I originally wrote this on August 11, 2017 my former blog here. This issue and concepts of liberty associated with it are still relevant today. It is also a follow-up to this post.
A couple days ago I wrote an article discussing why we don’t need, and shouldn’t want, government to be in charge of managing water lines.
Just a quick follow-up to that article; I went back into Which Wich and the guy who works there told me that they were only able to get to fixing the problem 30 minutes after I left. Furthermore, it took until 8 p.m. that night for the leak to be stopped and line to be repaired. Oh, and the best part, the guy who arrived was NOT from the government, but a private-sector plumber/mechanic.
How about that? We pay heavy taxes to our government because we “need” them to regulate our water lines, but government won’t be there to fix leaks when they happen, let alone plan ahead to prevent these leaks. A private company would have a greater incentive to have a fail-safe mechanism in place, or to have a more efficient emergency fix in place. This is because the company would lose money for that deluge of lost water, whereas the city of San Diego loses money, but just passes it along to the taxpayers by asking them to pony up more hard-earned income.
Do we need government to regulate our water lines? Should we let it? Should we also expect the government to do a better job than the private sector? The answer to all three is…..
No.