There has been a lot of discussion since Athens about foreign swimmers training in the United States. Most of them attend U.S. Universities, receive athletic scholarships, and compete at NCAA's. Some notable examples include Duje Draganja (Cal), Fred Bousquet and Kirsty Coventry (Auburn), Markus Rogan (Stanford), and the South African sprinters (Arizona). Some train in the U.S., but don't compete for a university (Inge de Bruijn). All of these athletes benefit from U.S. coaching, from training with U.S. swimmers, and in some cases, from financial support provided by U.S. entities (athletic scholarships). They all turn around and then win medals for other countries.
A couple questions: 1) What do you think about this arrangement generally? 2) Is it of benefit or detriment to U.S. swimming to have these foreign athletes training and competing here? 3) Should we be giving athletic scholarships, which are a scarce resource in swimming, to foreign athletes who will represent their own countries internationally instead of U.S.-born swimmers who will represent us internationally?
I'm sure there are other issues, but these come directly to mind.
Originally posted by aquageek
What makes you think public money makes something free? You might not pay for that visit when you leave the doctor's office, but you pay for it when you buy milk, use a toll-way, buy a new TV, etc. And, I have yet to ever see a single public institution manage anything more efficiently than private enterprise. I don't want to see my taxes go up so some gov't agency can mismanage the money and provide no additional health care services.
Yes, but the difference is you need healthcare and you don't need any of those things. And I already gave you an instance where public companies did better--the California electricity boondoggle. Every town that had municipal electricity had power and the rates didn't go up. Every place that privatized had blackouts and high rates. Or take the British rail system: it has gone to hell with partial privitization, while French trains, still under government control (I believe--I haven't checked it out in a while) are a freaking dream to ride. They apologize when they are five minutes late and the trains are always clean and present.
What Americans do is starve government entities, demand they do too much, then *** about the result. Well, duh.
Originally posted by aquageek
What makes you think public money makes something free? You might not pay for that visit when you leave the doctor's office, but you pay for it when you buy milk, use a toll-way, buy a new TV, etc. And, I have yet to ever see a single public institution manage anything more efficiently than private enterprise. I don't want to see my taxes go up so some gov't agency can mismanage the money and provide no additional health care services.
Yes, but the difference is you need healthcare and you don't need any of those things. And I already gave you an instance where public companies did better--the California electricity boondoggle. Every town that had municipal electricity had power and the rates didn't go up. Every place that privatized had blackouts and high rates. Or take the British rail system: it has gone to hell with partial privitization, while French trains, still under government control (I believe--I haven't checked it out in a while) are a freaking dream to ride. They apologize when they are five minutes late and the trains are always clean and present.
What Americans do is starve government entities, demand they do too much, then *** about the result. Well, duh.
