Re:Nice (Score 1)

As much as I agree with you that from a normative standpoint it makes more economic sense for the goverment to ensure the health of its citizens, this might never be the case. You seem to assume that there exists a clear-cut separation between government and corporations. Allow me to disabuse you of such an unbecoming misconception with a few well-known examples:

This article mentions Donald Rumsfeld's role, as former COO of G.D Searle (the makers of Aspartame, a well-known cancerigen) in not only avoiding the indictment of the company on charges of misrepresenting findings and concealing facts about aspartame's effects but in "persuading" the FDA under Reagan's administration to approve aspartame for human consumption. You might have noticed that Rumsfeld eventually went on to become Secretary of Defense (again) under President G.W. Bush.

A brief perusal of the wikipedia entries for other relevant members of Bush's cabinet will show their close ties to the corporate sector, particularly in strategic areas such as energy (cf. Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice, who even had an oil tanker named after her as a token of gratitude from Chevron.) This argument can nevertheless be extrapolated to other public officials of previous and present administrations, both in the US and most other countries for that matter.

Stemming from a common misconception (what I think Weber called the 'holistic vision' of the State, i.e. the State as a monadic, discrete entity), the notion that, as you write "the government does not have a legitimate incentive for profit" is, at best, incorrect. It might not be "legitimate" inasmuch as normative thinking would (dis)allow, but that does not make it any less real. You would probably be hard pressed to find an instance in history where a monopoly or an economic crisis was not created with the collussion of government.