Dynamic resource allocation in the public sector

Is it the solution to inefficiency in the civil service? Think about it, its much more politically feasible than privatization. What if we created 'market' like conditions in the government by letting budgets be dynamic, with higher performing, faster, more efficient, departments with higher 'customer satisfaction i.e. some dude receiving good service at the county courthouse or the navy making better arguments and providing more innovation in terms of national defense over the air force, could this model work.

If so, how should it be implemented?

Shameless self bump

...

but who would build the roads?

Stale pasta bad troll not relevant kill yourself

Damn this board never recovered from the 2012 election

While prices can be set to equate supply with demand according to planner's preferences, these preferences cannot themselves be based on an independent calculation of opportunity costs, as reflected in independently determined scarcity prices, since the scarcity prices in use are themselves fixed on the basis of planner’s preferences.

What if the 'planner' was not a government agency and instead made up of people who consume the service, like implementing a satisfied or unsatisfied button to the clerks desk, allowing for people to leave reviews online, and then having an independent body examine the data, say an indeoent jury made up from the common citizenry? Or removing barriers and allowing private companies to compete for the service with their public counterparts? I'm sure there is some way to reproduce the incentives of the market in a buearacracy, at least to a degree.

For an example, look at the US Postal service, they face tremendous market pressure already. An apt example supporting my hypothesis

>I'm sure there is some way to reproduce the incentives of the market in a buearacracy,
It's not even about incentives, it's about markets, which are required for economic calculation, even by all so-called "market socialist" models.
>like implementing a satisfied or unsatisfied button to the clerks desk, allowing for people to leave reviews online, and then having an independent body examine the data
This doesn't include any mechanism for limiting demand and determining where the given resources would be valued the most, which, again, is required in a society with scarcity. Knowing what the demand is is useless if there's nothing limiting this demand.
>Or removing barriers and allowing private companies to compete for the service with their public counterparts?
If there are no special privileges given to these state enterprises and they don't use their position close to the state for underhanded activities (hasn't worked out this way in many countries), then you would basically have just capitalism with some state-owned competitors in your hands. We have sectors like that in Finland.

Hayek used way too many commas. Just end your fucking sentence man goddamn.

not hayek.
>flag
figures

who then?

nvm I found it, but still sounds like Hayek.

I don't think you feel me. The budgets legislators pass would limit the availability of resources to the different departments. Our concern here is how to reform and innovate upon a sector that rewards mediocrity by placing barriers on hiring and firing, and also uncomsumer friendly practices like placing the comfort and convenience of the clerk over that of the citizen consumer.

Btw demand is always infinite

Your Idea is retarded. You cant create a market system by substituting the profit motive for some user surveys or equally shitty system. People will just maximize survey response instead of performance.

Real life example is when I worked as a bank teller. Some big wig at the top thought that he could improve performance among branches by creating a feedback system and distributing rewards to high performers.

The same high performing branches In the old system led by capable managers topped this new system, but performance in the old metrics (which actually mattered towards the bottomline) decreased across the board because resources were spent trying to maximize survey responses rather than sales.

>The budgets legislators pass would limit the availability of resources to the different departments.
This is the main point I'm arguing here. What I'm saying is that this has no mechanism ensuring efficient allocation of resources withing this system. Legislators' preference don't constitute for economic calculation
You're undermining your own argument with this; that's exactly we need markets to determine the agents that would most benefit from given resources.

It's going to be hell.

*exactly why we

If all the Soviet Union's Nobel Prize winners couldn't figure out how to make central planning work even when their lives depended on it, what makes you think you're going to do better?

In a democracy, isn't it the goal to maximize positive feedback?

It would improve the quality of the civil service, and that's a small victory there

In the absense of anarchism, isn't my proposal better than what us currently implemented?

niggu u dumb. This is literally what the republicans do at the local level all over the country.

>our local DMV is performing terribly and everyone hates it
>but this other DMV is quick efficient and loved
>lets reducing funding to the shitty DMV and increase funding to the good one!
>OH NO the shitty dmv is performing even worse!
>lets cut funding again!
>what the good dmv has become less efficient because diminishing returns exist !!!!!
>lets cut its funding too!
>wtf clearly the government cant do anything right we better privatize it.

The problem of inefficiency is both bad planning at the legislative level and mixed incentives at the executive level.

The reward for going over budget its getting your budget cut.

The reward for going under budget is getting your budget cut.

