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Let’s flip this question around for a bit, and ask, why (and when) is private enterprise so efficient?Well, this should be easy for most people, conservative or liberal: private enterprise has to be efficient, or else they’ll be out of business.EXACTLY!This means that private enterprise is efficient when certain conditions are met:There’s plenty of competition.The cost of price discovery is relatively low. It’s easy for a consumer to know what supplier A,B,C,D charge, and pick the best one. This includes ease of evaluation for an average consumer - if I need a law degree to figure out what I’m buying, then this condition is not met.It is possible to switch suppliers, and the cost of switching suppliers is relatively low.The consumer has a practical choice on whether to participate in the market, or not.A great example would be the restaurant sector - in any town center, there will be dozens of restaurants to chose from; it’s ridiculously easy for me to see what each offers and at what price, it doesn’t take much for me to go to restaurant B rather than A, and if the industry stops offering good value, I’ll just cook at home. The result is a ridiculously efficient, cut throat industry.Let’s see some examples of what happens when these conditions are not met:Oooohhhh, raise your hands: Who thinks their electricity company is efficient and provides great service? Well, let me tell you a recent story.That is what my electric meter, in a building that was constructed in the last 10 years, looks like (you can tell by how clean the meter is that it’s essentially brand new). Thomas Edison would be rolling over in his grave at this. Well, during COVID-19, my electric company was over-charging, by using “estimates” (even though radio meters have existed for decades), and then of course, inflating those estimates (even though they knew a lot of people had left this urban area during the pandemic). Their website, which looks like a “how to learn HTML 4.0” class project, allows you to enter readings, but not below the last reading, even if the last reading was a BS “estimate”. So instead I had to email them this picture - but then, they read it wrong. The meter reads 41877, but they read it as 42877 (see how the second hand is almost at 2, but not quite). So instead of refunding me the few hundred dollars extra they had charged me, they charged me for 1000 additional units of electricity, and instead sent me a new bill requiring me to pay $200 more! Fast forward about 3–4 hours of holding on the phone, threatened tweet storms (I don’t have a twitter account, shhh), threatened lawsuits, threatened complaints to the state utilities commission, I finally got them to fix this, and refund me around $80.Why is this $25 billion+ company so inefficient, with such crappy service? Simple: Because conditions (3) and (4) above are not satisfied - they have a monopoly on supplying electricity to my city. Despite all my empty threats, my only choice if I want to stop doing business with this company is to uproot my life and move to a different State. And nobody moves because they don’t like their electricity company.Now you could make this a little better by creating a mind-bogglingly complex regulatory structure where even though I have one set of wires coming into my apartment, I can still “choose” electric companies (this is the system used in the UK); but that’s not really efficient either.Another example: Until the 1950s, New York’s subway system was completely privately owned. Notice how the A-C-E, 1–2–3, N-Q-R, etc .. all have different colors? Those were all independent companies. The system was so bad, crumbling and expensive, that the city had to take it over. This is how the current NYC subway came about - through the utter failure of private businesses.Want another example: Ok, let’s switch to a red state. Title insurance. You see, when you buy a house, the mortgage company wants to be sure that nobody else has a claim to that piece of land. Since in theory, nothing is 100%, they require you to buy title insurance, and very helpfully “recommend” a title company. The price should, in theory be commensurate with risk: if 1 in 1000 properties face such a claim, the price should be around 0.1%. The problem is, the average person will do this once in their life, has likely never heard of title insurance before buying their first home, and has no idea how to even begin shopping for this arcane product. The result is that a title company affiliated with the bank gets about 2% of the loan value. My condo exists within a 50 story building, built on a converted landfill in the last 10 years, in a major city in the country’s largest metro area - the odds that someone else has a claim to that property is basically 0%. Yet, I still need to pay 2% for title insurance.Sick of this scam, the State of Iowa (a fairly conservative state), simply started its own state run title insurance. And guess what: Iowa has the lowest closing costs in the country, with claims