I will admit that calling for the privatization of the United States Postal Service (USPS) by free-market, limited-government policy people like me is hardly new. It’s a pretty standard viewpoint for people in positions like mine, sort of the libertarian equivalent of progressives calling for the government to fully fund public schools. But having said that, it really is time to privatize the post office.

In 1934, a federal law was passed that banned any entity except the USPS from placing items in any mailbox. That is the law that limited UPS and, later, FedEx, to parcel delivery. Even your neighbor is not allowed to put that party invitation in your mailbox. (If you are the type of person who reports neighbors who do so to the USPS, you probably don’t receive many party invitations in the first place.)

Until recently, the best defense of the post office monopoly was that, in all honesty, it worked fairly well. Sure, it was a monopoly that somehow managed to lose money each year, but at least the post office did a good job at its primary job of delivering the mail. You put a stamp on a piece of mail and it was delivered the next day if it was going nearby; two days later if it was going a little further; and three days if it was going a long distance. Big-picture concerns about USPS finances could be overlooked because stamps were cheap and the mail reliably went where it was supposed to go. That is, unfortunately, no longer the case.

A recent report on the post office by federal inspectors general found that, on average, on-time delivery of first-class mail has dropped 16 percent over the past year in the exact areas the post office has targeted for improvements. In St. Louis, over just two days in June at the downtown mail processing center, 2.6 million pieces of mail were delayed. There was no weather or mechanical reason for the delays, just bad operational management. Worst of all, sending mail in St. Louis puts your personal finances at risk. There have been multiple federal court convictions in the past year of St. Louis-area postal workers for stealing checks from the mail. The author knows two people who have had their identity stolen and finances ruined in this manner.

If the post office is no longer doing its main job well but is continuing to lose money, the entire system should be opened to competition. I’m well aware that FedEx won’t deliver a Christmas card for 78 cents (the current USPS rate), but if someone wants to pay more to make sure their Christmas card reaches Grandma before Christmas Day, why shouldn’t they be able to? UPS and FedEx should absolutely have a right to deliver first-class mail and place it into a mailbox where it will be better protected from rain and theft. (A reminder that you buy your own mailbox—the government doesn’t give it to you.)

USPS has long had a less-promoted role as a jobs program for political supporters and interest groups. When he was serving as a presidential advisor in the 1960s, former U.S. Senator Patrick Moynihan famously recommended changing to twice-a-day mail delivery, for the sole reason that it would allow the federal government to double the number of mail carriers.

It seems that, at present, the purpose of USPS is to deliver mostly junk mail in order to fund over $400 billion in postal-retiree pension and healthcare costs. Maintaining a failing monopoly to benefit those retirees may be politically popular, but it’s hardly good public policy. As the use of mail continues to decline, hard choices have to be made. Rural post offices shouldn’t be kept open just to appease rural interest groups, and urban post offices shouldn’t be protected against competition just to appease federal employee unions.

I would favor an attempt to sell the entire post office off to private operators. In 2025, the mail is no longer a necessary function of government (I will agree that it used to be). However, simply allowing other operators to compete against USPS by removing the mailbox monopoly would be a great step, too. You get to choose which phone, television, and internet services you use. You should have choice for your mail delivery, too.

The post Let’s Privatize the Post Office appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are many arguments for maintaining the current post office monopoly on mail, and economic efficiency isn’t one of them. Arguments include:

• The necessity of subsidizing rural life (especially really, really, rural life)
• General feelings about preserving “public goods,” as if getting a folder of advertisements delivered to your door each day is a “public good.”

And the one argument supporters of the post office usually don’t say out loud:

• Maintaining a small army of allied voters on the public payroll.

There are several ways the nation could go about privatizing the post office. The easiest would be to simply remove its monopoly protections against other companies delivering mail. That wouldn’t be privatization, but it would give people a choice to use other options for routine mail services.

