Comment Re:I'm not sure if I'll ever understand this (Score 2, Insightful) 655
I've lived in two locales, the greater Cleveland area and the greater Tampa area, and in both locations the municipal water was of very good quality. I and my family do drink the water "from the faucet". And I'll tell you a secret, most of that bottled water that people buy from those commercial entities are simply taking water from some municipal supply or another, or from a community resource such as the crystal springs here in Florida, and bottling them WITHOUT ANY ADDITIONAL treatment.
Not that I think that I can convince an anti-government zealots such as yourself, but I'll give you a couple more examples of activities that probably should not be in the hands of private corporations:
The CDC - Do you really want the entity that is trying to watch out for and react to an Asian bird-flu pandemic to be a for-profit enterprise? I certainly don't. Some activities MUST be done in the public good WITHOUT the impact of market forces.
The Federal Highway Agency- The U.S. federal highway system is the envy of the world (well, except for maybe Germany) precisely because it is open, free, well-designed, and (at least until recently) well maintained.
Protection of the food supply - Let me let you in on a little secret, before the FDA was set up, the only forces in place to protect public health were market forces. And corporations proved themselves well capable of selling the public anything they wanted to if they could get them to buy it. This included spoiled meat, poison pills, tainted baby-food, and all kinds of quack medicines. And the recent drug scandals just prove what happens when a public agency charged with protecting the public gets too cozy with the industry they are charged with regulating.
Commercial entities are good for many things. But not everything. Government has a role to play. The important thing, though, is that WE maintain control over our own government.
When companies are setting public policy that is contrary to the public good, it simply proves that the people have to pay more attention to what's happening in their own governments. And the fact that my mother, living in a rural area right in the middle of the highly industrialized section of northeast Ohio STILL does not have access to cable television or broadband service proves that there are gaps in the corporate coverage of these services. Shouldn't government then step in to make sure that services are available, even in sparsely populated areas? If you say no, realize that most of Tennessee would still not have telephone service if the opposite case had not been in force in the 1930s. It isn't a question of capability. Despite what you may argue, both government agencies and corporate entities have been both good and bad at what they do. If the organizations are put together well and populated with talented people, often times they work. Nope. It's a question of motivation. Occasionally. . . we do not want the motivation to be money.
Not that I think that I can convince an anti-government zealots such as yourself, but I'll give you a couple more examples of activities that probably should not be in the hands of private corporations:
The CDC - Do you really want the entity that is trying to watch out for and react to an Asian bird-flu pandemic to be a for-profit enterprise? I certainly don't. Some activities MUST be done in the public good WITHOUT the impact of market forces.
The Federal Highway Agency- The U.S. federal highway system is the envy of the world (well, except for maybe Germany) precisely because it is open, free, well-designed, and (at least until recently) well maintained.
Protection of the food supply - Let me let you in on a little secret, before the FDA was set up, the only forces in place to protect public health were market forces. And corporations proved themselves well capable of selling the public anything they wanted to if they could get them to buy it. This included spoiled meat, poison pills, tainted baby-food, and all kinds of quack medicines. And the recent drug scandals just prove what happens when a public agency charged with protecting the public gets too cozy with the industry they are charged with regulating.
Commercial entities are good for many things. But not everything. Government has a role to play. The important thing, though, is that WE maintain control over our own government.
When companies are setting public policy that is contrary to the public good, it simply proves that the people have to pay more attention to what's happening in their own governments. And the fact that my mother, living in a rural area right in the middle of the highly industrialized section of northeast Ohio STILL does not have access to cable television or broadband service proves that there are gaps in the corporate coverage of these services. Shouldn't government then step in to make sure that services are available, even in sparsely populated areas? If you say no, realize that most of Tennessee would still not have telephone service if the opposite case had not been in force in the 1930s. It isn't a question of capability. Despite what you may argue, both government agencies and corporate entities have been both good and bad at what they do. If the organizations are put together well and populated with talented people, often times they work. Nope. It's a question of motivation. Occasionally. . . we do not want the motivation to be money.