lower than basically any private company. Instead of paying potentially tens of thousands of dollars, you simply get a title opinion from an attorney, and the state backs your title. You Won’t Find Title Insurance in Iowa: What That Means and Why Iowa’s Solution is Better | Danilson LawThe other problem is that when there is a lack of meaningful competition, yet an important service is being provided, liquidation of the private company is no longer an option for the public. So now, the tax payer implicitly backstops a private for-profit company.A good example is the East Coast franchise of British Rail. In the mid-1990s, the Conservative government of John Major decided to privatize the inter-city rail. I’m not even going to argue if this was a good thing or a bad thing (there are entire books arguing both sides); but just take an example of what happened to one of the franchises. (The way this privatization worked, is that British Rail’s train lines were segmented into “regions”, and a franchise was awarded for each region to the highest bidder; with some regulatory oversight and targets.)One of those franchises, the “InterCity EastCoast”, a 400-mile section of rail from London to Edinburgh, first had its franchise awarded to a company called GNER, a subsidiary of Sea Containers. Eventually, GNER got into financial trouble because it could not keep paying the British government the required money for its franchise, and its parent had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York. So what, right? Bankruptcy is what makes private enterprise so efficient. Well, no. The government couldn’t just have trains stop running on it’s entire eastern sea-board; so it had to eat the franchise cost for two years until it could find a new bidder. Well the new bidder, National Express, got into financial trouble of its own just two years later. Cookie (or “biscuit”) for you if you guess what happened next. Surprise, surprise, the Department of Transportation had to absorb National Express East Coast and run it for 6 years. Finally, they auctioned it off to the Virgin Group, under the trading name Virgin East Coast. Okay, end of story - its now run by Richard friggin Branson, .. riggghhtt? Nope. 3 years into the 8-year deal, Virgin East Coast couldn’t meet the targets it had agreed to, so, guess what? For the third time since privatization, once again, the Department of Transportation had to take over. The current operator is a state-owned company called London North Eastern Railway.So to conclude, why is government so inefficient (presumably compared to private enterprise)? Because the government operates in sectors where private enterprise has failed miserably. Privately run mass-transit systems, healthcare systems, central record keepers (Equifax!), militaries (Blackwater!), prisons, etc .. do miserably: in fact, on average, if you look across the western world, Governments have done a better job at these things than private enterprise. And when you look at examples which in just some ways resemble government services (the examples given above), you’ll see that private enterprise is equally bad and inefficient at running such services.Note: I’m not arguing that in many of these cases, Government doesn’t have huge room for improvement. There are huge agency problems across government. I’ve written an answer about subway construction in NYC, and how corrupt and inefficient it is (The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth). And there are ways to fix that - more transparency, and more public involvement being the most important, but certainly in some cases, more public-private partnerships. And I’m even willing to go as far as saying that when private business can run a service with reasonable efficiency, the government should stay out. But this doesn’t change the above.

This is Ericka Huggins.Ms. Huggins is a former professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State University, East Bay and San Francisco State University.[1] In 2019, she is an in-demand lecturer and activist, regularly speaking to universities on gender and race issues.Photo: “Former Black Panther Ericka Huggins appearing at the Pacific Place Cinema in Seattle, Washington, during the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.” Ericka Huggins - WikipediaBut in 1969, Huggins was one of thousands of African-American radicals that heard the Black Panther Party’s call for a new American Revolution. At the age twenty, she was already a leader in the group, and was invited to open a Party chapter in New Haven, Connecticut. The Panthers’ focus on social programs and frequent challenges to racist police appealed to her sense of social justice.[2]Huggins, along with fellow Panthers Warren Kimbro and Lonnie McLucas, had settled into Unit B13 of the Ethan Gardens apartment complex.[3] The small rooms located along New Haven’s Orchard Street functioned as a home base and headquarters for area Panthers.