The Wreckage Expands

When Ronald Reagan began saying that the most feared words to hear were,"I'm from the government, how can I help?" he ushered in an era of hate for what the power of good government can be.  It has been a conservative tenant ever since that government doing anything will screw up the results.

Never mind that an incredible variety of wonderful and positive things have happened because we did them together through government.  It was government that put together our interstate highway system.  It is government that maintains that system when starved for the requisite cash by politicians under the guise of "fiscal responsibility".  For many years it was government that created an efficient and inexpensive educational system.  It is government that sees to our national security and defense.  Likewise, it is government that creates commerce by creating the rules for commerce.  The list of things that have been and should be the job of government is very, very long.  And yet, it is the naysayers who have given us the idea that government should be put in shackles and that all the jobs that it does for us should be privatized and monetized.  This is the rich telling us they are not rich enough and that we should be obliged to them for all that they can do on our behalf.  It is also bullshit.

We need the Constitutionally mandated Postal Service to be separate from government and not privatized.  It works as an example of the best mail service on the planet.  While it is overseen by politicians it is still separate from government.  The conservative politicians that have tried to ruin the U.S.P.S. by making it set aside enough money to fund the retirement system for that entity into the future 75 years are, in essence, trying to privatize it.  They want someone to profit from delivering the mail.  They want less competition for FedEx and UPS.  We have a service that works works really well when we allow it to.  This semi-governmental example is instructive because it something that is fostered by government and says to us loudly and clearly that people are capable of creating systems that work near perfectly and efficiently without making the rich richer.

The problem occurs when a politician becomes the property of the rich and promotes the desires of his/her owners.  It would be like making all roads toll roads.  Tolls when run by government are simply a method for capitalizing the work needed to make the road happen in the first place and expire when the road is paid for.  Tolls when run in a for profit way never end.  The profit of the few is reason that they exist.