Government Stagnation

[EPIPHANY]

BY CONTRAST, GOVERNMENT CAN'T GET ITS ACT TOGETHER, even when thousands of lives are at stake. The Federal Aviation Administration still use antiquated vacuum tubes in its radar system. Vacuum tubes are so primitive, manufacturers took them out of our TV sets dozens of years ago. But FAA officials can't quite manage modernizing. It's not that they haven't tried. They've spent billions trying it's just that government monopolies don't modernize well.

They don't have this problem in Canada, because in 1996, Canada prizatized air traffic control. It sounds frightening. In America, Congress decreed that air control is "inherently a government job." Critics said it would be insane to trust passengers' lives to a (sneer) private profitseeking company, which would cut corners to make more money. But in Canada the private company didn't. Its manager knew the company's profitability depends on its saftty record. Today, Canada's privatized air traffic control does the job well-for one third less.

American air traffic controllers still keep track of planes on little pieces of paper. They'd slide them around, the way a bartender slides beer down the bar. In Canada, computers have replaced paper and pencil.

Controllers who use to work for the government were skeptical at first' but four years after privatization, they told us they were thrilled at the changes the private company had brought.

How many other things would work better if the government would let go?

[OblivionJake]

You have strong feelings about planes, you know what i bet you can also fly, jump off one of those really tall buildings and give it your best shot.

[EPIPHANY]

The Natural Progess Of Things Is For Liberty To Yield And Government To Gain."
-Thomas Jefferson

Not fan of planes just telling the facts I know to be true , also cant fly, so can't see myself jumping!

[Teep]

Following, amongst others, the American example, more and more services are being privatized in the Netherlands. Public transport, health care, electricity, postal service, etc. In some cases it may be a good idea but in a lot of cases it is not. A lot of these service are, or should be, part of the national infrastructure. They are things you want to have sorted in a civilized country, and sorted well. You want to have good roads, working traffic lights, schools. If someone breaks a leg you want to be able to take them to a hospital, no questions asked, just fix them. A lot of these services you want to be available to everyone, regardless of their financial situation. Heart surgery shouldn't only be for the rich. So a lot of these things are subsidized by the government, using tax money, which I think is fair. As these services are funded with tax money, they should be government controlled, I think, which indirectly puts the people in control, through the democratic process.

Granted, a lot of government- and government-controlled organizations are slow and less than efficient in doing their job. But throwing it all in the open market is not the solution. Sure, the element of competition in the open market will encourage organizations to become more efficient, but who will guard the quality of the services? Who will make sure nobody is left out? Ultimately, commercial organizations competing in an open market will strive towards maximizing their profit, which will in a lot of cases be in conflict with the common good. The risk is that aspects of a service that are profitable will gain priority over aspects that are not profitable. To stop poor patients from not being treated and unprofitable bus lines from being canceled, the government has to draft rules and enforce them. By their (free and competitive) nature, the organizations will try to find ways to outsmart these rules and enlarge their profit, and the government has to continue adjusting the rules and enforce them more strictly. This leads to a race that only soaks up energy, time and money and thereby defeats the purpose of privatization in the first place.

In a way, throwing a service / organization into the open market is a form of laziness: Oh, we can't be bothered reorganizing and making this thing more efficient, let the open market do the work. I say have the balls to invest the energy, time and money to reorganize and make these organizations more efficient and up-to-date and maintain control over what is, after all, basic infrastructure...

Roads (railways, air control)
Public transport
Education
Health care
Public utilities

If the government is stagnating, do something about it! It's a democracy!

(for the record: I'm opposed to the government controlling our lives, I think they reach too far in many aspects of our lives. The limits of governmental power should be more clearly defined, but the above, they need to have sorted.)

[EPIPHANY]

Thank You For An Educated Reply!!