In this thread: a bunch of comments that don't understand that if you want more of something (power, food, housing, videos of cats, whatever), by far the best way to get it is to give the people providing the stuff more money.

Right.

Giving the government more money to do things works really well. Here in the USA we've given the governments 3x more money in real terms to run our public schools, and we've gotten worse results over those 3 decades.

Governments also get to hide real expenses that audited private enterprises never could. The "cost" on this website assumes what's paid is adequate to manage the business which is wrong.

Okay, I'll vote for the candidates that will allocate more of my tax money towards these goods and services I want and support.

It's interesting how once people were successfully swindled into privatizing everything, the rhetoric changed from "everything will be cheaper!" to "well of course it's more expensive, you want to reward them for their superior service, right?". Apparently none of these extra costs go to appeasing middlemen or lining investor pockets, all these companies clinging onto natural monopolies are just too good at what they do. They have no conflicts of interest whatsoever!

That only applies to markets. As soon as the market breaks down it no longer applies. Monopolies and cartels for instance can absorb arbitrary amount of money without growing the supply or improving quality.

Thank you! Holy shit. It is very disheartening hearing from what I see as a intelligent community speaking with such ignorance and naivety.

Hacker News has slowly taken the road to reddit style communism.