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If I understand you correctly, your suggesting that the central government of each nation should control the major utilities, while allowing everything else to be controlled by a capitalist economy.

I'm ok with what you have so far, however you continue.

You state that the reason for doing this would be to "prevent other countries from taking control of vital aspects of the country."

In my view, the reason for turning the utilities over to the central government would simple be to protect the citizens from such things as monopolies, or even overpriced services.

If you wanted to eliminate the economic effect other countries were having, then just increase tariffs to outrageously high prices, or stop trade altogether.

Please correct me if I have not understood something correctly. I am always open to hear foreign and opposing views. biggrin

State-run basic services generally leads to corruption, poor management and inefficiency. Look at how Communist Russia was. People spent an average of two hours a day waiting in line.
I do, however, think that minimum wage should be high enough to be enough for someone to survive on decently well and be entirely untaxed beneath that. A welfare system that maintains basic needs should be in place, though, along with a workfare system, potentially to supply for those basic needs.
I'd say the state should supply those things, but only on a need basis.

th catholic church has a policy which provides that each need be met at the most basic possible level, and i agree with this.

so, education can be dealt with at a local or regional level.

traffic and treansportation a=can be dealt with at a regional or state/provincial level.

what this means is that you do not need a slewdgehammer to swat a fly; use appropriate measures.

so for most needs i would oppose a large central government.

it could be used for peacekeeping, and facilitating trade; possibly for environmental protectio n on a large scale (nickel smelters in Sudbury Ontario are polluting the air in Norway, for instance).

otherwise i suggest we use the most local level possible to deal with any problem, since that will prevent bureaucracy and allow more immediate response.

That's so true. "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." A bureaucracy is not a bad system and helps maintains some control even if the leader is bad, if the system is bloated and takes to much responsibility than it breaks down.

While I realize this goes back a few posts, it has been noted that state-run enterprises and utilities have drastic inefficiencies and unusually high costs. This is true merely by indication of track record. However, I have an idea.

First; the state should provide services which are NECESSARY to life in that country: environmental protection, water, power, food, shelter, education, and in some countries, public transportation. I know my idea that people should be housed by the state is...controversial at best, but let us say that we can reserve this only for the extreme cases, as with food. However, as it is the state's moral and economical responsibility to take care of its people (unhappy, tired, starving people tend not to work well), these services should be provided by the government. Thus is my reasoning.

Second; to attack the problem of inefficiency. Those of you who study the sciences know that in cells, a higher surface-area-to-volume ratio increases efficiency, because it increases transportation capablities. The same is true in materials sciences, animal populations, etc. Even economic divisions exhibit higher rates of trade between small regions than large. I believe that the reason such state-run services are inefficient is because they are forced to cover too large of an area.

My proposed solution is to reduce the size of independent, interacting regions (much like America's division of the States, only even smaller) to increase government efficiency. If each county, or tri-county area, were responsible for these services, with perhaps a representative democracy to unify the country as a whole (Congress), civilian programs could then focus on interregional trade. Overall, the effect would be to secure the stability of these services region by region, create a more sustainable country, and spark trade of commodities rather than services (trade of services has a severe track record of cutting short the stability of the importing region).

Finally, to simply agree with what Aeridea said: the pay system of civilian services must be drastically re-worked. Entertainers, for example, should not be the most highly-payed (and most desireable) jobs in any country. Researchers, scientists, educators...those who further the stance of the entire nation, should not be second-class citizens. Garbagemen should not make more than teachers, in short. Football players should not make more than the combined salaries of a medical clinic (after taxation and insurance).

I agree. Although, in terms of inefficiency, I would say a good healthy dose of competition should be able to maintain that.

Hm, my apologies, I had posted with the assumption that this was in a hypothetical Utopian nation, where there would be checks to ensure that the land and workers weren't raped by a corporation.