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But if I pay an invoice from a private hospital instead then the someone who fixes my leg IS, magically, now "productive".
The people are the same: it's only the "enterprise model" that's different, but I'm now paying a return to rentier capitalists on top of the actual costs of my treatment.
Now I happen to believe that markets are a more efficient mechanism for allocating resources than centralised planning and "the State".
So I don't believe in a State distinct from its citizens, any more than I believe in the deeply toxic "Private" sector market to which we are accustomed.
What we need IMHO are markets without rentiers and without profits: which Dr Yunus of Grameen Bank calls a "Not for Loss" enterprise model.
This is now actually perfectly possible within a consensual partnership-based enterprise model based upon what the French know as "contrats de societe" (as opposed to our good old Anglo Saxon "contrats de mandat"). "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
If the NHS fixes your leg, the profit - well, there is no profit.
So the real motivation is naked, wobbly-jowled, snout-smacking greed, mixed in with some old-fashioned quasi-imperial xenophobia.
The hatred of France and of socialist economies is based on the fact that state management makes it harder to strip-mine economies for personal gain.
Money recirculates to workers instead, which is not what should happen at all.
In the same way there can be no such thing as "Public Sector" investment because all "investment" is by definition "Private" (ie through a Corporation).
So the Public Sector may only borrow (from Private Banks) to invest - hence fantasies like Gordon Brown's "Golden Rule", National Debts,and the rest of the surreal nonsense that passes for national accounts.
It's all bollocks of course, since there are a couple of ways that the Public Sector may maintain ownership of assets and still bring in long term "investment".
But you won't read about them in the FT,the Economist or any publication which looks to banks for advertising.
"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
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