I meant to put in more caveats that the actual practice of deregulation or privatisation doesn't in fact deliver the advertised benefits of "efficiency" or "greater prosperity" - but that is how it is sold.

The key point is that even in the cases where it does increase "efficiency", something else goes down  - "stability" as I've named it - and the cost of that tradeoff is largely not taken into account.

But that cost is usually born by the employees, not by the employer. "My train was late" is not an acceptable excuse for being late to work (although for some reason "there was a traffic jam on the highway" is, although they occur with the same predictable consistency as late trains... I guess it must be that the bosses do cars and not trains). So if "macro efficiency" is measured as an aggregate of "business case efficiency" - then late trains don't hurt "macro efficiency," because a previously untapped resource (people's time - which they're supposed to supply for free during the commute).

The fact that the workers used to be using that time for other things - like going for walks in the woods with their families - doesn't count, because they weren't using it to make money. And only the time that is used to make money matters in this ideology.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.