Even with all the advantages the post office has over Fed Ex, UPS, etc., such as not paying taxes, exemption from parking regulations, and so on, it still manages to lose a lot of money each year.

Let’s face it. In the modern world, mail is no longer a necessary public service for the vast majority of people. For the people who still need it, there is no reason they should get subsidized service paid for (even if indirectly) by the rest of us. If you don’t want to adapt to technology or choose to live in outer Alaska, that’s fine, but you should pay more for your mail.

I write this at Christmas time, which is the only time that many people make use of the mail anymore. My family is sending out Christmas cards now, and we will pay the same price whether we mail a card to neighbors across the street or to friends and family in New York. Those price mandates and mail protections are absurd. I’d like us to sell the entire post office to the highest bidder, but short of that opening it up to competition is the next best thing.

The post Yes, We Should Privatize the Post Office appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to University City Council member Paulette Carr, the delay was caused by a lack of mutual aid. Ordinarily when there is an emergency call in University City, EMS personnel and firefighters from surrounding cities such as Clayton and Brentwood are available to help. Most of the fire departments in this part of the county provide relief for one another to help lighten the load and improve response times. This is how mutual aid works.

According to Carr, Clayton had an ambulance ready to go. Under these circumstances, a 15-minute delay was unnecessary.

We’ve been told by reliable sources that the other fire departments in the region recently blacklisted University City from the mutual aid agreement. University City contracted out for EMS with a private company earlier this month, against the wishes of some of the bosses in the county firefighters union. The result: if you don’t play by our rules, we won’t cooperate with you.

When there’s a labor dispute between a private sector union and a private business, it doesn’t cause this kind of problem. If UPS and the Teamsters can’t work well together, consumers can use FedEx instead. There is not an alternative fire service for citizens of University City to use. When it comes to the government, union executives cannot afford to let petty disagreements stop the delivery of services.

A handful of executives in the St. Louis County firefighters union seem to be playing games with people’s lives. If they can’t put service to the public above getting their way on every little thing, then perhaps they don’t belong in our government. 

The post Playing Games with Lives appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here are five market-oriented resolutions for a more prosperous 2014:

1. Privatize the United States Postal Service (USPS). The United States should follow the lead of other Western nations, including Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain, in deregulating and privatizing mail service. It is a form of economic insanity, which can only be explained by the power of the postal union and its political friends, to require daily delivery of mountains of mostly junk mail to U.S. households. The USPS should have to compete with FedEx, UPS and other private concerns in the delivery of first-class mail.

2. Follow suit with other public services. Look for other ways to benefit consumers and taxpayers by deregulating or privatizing other public services, with airports, roads and public utilities at the top of the list. There is a reason vacation travel is much cheaper and more convenient within European and Mediterranean countries than it is in North America and the Caribbean. Europe has widespread airport privatization and greater reliance on market forces to allocate scarce resources. As travel writer Rick Steves says on his website, “Ryanair routinely flies from London to any one of dozens of European cities for less than $20” (through its most heavily discounted fares paid weeks or months in advance).

3. Do not buy the “living wage” rhetoric. Recognize the folly of calls to increase the minimum wage — now $7.25 nationally — to $10 or more at a time of sky-high youth and minority unemployment. Why would a fast-food restaurant — or any other business — want to hire someone for $10 an hour who adds, say, only $6 an hour in additional profit, before counting the cost of his or her wages? To do so would be to accept a $4-an-hour loss. Raising the minimum wage thus has the perverse effect of causing unemployment. It artificially reduces the demand for labor and makes the first rung on the job ladder higher than it ought to be for young and unskilled workers.

4. Break the health insurance oligopoly. The next stage in the seemingly never-ending debate about health care, now entering its sixth year, might be between full-scale nationalization — as one way of rescuing the Affordable Care Act from going into a full-scale “death spiral” in 2014 — and the creation of a much more market-oriented system than the status quo ante. The starting point for a market-oriented approach should be in freeing — and, indeed, forcing — insurers to compete across state lines on both price and range of product offerings, without a great assortment of government dictates or mandates at either the state or federal level.

