> When I say the government is too big - it's trying to do too many things, and does most of them badly. Markets are better at selecting for efficiency than a s

> When I say the government is too big - it's trying to do too many things, and does most of them badly. Markets are better at selecting for efficiency than a single centralized entity. Each 'ministry' or whatnot should be a distinct entity, and should operate like a for-profit business. If one ministry is performing poorly, it could be replaced with a different company in a free market. The threat that they could lose such a contract would force them to perform. No performance, no job - like the rest of us. This is just passing the buck. Right now the government bid out the creation of a bathroom and it was done expensively. But you are arguing that if the government bid out the entire parks system it would be done really well? I don't follow the logic. In my experience the more complex the RFP the more the sophisticated parties(the bidders) are going to fuck the unsophisticated party(the government). It's easy to specify what a bathroom should be and take the lowest bid. It's way harder to do that with the park's department. And not everyone thinks the Swedish model is a success. Lots of people blamed them for causing Sweden to have some of the fastest dropping test scores in the world. And I'm not arguing privatization is always a failure. I'm just arguing that it's not always a success, and that it's success and failure is dependent upon how it's done. I'm not sure why you are so privatization is always a success every time when clearly the historical record says it's a mix of successes and failures. You argue the government should be smaller. 5/6ths of the government is insurance(medicare/medicaid/social security)+military and then 1/6th is everything else. That includes education, protecting the environment, funding research, parks etc.. I would love the government to be smaller, I don't think we need to spend so much on the military but I do like social security, medicare, and medicaid. I don't want to be in the position where I have to decide between mortgaging my house or letting an elderly relative die of cancer. And it's really nice we don't have to make those decisions.