LIQUIDATION OF GOVERNMENT NOT ANSWER Part 2 Response

Dear Pius,

I will indeed keep my promise of commenting on the debt issue later, but remember that I also promised that continuance of discussion with you (directly) was dependent on honesty and rationality. So far, I’m afraid to say that you have not demonstrated this honesty, despite your assurances to the contrary. And so that you might not accuse me of just unfairly (or condescendingly) throwing this accusation at you, I will demonstrate very clearly what I mean.

Firstly, our debate hinged on whether it is right or wrong to privatize companies. I showed you how a company’s sole purpose is to make profits and I gave you an argument which shows that if this purpose is ignored, the company would not be a company any more as it cannot serve its function (my lung or liver is useless if it does not fulfill its purpose, yes?). I also asked you, if you believed that this was not its purpose, to demonstrate what its right purpose is in that case. Your response has completely evaded that question and the problems it exposes in your position. Simply citing examples of nations that have failed allegedly because of privatization does not answer the question I asked you. Everything else you have said about World Bank and IMF and their failures, etc, makes very entertaining and perhaps informative reading, but it does not even remotely address the central question I paused to you, and therefore it is not a demonstration of intellectual honesty. Evasiveness and prevarication always reflect an absence of honesty. Bringing in new issues and aspects to the debate without sorting out the questions being raised on the way only makes the discussion aimless, pointless and endless.

If you were honest, you would either tell me that you do not know the answer to my question or you would show me how I have identified a wrong purpose for companies or alternatively, you could even show me why it is right to ignore the purpose of a company and how this would not lead to logical absurdities as I have argued. In other words, by presenting a contrary argument, I would have had something to answer back to and there would have been a basis for rational debate.

This discussion will not go anywhere as long as we do not address that basic question, Lienda, because as I stated in my response to you, it is what distinguishes our positions. Because you have avoided tackling the question, you continue to make the same mistakes in your argument over and over again. Remember, as long as someone’s premises are wrong, their arguments will all be wrong even if they look right, for the simple reason that any position can appear to be correct if the starting premises are just assumed correct (cyclical argument) without being first proved to be so. It’s the same as if I asked you the question, “can you prove that God exists?” and you answer me, “Yes, God exists because if he didn’t exist how could he have made the world?” This argument already assumes that God exists so everything you say will appear to be correct, but only if your premises are assumed correct in the first place. (This is merely an example, of course; it does not reflect my personal beliefs).

My discussion with you, in other words, was simply to establish if your premises that have led you to your antipathy against privatization, are correct. But you have kept on assuming they are correct even if they produce absurd results when extended logically.

To repeat myself, for example, I see no reason why government should not just line up people and give them free salaries instead of giving them redundant jobs if what government cares for in such companies is the livelihood of these people more than the profitability of the companies. You have not addressed this contention at all or shown how the argument contradicts the facts of reality. There is no way you can claim two contradictory positions to be both correct, Lienda. If it is true that these companies should have the goal and purpose of profit-making as you seem to agree, then they should also be committed to the things that make real companies profitable, and one of such things is cost-cutting. Cutting costs can mean trimming down on company size to make it more efficient or even replacing workers with advanced technologies that are cheaper to maintain and manage.

I have not said anywhere that they should mistreat “the poor workers” or things like that, as you have chosen to imagine. All I have stated is that they should strictly maintain their purpose, profit making, instead of putting jobs above profits. It so happens that so far we have seen in the entire world that a private owner of a company can more readily stick to this purpose of the company (profit) than when the state owns it. When the state owns the company, other interests usually come into consideration besides profit and this makes companies run below their optimum efficiency. I know there are many sincere Zambian citizens who think we can make these parastatals as efficient and professional as if they were private, but that is very much unlikely, as experience has shown us. It is very difficult to expect a person who does not own something to be as committed as one who owns the thing himself. This is just common sense, Lienda. You will always tend to be more concerned and more worried about your own children than you would be for your neighbor’s children. Same thing with your own car, your own house, your farm, etc. That’s a principle inherent in ownership that you cannot honestly deny.

Now, you might even fail at keeping your children safe or managing them well but this does not still negate the fact that you are better suited to managing them because of your natural care for what you own than for what you do not own. Thus, giving examples of companies that have failed in spite of privatization does not change the basic fact that private owners are better positioned to take care of a company than managers who are told that they are managing something that belongs to someone else – the people of Zambia. And even if you did show me a company that did succeed under government hands, you have not changed the principle here, just as I can show you someone who took very good care of other people’s children, but does this mean that therefore there is equal chance of a non-owner and an owner of property taking good care of something? I am sure you see the point. My wish is that we argue on such basic principles and premises because when these are established, the political choices we have to make become clear and natural; they become common sense. But evidently, you have no preference for such a rational approach, Lienda.

Your last statements have summarised your approach to this issue (and to debate in general) very succinctly. You say:

At this point I should again agree with you that companies have to make profits but they should not be quick to lay off the workers that have given them those profits.

I know you would say, “But companies are not charitable organizations, the purpose of any company is to make [profits]…. “    So what?   Should these monopolistic corporations make huge profits at the expense and exploitation of our poor workers? Should we stop caring for another man just because we need to make excessive profits?   I wonder what my Lord, Jesus Christ, would say about people like you. It would also be interesting to ask him which place he has reserved you for upstairs. But my guess is that you and I will not be in the same place.

Pious, referring to what Jesus Christ would do to me does not solve the logical problems presented by your position. Your opening line in this passage is “I should again agree with you that companies have to make profits”. Are you honest when you say you agree with me (on this point)? If you did agree with me you would have also agreed with the corollary point that there is therefore nothing that a company does or owns that should ever negate this purpose, unless the company is totally irresponsible or irrational. Everything, including its jobs, should be there only to help the company reach this purpose or goal, and not the other way round.

Should we stop caring for another man just because we need to make excessive profits?

Lienda, tell me something: can you employ three house servants in your house just because you love humanity – even if you have only two rooms in your house? If you answer this question with total honesty, you would begin to realize why private company owners who downsize their companies are not necessarily evil “monopolistic” men deserving of eternal punishment! And you would also see how government does indeed have a greater tendency to do such irrational things when they own a company than do the private owners that you so passionately denigrate. Remember: the reason why you would maintain only one servant in the small house is connected to the purpose of that job – to clean the house, and not to provide employment to someone. You did not buy the house so that you could give a job to your servant or maid; these jobs are not the main thing and if you can replace them with a machine that cleans your house, you will gladly do so because that will reduce your costs. Does that make you an evil person who has “stopped caring for another man just because of the need to cut costs”?

You are therefore correct when you predict that my response to your statement above would be, “but companies are not charitable organizations, the purpose of any company is to make [profits]…” But just predicting what I would say does not mean you have answered the question or solved the problem in your position. Once the logical problems implied by our premises are solved, it will be very easy to build on from there to see what is right or wrong practice in political economic management, instead of just saying World Bank this, World Bank that, and so on.

As I indicated in my article, it will not be possible for us to communicate effectively or to arrive at any reasonable conclusion if we do not agree that our debate should be resolved only by rational arguments. Running to Jesus Christ or disclosing where he would be inclined to send me (to hell, presumably?) because of my position, is hardly the rational response I anticipated!

But still, take care.

ZOL President.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” – Stephen Covey.

p/s: By the way, ZANACO is definitely nowhere near being the most profitable bank in Zambia - it's nearly last (in spite of having largest market share and asset value), but that's not where the argument should go, until we settle the logical arguments concerning our premises. Thank you.

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