by That’s the key point of my article in The Guardian this week. The intro focused on aged care and the headline picked that up, but the main points are general There’s nothing inherently desirable about competition. If the alternative is collusion against the public interest, competition is a necessary evil. Far better, when it can be achieved, is cooperation to be the best we can at what we do. That’s the core value of the service professions, professions derided by market reformers as “producer interests”. Much the same is true of choice. As far as flavours of ice cream are concerned, some people will like butterscotch, some will go for mango and some might even prefer Neapolitan. The more choices the better. But for the human services that matter most to us, it’s not a
Topics:
John Quiggin considers the following as important: Uncategorized
This could be interesting, too:
tom writes The Ukraine war and Europe’s deepening march of folly
Stavros Mavroudeas writes CfP of Marxist Macroeconomic Modelling workgroup – 18th WAPE Forum, Istanbul August 6-8, 2025
Lars Pålsson Syll writes The pretence-of-knowledge syndrome
Dean Baker writes Crypto and Donald Trump’s strategic baseball card reserve
That’s the key point of my article in The Guardian this week. The intro focused on aged care and the headline picked that up, but the main points are general
There’s nothing inherently desirable about competition. If the alternative is collusion against the public interest, competition is a necessary evil. Far better, when it can be achieved, is cooperation to be the best we can at what we do. That’s the core value of the service professions, professions derided by market reformers as “producer interests”.
Much the same is true of choice. As far as flavours of ice cream are concerned, some people will like butterscotch, some will go for mango and some might even prefer Neapolitan. The more choices the better. But for the human services that matter most to us, it’s not a question of how many choices we have. What matters is the quality of the best choice. We want our doctors and nurses to keep us well, our teachers to educate and inspire us, and our carers to give us comfort and dignity.