That would give individual consumers the right to buy low-cost, low-price health insurance — from a far larger universe of sellers. And it would cause big insurers to lose the monopolistic or oligopolistic positions they have built up over the years through assiduous lobbying at statehouses around the country. Their cozy arrangements with state regulatory offices have resulted in mandates to cover everything from hair pieces and contraceptives to acupuncture and marriage counseling. Opening the insurance market to open-ended interstate commerce will cause all producers — both insurers and health care providers — to reduce costs and look for more and better ways to satisfy the health care customer.

5. Choose growth over class warfare. Be prepared for the proponents of big government to try to turn every debate — whether it is about health care, privatization, the minimum wage, entitlement reform, curbing the power and privileges of public sector unions or any other issue — into another rant on what President Obama has called “the defining issue of our time”: namely, income inequality. However, the president and others greatly exaggerate income disparities between different quintiles in the distribution of income by ignoring the effects of high taxes on high earners and, for lower earners, the effects of income tax rebates, food stamps and other welfare. One study finds that income inequality actually declined between 1993 and 2007, after adjusting for taxes and transfer payments.

But the real takeaway here is what the poor and the middle class really need to achieve a better life for themselves and their children. That is faster growth, not more income redistribution. It is the opportunity for self-improvement, not the fallback of welfare dependency.

Andrew B. Wilson is resident fellow and senior writer at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Let Market Guide Us To Prosperity In ’14 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is an example of an industry where there are strong private alternatives to a government-provided service. USPS has a monopoly on first class mail, but UPS and FedEx provide consumers with many other options to meet shipping needs.

As I read James Shuls’ blog post “What is Public Education?” it occurred to me that traditional public schools and the postal service have more in common than one might expect.

Public schools and post offices obviously provide different services, but they are both trailing behind their private counterparts. These government services are highly regulated, in what I assume is an attempt to make them well-run. But the opposite is true. Under these conditions, the postal service cannot adapt to the changing marketplace as easily as UPS and FedEx. Similarly, public schools cannot respond to changing school and student needs as swiftly as private and charter schools.

The success of UPS, FedEx, charter schools, and private schools shows us that people often prefer non-government services and (gasp) receive a better product.

Traditional public schools are not always able to attract and retain the best teachers, nor can they remediate or remove the worst. Bad schools stay open when they should close. And regulations prevent students from using technology to learn at their own pace.

I am certainly no anarchist, but I am rational enough to see when markets are better than government. Businesses thrive when they are able to adapt and compete. Just as restrictive burdens on the USPS have hindered the organization’s performance, government regulations are stifling education. In Saint Louis, for example, it often takes more than 100 days to remove a low-performing teacher.

We need to take a clue from the postal service: freedom, not regulation, produces better results.

The post Public Education Going The Way Of The Post Office appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

St. Louis area business leaders and airport operators propose to divert regional air cargo now dominated by Chicago O’Hare International Airport to what locals call the “Midwest China Hub” and “the Big Idea”. Rather than test the likelihood of the hub’s success, proponents and their enablers simply assume Lambert will attract the required service and then promise benefits based on that success. The proposition’s champions and their consultants performed a meager analysis. Shockingly, the State of Missouri has already directed millions in public money on that basis and the Missouri Legislature almost approved hundreds of millions in additional support without any independent analysis.

Had an independent analysis been conducted, overwhelmingly critical concerns would have been exposed.

Mere context is damning enough. According to Airports Council International – North America, St. Louis ranked 39th among North American airports end of calendar year 2010. By comparison, Kansas City International Airport was ranked 45th and until 2009 had led St. Louis for a decade. In fact, St. Louis not only trailed Kansas City but also Des Moines. During a decade that found the U.S. air cargo industry in collapse, St. Louis’ annual air cargo volume declined 20% comparing 2010 levels with calendar year 2000. St. Louis’ air cargo slide is not atypical of the industry but nothing suggests it is in expansion mode.