[4]The organization felt the sting of federal harassment. National Panther leaders were convinced that FBI informers had infiltrated the group at all levels. Rooting out snitches became paramount.[5]When a new recruit, nineteen-year old Alex Rackley, arrived in New Haven on May 17, 1969, he was completely unaware of this stifling climate of fear and paranoia. He had nowhere else to go, and the Panthers offered him a comforting respite from his tough life on the street.[6]Huggins, Kimbro and McLucas, however, were primed for suspicion. No one in any Black Panther office could be fully trusted. Rackley might not be a just a kid looking to join a cause. He might be more than just a tough teenager from Jacksonville that loved karate, sports, and clothes.[7]Rackley might be dangerous to the revolution.He might be a spy.Photo: 'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution': Sundance ReviewNational Party leader George Sams was the first to test New Haven’s newest member.He ordered one of the women to seduce the young man and subtly interrogate him for any hint of disloyalty. Fifteen-year-old Maude Francis “took a speed pill” to stay awake and enticed Rackley to bed.[8]Rackley was only too happy to oblige. But he denied that he was a spy.[9]The next morning, Huggins found Rackley asleep on the living room couch. “Wake up!”, she screamed. Huggins tossed him a copy of Mao Tse-tung’s Selected Military Writings. Rackley picked up the book and started to “read” it upside down. He admitted that he couldn’t read, which only enraged Huggins further.[10]Hearing the commotion, George Sams entered the room. He accused Rackley of “lying to the sister,” and began beating the young man with a fraternity hazing paddle he called the “Panther stick.” Blood “spurted” from a deep head wound in Rackley’s skull.[11]In their book Murder in the Model City, authors Douglas W. Rae and Paul Bass provide a horrendous account of what happened next.“Brother,” George Sams said, “I don’t think you really want to leave. And I think you are the pig.” Sams ordered Rackley, Warren, and Lonnie McLucas into the basement…The group fashioned a noose around Rackley’s neck and threw it over a joist; McLucas held the rope and told Rackley to read. Again he insisted that he could not read.“Brother,” declared Sams, “this calls for more discipline.” Warren and the others took turns whacking Rackley with the Panther stick.Then they stood Rackley’s limp body, paddled a good fifteen times on the buttocks alone, back up. The order resumed: Read! Desperate, Rackley muttered words. It sounded as if it might have been reading, or it might have been a mixture of recognized written syllables with remembered recitations of cant.To Sams, it was proof of perfidy. Clearly, Rackley could read. “We are going to tie him up and get some information from the brother.”[12]Photo: Black Panther members at the California state capital. Whitewashing the Black Panthers | RealClearPoliticsThis was only the beginning. According to journalist Michael Moynihan, Rackley endured several hours of torture at the hands of his psychopathic interrogators.When his captors uncinched the noose around his neck and shoved him into a wooden chair, Alex Rackley might have assumed his ordeal was over. He had already endured a flurry of kicks and punches, the repeated crack of a wooden truncheon, ritual humiliation, and a mock lynching. But it wasn’t over. It was about to get much, much worse.Rackley, a slight, 19-year-old black kid from Florida, was tough (he had a black belt in karate), but hardly in a position to resist his psychopathic interrogators. During a previous beating he had gamely tried, kicking and flailing and swinging his arms. But this time he was tied to the chair, with a towel stuffed in his mouth to mute the screams.The women upstairs were tending to the children while assiduously preparing pots of boiling water—because traditional gender roles applied in the torture business, too.[13]The women, including Huggins, brought four or five “bubbling cauldrons” down to the basement. They drenched Rackley’s naked body with the scalding water.An investigation of this magnitude required documentation; they pulled the towel from his mouth and began recording the interrogation.[14]The tape, featuring the cool, calm voice of Ericka Huggins, was later played at her murder trial.[15]The interrogation begins with a woman’s voice:Brother Alex from New York was sleeping in the office…And I kicked him and said, “Motherfucker, wake up!”A few minutes pass, instinct kicks in, and Rackley tries to free himself.Sit down, motherfucker. Be still.The woman coolly and dispassionately reads the details of the previous interrogation session into the record:So then we began to realize how phony he was and that he was either an extreme fool or a pig, so we began to ask questions with a little force and the answers came out after a few buckets of hot water.Then the brother got some discipline in the areas of the nose and mouth.[16]Sams was no stranger to extreme interrogation methods.