On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 06:49:28PM -0800, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > If NPR's _only_ public funding was from federal grants that it won > competitively, that would be fine. But it doesn't - it gets special > allocations and special privileges that aren't on the open market. > It competes not through bidding, but through the political process > - through getting Congressmen to vote in its favor. That's not > competition.
Sure it is. Competition. If they can LOSE funding (by not getting the votes for example), then they are competing. If there is a finite amount of money to be divided up among various recipients, and it is a zero-sum game (i.e., one recipients gain is another's loss), then those recipients are competing for the money. It is a slightly different sort of competition than low-bid "auctioning" a contract, but maybe not as different as one might think (as Dan pointed out, there is some amount of politics in the awarding of some of those contracts). Obviously, the number on the bid is not the ONLY thing they consider (there is quality, reliability, honesty, nationality, to name a few) -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