Worse, an unprecedented surplus of on-airport air cargo capacity exists after a decade of nationwide contraction that witnessed the disappearance of such formerly common on-airport all-cargo names as Airborne Express and Emery Worldwide, as well as sharp contraction by BAX Global and DHL. Medium-sized U.S. airports are fortunate to still have both UPS and FedEx. The two integrated carriers account for at least 90% of air cargo at most U.S. airports, including St. Louis.

Lots, lots more at the link. Cross-state, Tony’s Kansas City picks up the story under the headline “MUST READ!!! GROUNDBREAKING EXPOSÉ UNCOVERS BIG MONEY STL AIR CARGO FACILITY “FLEECING” AND A SECOND-CLASS KANSAS CITY CONNECTION!!!”:

Just like most development schemes . . . The economic promises and utility of this project are suspect.

But even more importantly for this town, his reporting and analysis reveals. . .

WHILE IT MIGHT BE A BOONDOGGLE, KANSAS CITY WAS COMPLETELY OVERLOOKED IN THIS IMPENDING MISSOURI AIR-CARGO FACILITY HOT MESS!!!
[…]
Local politicos overlook this kind of IMPORTANT INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM at their own peril, and it’s troubling that $400 million of taxpayer cash to support a competitor across the state doesn’t arouse any concern from either our local legislators or local business media.

More is coming. Stay tuned.

The post Air Cargo Expert Hammers Aerotropolis Plan in Industry Publication appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On the stump, candidates rail against corporate giveaways and crony capitalism. In town halls they opine about “backroom deals,” preferential treatment, and earmarks. But when it comes to a whole host of issues — sports teams, convention centers, hotels, and many other developments, too many politicians find their inner Nancy Pelosi and — Eureka! — discover that this latest project they’ve stumbled upon is about one thing, and one thing only: “Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.”

So, what’s the latest and greatest form of state-supported “economic development”? Introducing the “Aerotropolis,” the theoretical airport-centered city of the future.

The idea is that decades from now, the animating appendage to the most successful cities will be massive international transit hubs combining air, rail, and wheels that can get product from manufacturers in, say, China to buyers around the United States. It requires massive inventories of warehouses around the airport to store the product, massive improvements in the airport itself to handle the air carriers, and, predictably, massive, massive public subsidies, at least if you’re going to build the thing from scratch on the backs of taxpayers.

As you’d imagine, the promises made to hawk a project like this aren’t a far cry from the days of travelling salesmen and their talismanic tonics. Need your cattle flown overnight to China? Aerotropolis. Want your city to “seize the opportunity” and act on this “vision” before it “passes us by”? Aerotropolis. Want your hair darkened, your teeth whitened, your wife to love you, and your children to praise you in song?

Point being, there’s no shortage of promises made for a project like this, nor does there seem to be a shortage of willing elected officials prepared to throw money after those sweet, sweet nothings whispered in the name of government-created “markets.” This session the Missouri legislature took up an Aerotropolis bill that would have given millions in tax breaks to the private sector, primarily to warehouse developers in Saint Louis.

But for the fact that the chambers ran out of time on a compromise, a bill with a reduced price tag would have been signed into law, and still may be; a coalition of both Democrats and Republicans are lobbying hard to bring the legislature back into a special session and pass the bill once and for all.

The problem for Saint Louis and other cities is that the marketplace for freight has been making its decisions about transnational hubs for years, long before the word “Aerotropolis” was even imagined.

• To the north of Saint Louis, Chicago and Detroit are both well into the international passenger and shipping game.
• To the east of Saint Louis, Louisville hubs for super-carrier UPS.
• And only four hours to the south of Saint Louis, Memphis — the mother of all Aerotropoli — hosts mega-freighter and overnighter FedEx. And that’s to say nothing of Milwaukee, which is also looking to create yet another “Aerotropolis” of its own. Or DFW. Or ATL. And others.

