]

The biggest problem with any government run operation is that money passes through so many hands that by the time it gets to the actual thing being funded, there are only pennies left for every dollar.

Do you have a chart of weird and false aphorisms like this one? Or do they come from your rear end?

[rogue06]

The biggest problem with any government run operation is that money passes through so many hands that by the time it gets to the actual thing being funded, there are only pennies left for every dollar.

The HOPE Scholarship program here in Georgia and funded by the state's Lottery seems to be a rare exception