So every year they overestimate the needs of their department to get their budget raised and then if they come under budget near year end they spend it all on wasteful things so their budget doesn't get cut.

Instead of cutting the agency's budget, why not just cut the clerks' salaries and place the extra cash into a rainy day fund

Sorry, but I'm not completely sure what you mean by that (I'm not an anarchist if that's what you mean). Are you saying that we should concentrate more parts of the market under state and "department" control (which is unable to engage in independent calculation of opportunity costs) as opposed to having the same tasks fulfilled by the free market, or?

Or fire the clerks and management and offer competitive salaries for new hires.

Are you confusing political systems with economic systems?

Because the goal of democracy is to get 51% positive feedback.

Think of how much more each additional % of positive feed back would cost. Getting the post office from 50% to 80% approval would likely cost more than getting from 0% to 50%.

Why would you maximize something that has no inherent value but is very expensive? Do you want a very popular but very ineffective school system? Or do you want an mildy popular mildy effective schoolsystem?

Tradeoffs mate

>which is unable to engage in independent calculation of opportunity costs
The intricacies of this argument depending on the details of the system you intend to implement, of course. You've thrown out a couple of suggestions out there

No, I'm a strong adovate of free markets, but some government services cannot be fully privitized, such as courthouses and the navy, so in order to raise their effectiveness we should give them faux market incentives that enable them to be competive both internally and externally.

Fixed and variable cost of new hires + you cant cut your own voters salaries + "extra cash" doesn't exist in the real world. If there is cash lying on the table its going to be claimed by some other agency.

Ineffective low quality service are inherently upopular. No one wants to go to a shit school and everyone hates the dmv. Asuming rational actors, if a service is popular it has more value than an unpopular one.

Why? If the market is unable to perform In these sectors to begin with, why try to shoe horn it in?

Won't you suffer the same problems that prevented these industries from being privatized in the first place?

The main objective of these government agencies should be to accomplish their mission, caveats of faux market incentives can only lead to diversion from this focus.

So why not leave decision making to a jury, no one votes for a jury and it's still puralistic.

Because the incentives that exist today in the public sector reward mediocrity and don't incentivize innovation.

Valuing things based on popularity is cognitive bias. So I cant grant you rational actors.

And popular has almost nothing to do with the quality of a good or service. It just means that its utility maximizing for the largest section of the population.

McDonalds fails at providing quality service, sustenance, and has more externalities than can be listed in the character limit, but Its also one of the most popular eating establishments in the country.

Inferior goods are not suddenly amazing just because everyones poor.

the market allocates capital to McDonalds through its appeal, therefore making it an effective product. Popularity doesn't define value, a product's value defines it's popularity.

I think I misunderstood your angle: I though you were more of a "state market" advocate in and of itself, but I kind of agree the basic goals of what you just wrote. I think low-level courts, for example--the kinds that mostly deal with all sorts of run-of-the-mill stuff--could be effectively privatized under a state license. People struggling with two-year trial waiting periods would surely welcome this. They do that kind of incentive stuff you talked about with universities here, for one. However, I'm kind of afraid of the real world politics of these government-market hybrid courts you're advocating for, and I would prefer a more market-based system over the New Public Management approach. But these experiments are nothing new in Europe especially, where you have lots of this kind of overlap. Sure.

Who the fuck is supposed to be innovating the Court system? Or the Navy? They are supposed to remain functional. If they are failing that then intervention is needed, but otherwise keep your government hands off my medicare.

Its called a commison and they already exist, but the only people who care enough or are informed enough to serve on these voulenteer bodies are insiders of the gov agency or lobbiests to the gov agency.

Dude go do some research before dropping your crazy innovative disruptive econ 101 master level hypothesis on us brainlets.

yeah, we misunderstood each other. good talk my handsome friend

aye, have a bump

these juries would be about a 'volunteer' as a criminal jury would be. And they would also be randomly selected, not cherry picked experts.

if the goal is for a government agency to be just functional than the PRC is the model to be emulated. If we introduce incentives to compete and innovate in our already existing public sector then we could get some creative destruction going instead of having these establishments stagnating and morphing into extractive economic and political institutions.

for example, if i go to my local courthouse, all of the best parking is reserved for the clerks. But if they were subject to citizen review and had there personal well being rely on the citizenry being satisfied with the service, than I guarantee you they would stop offering the summer 1994 golf weekly magazine in the waiting room.