Indeed, Saint Louis is only the latest proposed entrant into the “Aerotropolis” game in a region rife with competitiors. This, really, is the problem. Subsidizing projects whose market-crystallizing stages passed years and sometimes decades before is a not a recipe for sustainable economic growth, but it is absolutely the M.O. of typical, undisciplined Big Idea public spending, even here in the Show-Me State.

What makes the situation in Missouri particularly strange and disheartening, though, is that substantial conservative (and arguably tea party) majorities exist in both legislative chambers, and yet … $360 million in special tax breaks is still on the table for the project, a high stakes experiment based on highly dubious economics. It’s hard to shake the disturbing reality that in even one of the most tea party–friendly states in the country, this sort of legislation could get “aye” votes from more than 94 percent of a legislative chamber.

This is, of course, to say nothing about the legislation itself, which ultimately has little to do with encouraging international trade and everything to do with awarding taxpayer money to the politically connected business elite. The Show-Me Institute found that there was more than 18 million square feet in vacant warehouse space available around the airport already, yet the Aerotropolis tax credits would go to subsidize construction of even more. That hurts business owners who took on the risk of building without the lure of Aerotropolis’ lucrative tax breaks.

But whether you’re talking about hurting existing local businesses through preferential tax credits or about chasing after yet another “economic development” comet, the list of reasons not to put public money behind a project like an Aerotropolis are wide and dispositive. We all want our cities to grow, but to do that, governments should be relying on the free market to make those decisions and not the wrong-headed and expensive big ideas of its politicians, however well-meaning those politicians may be.

The post The Next Big Handout: An “Aerotropolis” Near You? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As I said back in August, the Postal Service’s decline seems to be inevitable. USPS is subsidized not by tax dollars but by regulatory capture: The Private Express Statutes limit private mail carriers from delivering mail to mailboxes and from charging less than $3 to deliver a letter.

Luckily for the USPS, it doesn’t have to compete in a free market, where its work schedule would be drastically insufficient to compete successfully with others. UPS and FedEx don’t have the same regulatory luxury, and consequently have some locations that are open 24 hours a day and on weekends, because that is what customers want. Private delivery companies also price shipments based on distance traveled, which makes more sense than the flat rate that the USPS levies for first-class letters. Mailing a letter to one’s landlord in the next town over has a lower marginal cost for a postal service than mailing a letter to a cousin across the country, but first-class USPS prices don’t reflect that.

Unlike private delivery services, the USPS does not face direct competitive pressure, and so has found it difficult to adjust to changing technology and market conditions. This has left the agency well past its prime, if that prime ever really existed. James Bovard pointed out in a review of USPS history that government-provided postal services were originally conceived as revenue generators, and that regulators had to actively stamp out competitors who were providing more reliable, trustworthy services at lower prices:

The early colonists inherited the tradition of government postal monopoly from Britain. In sixteenth-century England, the Tudor monarch outlawed private post in order to hinder communication between potentially rebellious subjects. Later, the monopoly was justified as a revenue raiser for the Crown. But even 270 years ago, private carriers were breaking the law and providing the public with better service than the government:

In 1709, Charles Povey used bell ringers to collect letters, which he delivered anywhere in London for a halfpenny. The Post Office prosecuted Povey, who was convicted and fined, and then it adopted his system for the government service.[2]

Since 1709, not much has changed in how governments run their postal monopolies.

In 1789 the Constitution granted the federal government the right to set up a post office, but it did not prohibit competition from private services. However, the first postal act, in 1792, did effectively outlaw private competition.

