Comment Are You Saying Private Business Is Efficient? (Score 1) 630
You must not have ever worked for one.
A government-funded agency called the Manhattan Project avoided the need for one million American troops to give their lives by having a few hundred thousand residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki give theirs instead.
NASA put a dozen men and a few dune buggies on the moon in a government operation.
But on private industry's side, Enron manipulated what was intended to be a free market for electrical supply by creating rolling blackouts in California during its notoriously hot summer. I expect that more than a few elderly or sick people died when they couldn't run their air conditioners. It didn't work out so well though, as Enron when tits up after getting caught.
Or take the current economic crisis. created largely by "The Invisible Hand" developing a new form of investment vehicle that anyone with half a neuron knew was impossible to reliably valuate, with the result that Silicon Valley alone how has twenty-four thousand homeless people.
I don't live there anymore, but when I did, I used to see those poor fuckers all the time, smartly dressed and toting those rolling suitcases that are so popular, all night long on empty streets, because they had nowhere else to go. At least they were able to keep their fine luggage after their homes got foreclosed.