re: #279 PT Barnum

The problem is that if one believes that government can never be effective, one has no motivation to make it effective. Which explains any number of cloister flocks that occurred during the Bush years /

That’s not to say that government can solve every problem but that there are problems that cannot be solved by private enterprise because the payoffs are too far into the future to be attractive.

To me government should be focused on the long range thinking that private enterprise doesn’t tend to do all that much.

Any number of things we enjoy today were created by the government without a profit motive and then turned into tremendous opportunities. Without ARPANET, for example, I doubt any of us would be having this conversation in this venue. I was able to drive cross country to see my parents in a few hours because of the interstate highway system. Those are examples where government is able to be effective.

Can’t argue with your two examples—though note how nothing happened with ARPANET UNTIL it was handed over to private hands.

I agree that government should focus on things that individuals and the private sector cannot, however noting its level of competence, I would say it’s best to keep those areas to as few areas as possible.

Using Obama’s post office example—heh, heh—there was a time when it was necessary. But the postal service has always been inefficient. Now that private companies can do profitably what the post office fails to do well, we can probably do away with it. But there is another truism of government—like many areas of government that are no longer, or never have been, effective, it will never die.