The first postage rates were extremely high, as Congress tried to force easterners to subsidize the more expensive service to outlying settlements on the western frontier. As the Postal Service’s official history notes, “Until 1851, the cost of sending a single sheet letter 40 miles was either 6› or 8›. When the letter traveled over 400 miles, it cost 25›. These prices doubled, tripled, or quadrupled with each additional sheet.”[3] In 1843, “it cost 18 1/2› to send a letter from New York City to Troy, New York, but only 12 1/2› to send a barrel of flour the same distance.”[4] The government charged 25› to deliver a letter from Philadelphia to New York.

Henry Wells (later of Wells-Fargo fame) entered the market, charged 6› a letter, and delivered faster.[5] In the Boston area alone, over a hundred private express companies carried the mail. Private companies delivered letters directly to addressees’ homes, while the government still required people to pick up their mail at the nearest post office.

As private business flourished, government postal revenues declined. The postmaster general admitted in 1843 that many people thought the government’s monopoly was “odious,” but insisted that it had to be preserved for the good of the country.[6] In 1845, Congress tightened the laws prohibiting competition and increased the penalties for violators. In 1851, Congress lowered postal rates and began providing a direct subsidy for postal operations.

An 1844 competitor, the American Letter Mail Company, was founded and operated by notable proto-libertarian Lysander Spooner. This competition was so effective and efficient that “The end result was that in 1851 Congress again had to lower the postal rates to a uniform 3 cents” from previous prices “of 18 3/4 cents or 25 cents.” Lawmakers simultaneously put Spooner out of business for good by strengthening the USPS monopoly laws.

The notion that government postal services may have been necessary to provide a crucial public service in the absence of trustworthy private alternatives doesn’t stand up to the historical record, and is even less justifiable in today’s electronic information age, in which private companies are the primary means by which most people send and receive sensitive communication.

Missourians — and the United States in general — would greatly benefit if the USPS lost its monopoly protection so that costs could be reduced through the efficiency of competitive pressure, rather than through elimination of services.

The post Maybe When Service Drops to One Day a Week, We Can Eliminate Its Monopoly Protection? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With a $6 billion budget deficit, the USPS surely needs an overhaul.  But the USPS has taken the wrong tack. It should be improving its service, rather than simply cutting it. Many businesses and individuals rely on the USPS for important mail; reductions to service fail to address that, instead exacerbating the existing problems. The advent of the Internet has made USPS service redundant in some areas, and a decrease in service would only serve to push its usefulness even farther to the wayside.

With the inevitable decline of USPS service, however, lawmakers need to reduce the legal restrictions that currently hamper other potential mail services. Although the USPS does not receive taxpayer funds, it has essentially been given a regulatory monopoly on certain types of delivery services. Mailboxes, by law, can only be accessed by postal service employees. The Private Express Statutes limit private mail carriers from delivering mail unless it has the proper USPS postage or is “extremely important” and priced at more than $3. These statutes stifle competition and hurt consumers.

Even long before the advent of the Internet and telephones, the USPS was inefficient. In 1844, abolitionist and individualist lawyer Lysander Spooner created the American Letter Mail Company to ferry letters to Boston, Philadelphia, New York, or Washington, D.C., for a third of the price that the USPS charged at the time. New legislation eventually halted his business, but his efforts did force the USPS to significantly lower its rates. The giant postal monopoly of today no longer has to respond to this sort of cost-cutting competition, because federal protection keeps it insulated from those who might provide a similar service more efficiently. Instead, it can get away with practices like paying employees to quit without having to address the real reasons that it cannot make a profit, while private companies like FedEx and UPS are flourishing.

It’s certainly a good idea for the USPS to cut jobs and make its process more efficient, in order to meet its budget constraints. But sustainable efficiency will not occur without real, free-market competition. Simply paying people to quit does not address the growing superfluity of the USPS, and instead makes the mail service slower and more expensive.

The post Snail Mail Payouts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I assume this piece was not original to the Post, but it may have been. I remember about 15 years ago when a state rep from south Saint Louis County wrote a similarly themed article for the Post, and then got in a lot of (political) trouble when it turned out she had just copied it from somewhere else. I remember her name, but don’t feel like printing it. She did lose her next election, if I recall correctly. (All that stuff predated the web by a few years, so no free links are available.)

