I originally wrote this post on my former blog on August 9, 2017, but it is still relevant even today.
The consensus, even among those who advocate for small government, seems to be that government needs to create, regulate, and control things such as roads and water lines.
I’ll focus on the water lines, and in particular, a recent incident that happened in my hometown of San Diego, CA, where water supply and drought are significant issues. I was walking into the UTC Which Wich shop, and noticed that a water line was severely leaking. In this video, I not only observed that government is inadequate in preventing such disastrous water leaks, but I also wondered, why is government, which loves to collect high taxes, taking so long to respond to the situation? While my video only runs for five minutes, I had actually arrived on the scene nearly 15 minutes before, and the leaking was probably going on for several minutes before that. It probably took at least an hour before the government finally showed up to help.
I initially called the San Diego city hotline for water line leaks, 619-515-3525, twice. Both times, after going through their unorganized automated systems, the call ended without directing me to an actual human being. You’d think that with all the taxes it collects, the city would wisely invest in good customer service like a private enterprise, right? I then called 9-1-1, but got no assurance of how long it would take.
Doesn’t government care about the drought problem, or is it just more political big talk and little action? The amount of water lost from the leak could have filled up half a pool, all because the city government, with its abundance of resources, couldn’t arrive sooner. This is the same government that has the audacity to forcibly steal our money via taxation, to tell us that we can only water our lawns and gardens twice a week to conserve water, but fails to actually deal with unaffordable leaks in a timely manner – too bad for water conservation.
Solution – Sell the water lines, and even the roads too, via auction to the highest bidder. Let private industries that, unlike the government, have their own money to lose if they displease customers, deliver these resources. Allow for some competition in roads and water lines, so that the best producer of the sweet spot of lowest price and highest quality service will succeed. Competition works great for consumers in the industries where it is allowed to work, like cell phones and clothing, so let it also work in water lines and roads.
One more important point is that this incident occurred at around 04:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, meaning thick rush hour traffic. While I can’t blame the city responders for uncontrollable traffic, weren’t the roads also built by the government? If so, why wasn’t the government, despite gluttoning on taxpayer income, wise enough to build roads that wouldn’t become so congested? Why haven’t they modified or modernized the roads to increased population densities since the Interstate and state highways completed construction decades ago? Why not open up competition in roads?
Again, another reason why government doesn’t need to run water lines and roads, and doesn’t definitely or always perform better than the private sector.