Re: First smokes, now soda...


"Dave Hannes" <dhannes1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Alex W." <ingilt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Hutch" <champboat@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Mon, 06 Feb 2006 14:34:32 GMT, "Dave Hannes"
<dhannes1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't agree with the USPS. It can be much more
efficient
in the
private sector, with competition as a stimulus for
same.
Nor the
communication part....no reason for it on any
level....IMO
:)

USPS is a direct congressional mandate (Art.I, Sec.8).
Nor
is maximum efficiency always the best policy. A
comprehensive and universal access that reaches those
parts
which are plain unprofitable is a common good.

I agree...maximum efficiency and profit maximization need
to come second
when either providing for the national security or
ensuring life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. Providing electricity,
telecommunications,
published documents (via mail and libraries) and,
eventually, the internet
to rural areas, should be done even if costs exceed
revenues. Same goes for
roads, waste removal, water, sewer...but I can see needing
and wanting to
charge someone that wants to build a home in the middle of
nowhere at least
some of the costs associated with adding in power lines or
roads prior to
issuing a building permit...otherwise, you'd have all
these wealthier
individuals building majestic summer homes in the hills
and demanding their
local governments add access roads.

If you charge any more than a minimal fraction of the true
cost, the Sierra Club crowd would be very happy because then
no-one would ever live outside city limits. Building
infrastructure is simply too expensive for other than
corporate projects.

There are ways and means of introducing cost consciousness
and efficiency through competition into the system without
throwing it all to the wolves of profit-maximising
capitalists. Government can build roads and then lease them
to private companies to manage and maintain. The state can
build a national grid or a railway network, and then open it
for use by private operators (against a suitable fee, of
course).



IMO, the same holds true for health care--if an
impoverished person comes
into a clinic with no money and no insurance, he/she
should still get access
to the best health care possible.

That will never happen. It is simply too expensive.
Offering all-out late-stage cancer care that may well cost
$100,000 or more per cycle to anyone who wants it is utterly
beyond the means of even the most generous of states. The
best you can hope for, and shoot for, is reasonably adequate
care.

It is a simple if unpalatable truth that we are getting too
old. We were never designed to live beyond 60-65 years.



.

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