Not everything he (or she) writes here is crazy or wrong, so feel free to take my lack of comment on certain areas as being along the lines of agreement in those instances:

Dear Tea Party Members:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly, Ameren UE, regulated by the US Department of Energy.

All true, as it goes, but are you really that dependent on the government to get you out of bed in the morning? And didn’t the alarm clock get built in the first place by the mechanics of the free market?

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility, Missouri American Water.

This is the first flat-out error: Missouri-American is a regulated, private company, not a municipal water utility.

The water was heated by the public natural gas monopoly, Laclede Gas,

Laclede Gas is a private company.

and disposed of by the the municipal sewer utility, Metropolitian Sewer District of St. Louis.

A government entity — ask Tom Sullivan about them.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the Federal Communication Commission regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

This totally ignores the role that private companies and people played in all of this, and ignores the fundamental question of whether this regulation is necessary. I can guarantee you the television needs of Americans would be met just fine without government regulation.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

This is all true, and a legitimate role for various levels of government, but let’s not pretend that nobody in America was able to feed their families before the government got involved. A nation of farmers fed itself just fine.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory,

Does the author really think people could not tell time before the government got involved?

I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation,

The private provision of highways is very common in other countries.

possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service.

The Post Office versus FedEx and UPS? Enough said.

If I had kids, I would probably drop them off at the nearby public school funded by the state and federal Department of Education.

Many Americans choose private education for their children for a number of reasons, the failure of certain public school systems among them. Clearly, there are many excellent public school systems as well.

At lunch time, I pick up a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant that has been inspected by the local department of health which enforces state and federal guidelines for food safety and workplace safety. I then return to my cubical where I listen to the local FCC regulated radio station

As with television, I will guarantee you that, beyond distributing the channel spectrum as a common good, government involvement is not necessary for radio to operate, at all.

as I work on a computer that has been certified by the Consumer Products Safety Comission to be safe and compliant with FCC Part 15B regulations.

The computer industry has grown as it has during the past 40 years because of private markets, not government involvement.

Sometimes instead of work, I go on a business trip and use an airplane inspected by the Nation Transportation Safety Bureau to travel. But first I have to take off my shoes and anything metal as a walk through the the inspection station set up by the Transportation Safety Adminstration.

Watching grandpa get a body cavity inspection because he shares a nickname with a terrorist is not an argument for government success.

After checking the weather with the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Adminstration gives the all clear for the airplane taxi off the tarmac and to take off.

Then, after spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the US Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I drive back to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes

People CAN build things on their own, you know.

and the fire marshall’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

It’s a sad view of society that assumes we would all descend into chaos without government force — perhaps a true view, but still a sad one. I tend to think people cooperate in many more ways without government coercion than the author does.

At home, I can call up my grandparents on a cellular telephone that is FCC Part 15B complaint and designated on a frequency regulated by the National Telecomunication and Information Administration.

As with computers, the telecommunications revolution is attributable far more to private initiative than to government control and regulation.

I then log onto the Internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, an agency of the Department of Defense which is the parent agency of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps who are defending our country so that I can enjoy my freedom to post on Freerepublic and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

End of letter. Many of the points the writer makes are valid to varying degrees, but he discounts or ignores the role individuals and private actors played in many of the advancements he credits to government. What is also missing is any even remote debate over whether or not these things are the proper role of government as set by our Constitution. As it stands, the letter makes Americans sound like a nation of people who could not blow their nose (the closest to a clean scatological reference I could think of) without government involvement and approval.

Seriously, you thank the government for helping you get out of bed in the morning? That is not the type of life I want to live and not the type of country I want the United States to become.

The post Intriguing, Yet Frightening, Comment Over at Political Fix appeared first on Show-Me Institute.