"Government is ineffectual, right?"

[furrbear]

Borrowed from danthered, who asked that it be passed along:

"This morning I woke to my alarm clock, powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the local water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to an FCC-regulated channel to see what the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather will be, using satellites designed, built, and launched into orbit by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast, which has been inspected for safety by the US Department of Agriculture and took my medicine, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

"At the appropriate time, as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I got into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-certified and -approved automobile, and set out to work on the roads designed and built by the local, state, and national Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase fuel at a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, at a pump certified by the local Bureau of Weights and Measures to have dispensed what it says it did, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I drop my mail in the outbox for the US Postal Service, which can deliver a note anywhere in the country in less than a week, and drop my kids off at the local public school.

"After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of state and local building codes and a fire marshal's inspection, and which has
not been vandalized or plundered of its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log onto the Internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and carp on freerepublic.com about how 'socialism' is bad because the government can't do anything right."

Comments

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

1. The US power grid is effectively that of a Third World nation. It is a model of inefficiency and wasted energy. Most people who think government does a good job of regulating the power grid do so because they have not studied the power grids of other nations.
2. If he was like the majority of Americans who get their news and weather from basic cable, the FCC had absolutely nothing to do with it.
3. Many Earthlooking sats nowadays are private enterprise. The government wasn't upgrading resolution as fast as the private sector wanted, so the private sector put their own in orbit. I don't definitively know that weather data now predominantly comes from the private sector, but it wouldn't surprise me.
4. NIST regulates the official American clock, but there's no law compelling people to use it. It's used because it's a good idea, not because we must. In that sense, NIST is an example of a great government program: if you want to keep to a different clock you can, and if you want expert advice NIST will give it to you. Point to the author, but it should be emphasized adherence to NIST time standards is voluntary.
5. The house not burning down has nothing to do with building codes or fire inspection. If it were, then the instant we did away with them we'd expect the world to burn to a cinder. Building codes are a codification of best practices, and would still be best practices even if they weren't the law. The threat of negligence lawsuits for not conforming to building practices (a civil law matter) is just as effective a motivator as the vague threat of criminal charges (criminal law) for violators, especially given how readily a citizen can file a civil lawsuit, and how rarely builders are charged with crimes.

... I could go on, but I think you get the idea. He's cherrypicking like mad, and presuming that if the current mechanism of government was absent catastrophe would result, instead of being replaced with a free-market mechanism which would work equally well, or better.

[bearbarry.livejournal.com]

Let us hope none of these freerepublic.com blog-heads live down stream from a dam built by the Army Corps of Engineers.

[randomcub.livejournal.com]

danthered has a new fan in me. :)

[pangolin.livejournal.com]

*applause*

[jp5040.livejournal.com]

Maybe they'd also like to get rid of the USDA, the inspections at the ports for foreign imported foods. Hell, the Chinese could pump up the production of mellamine contaminated food and you'd never know! How about mad cow and bird flu? Without government intervention the corporate/agribusiness food supply would kill us all - USA AND Canada. Funny thing is without government regulations there would be no internet for us to share our ideas, not TV for us to watch, no national radio services. Nothing at all. We'd be beholden to large corporations for our information and our food supply. We already are, but it would be worse. Capitalism in pure and free form is dangerous.

Even Adam Smith (the founder of modern capitalism) wrote that certain services must be delivered by government because the free market has no capacity to handle "goods on the common interest" such as common property issues like garbage services, water distribution, sewerage, and the list goes on. He was so far ahead of his time he even predicted the shortfalls of his system.

Those idiot neo-conservatives would like to forget that even the founder of the system would have had a place for government programs to provide things in societies best interest.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

To be merely useless is perhaps the highest eulogy which can ever justly be bestowed upon a regulated company.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations,
Cannan edition, pg. 793

While it’s technically true to say that Adam Smith believed in the necessity of public services, he quite clearly considered them to be necessary evils: to be minimized whenever possible, and as technology changed and new capabilities emerged the necessity of government regulation would become less and less. Smith was almost as skeptical of government regulators as he was capitalists. Smith loved the free market and how through it venal and self–interested actions could be put to beneficial societal use — but he did not approve of venal and self–interested actions, nor of government regulation.

Whoever examines, with attention, the history of the dearths and famines which have afflicted any part of Europe, during either the course of the present or that of the two preceding centuries … will find … that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations,
Cannan edition, pg. 563

My objection to the government getting involved in the healthcare business is rooted in The Wealth of Nations. There is at present a dearth of affordable healthcare — and having read Smith, I am deeply concerned government involvement will make it much worse.

[jediknightcub.livejournal.com]

FTW!

lulz

[sultmhoor.livejournal.com]

Cuz putting all the really important stuff in the hands of a government that flip-flops to alternating extremes of ideology every eight years is a good idea.