“When you are interrogating an individual,” Sams said, you use “any means necessary to take that interrogation. This wasn't the first time I interrogated one in the party, so I knew what the procedure was.”[17]Under torture, Rackley admitted to being a rat. The Panthers tied him to a bed in a child’s bedroom, and left him there for three days. Rackley, still in agony, was covered in his own filth.[18]The Panthers realized they had to dispose of the evidence. They cleaned Rackley up and bundled him into a car outside. With his arms tied and a wire-hanger noose around his neck, the doomed young man was driven to the Coginchaug River in Middlefied, Connecticut.[19]“Orders from national [headquarters],” said George Sams, the bloodthirsty ringleader of the hit squad. “Ice him.”Warren Kimbro, a Black Panther party cadre from the New Haven branch, put the first bullet in Rackley’s head, collapsing him in the shallow water. As his body heaved, another Panther foot soldier, Lonnie McLucas, took the gun from Kimbro and fired a bullet into his chest, just in case.They didn’t bother checking, but Alex Rackley was still alive, gasping and in pain, one expert later speculated, for almost four hours.[20]Rackley died on May 21, 1969. Despite the accusations from the Panthers, Rackley was not an FBI informant.[21]The resulting murder trial of the New Haven Black Panthers galvanized leftist admirers, but it was the beginning of the end for large-scale support of the Party.Sams and Kimbro cooperated with authorities, and each received a life sentence for a reduced charge of second degree murder. Kimbro served four years of his sentence.After leaving prison, Kimbro attended Harvard University, and was later named Assistant Dean of Eastern Connecticut State University. As the years passed, Kimbro expressed remorse for the murder, and attempted to atone for his actions.[22]Images: Warren Kimbro. 1973 WARREN KIMBRO MURDER SUSPECT IN WILLIMANTIC CONN DUAL IMAGE WIRE PhotoHuggins, along with Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, was acquitted of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy after the jury deadlocked 10–2. She testified that Sams forced her to “play along” with the killings, a claim that prosecutors disputed during the trial.[23]The brutal torture of Rackley was only one item in a long list of violent acts committed by members of the Black Panther Party.Black Panther founder Huey Newton was no stranger to violence. “It was alleged that on 6 August 1974 Newton shot a 17-year-old street prostitute called Kathleen Smith in the face, apparently because she referred to him as “Baby”. She died after three months in a coma.”[24]“In 1967, founder Huey Newton allegedly killed Oakland police officer John Frey. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. An appellate court decision later reversed the conviction.”[25]“Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther’s newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and treasurer Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded.”[26]In total, members of the Panthers were involved in hundreds of acts of violence during the late sixties and early seventies.[27]Photo: “Bobby Hutton and Bobby Seale lead a contingent of Black Panthers carrying loaded rifles in a provocative protest at the state Capitol in Sacramento in May 1967.” Wade Sharrer, Sacramento Bee. 50 years later, Black Lives Matter takes up Panthers' fightDespite this destructive history, the Black Panthers still have a strong base of support willing to whitewash their story with hagiographic films and books.[28]Of course the Panthers had legitimate grievances; they faced pervasive, entrenched racism. Police brutality had reached unspeakable levels, and black Americans seized the opportunity to fight back behind tough, charismatic leaders.During the course of their investigations, Panthers regularly had their rights violated by lawless FBI agents.[29] Federal authorities did not care that the Panthers ran some of the largest social programs for African-Americans in several states.[30]Photo: Black Panther school lunch program in the late sixties. Black Panthers' Breakfast Program - Partners for a Hunger-Free OregonIndeed, the Panthers’ actions have long been justified and even lauded as necessary at the time. The tumultuous 1960s-era America offered multiple opportunities for crippling cognitive dissonance; you could celebrate killers and cast them as heroes, each one an unavoidable product of an inveterate racist state.I know all of these claims have some merit behind them. And yet, I still can’t follow these thoughts to the same conclusions as Panther admirers.These elaborate justifications wither when I think of a terrified Alex Rackley, strapped to a chair in a dank New Haven basement, wondering when his nightmare would end.Revolution requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating destruction, since in this way, and only this way, are new worlds born.Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, 1873.[31]Footnotes[1] Bio | Ericka Huggins Official Website[2] Bio | Ericka Huggins Official Website[3] 50 Years Later, Panther Murder Echoes | New Haven Independent[4] Black Panther Torture "Trial" Tape Surfaces | New Haven Independent[5] Murder in the Model City[6] Murder in the Model City[7] Murder in the Model City[8] Murder in the Model City[9] Murder in the Model City[10] Murder in the Model City[11] Murder in the Model City[12] Murder in the Model City[13] Whitewashing the Black Panthers[14] Whitewashing the Black Panthers[15] Black Panther Torture "Trial" Tape Surfaces | New Haven Independent[16] Whitewashing the Black Panthers[17] Sams Says He Was Calm While Torturing Rackley[18] Black Panther Torture "Trial" Tape Surfaces | New Haven Independent[19] Murder in the Model City[20] Whitewashing the Black Panthers[21] Whitewashing the Black Panthers[22] A killer redeemed, Kimbro dies at 74[23] Black power’s coolest radicals (but also a gang of ruthless killers)[24] Black power’s coolest radicals (but also a gang of ruthless killers)[25] Black Panthers[26] http://Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther’s newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and treasurer Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded.[27] Murder in the Model City[28] The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution | Documentary about Black Panther Party | Independent Lens | PBS[29] A Huey P. Newton Story - Actions - COINTELPRO[30] How the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government[31] Revolution - Wikiquote

All the strategies I used to learn Spanish in the US revolved around finding ways to immerse myself in the language locally. Here are my recommendations by category:Grammar- Go to the library or look on Amazon for some reference books on Spanish grammar. Reference books give far more details and explanations than most textbooks and are structured in a way that makes it easier to look up whatever specific grammar concept you want to learn about without wading through other chapters of information.Vocabulary- I'm not big on using apps to truly learn how to speak, but resources like Duolingo are good for learning vocabulary early on. Word Reference is a great website/app for looking up individual words. Reverso Context and Lingee are great for looking up words/phrases in a real world context.Reading- Read what interests you. Find blogs, magazine articles, and news websites that interest you in Spanish and use them regularly. These reading options allow you to take in vocabulary about a variety of topics, plus the length of the writing pieces aren't terribly long and overwhelming. Aside from reinforcing vocabulary it also helps with reinforcing grammar concepts and how to apply them in real life.Listening- Use YouTube, Netflix and other online video streaming services to practice listening. I would wait to do this until you have a solid reading level. That way you can watch videos (I started with kids shows) with Spanish subtitles to learn pronunciation. As time goes on you'll get better at recognizing words without the subtitles and can slowly transition to watching/listening to harder dialougues and phasing out subtitles all together.Writing- Lang-8 and italki are my go to websites to practice writing. Write a short blurb about your day or something that fits with whatever new words you're learning and get feedback from native speakers on how to correct your grammar mistakes and sound more natural. Now I write answers in Spanish on Quora to practice my writing. It pushes me to express thoughts on complex topics in a way I don't ever typically have to in real life and many native speakers are happy to give grammar corrections if my answers have any.Speaking- I think the easiest way to learn a new language at an advanced level without living in a country where it's spoken is to practice with native speakers on Skype. Make a profile on a language exchange site, find a partner you vibe with and is serious about practicing on a regular basis and set a schedule to practice and help each other. When I was learning I found 2–3 partners who were willing to practice long term that helped me immensely. We spoke an hour in English, an hour in Spanish and at the end of each part the native speaker of then language being spoken gave corrections to the learner. I prefer Skype over meetups because you can strucure how the sessions go much more and you HAVE to talk. Moreover, both people are getting something out of the exchange instead of bugging/taking time out of someone's day who perhaps knows your target language, but isn't interested in being bothered to listen to you struggle through basic conversation. If you can integrate your improving language skills into your job and other day to day activities (ex. eating at a hole in the wall Mexican food spot where the menu and all the staff only speak in Spanish), even better.If you have the discipline to do all these things on a regular basis, it is very much possible to achieve an advanced level of Spanish as a adult without ever leaving your home country.Good luck and happy learning!