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> Wastefully compared to what? A competitive marketplace. > Do you know of any other organization that provides essential social services to hundreds of milli

> Wastefully compared to what? A competitive marketplace. > Do you know of any other organization that provides essential social services to hundreds of millions of people? I would categorize food, clothing, furniture, and housing as essential needs. They're all provided for by competitive markets. There's nothing unique about health care, education, fire, power, water and roads that these couldn't be provided by competitive markets, too. > Do you have actual facts to supply here? I think the price tag on the Middle East war(s) is over 1 trillion dollars. This expenditure is done under the umbrella of "defense." If your local security company told you they think it will make you safer if they expand their operations to the Middle East to seek out shady characters, and oh by the way, we need to charge you 10 times as much to pay for these new operations, you'd take your business elsewhere. The inherent danger in government programs is that there is no effective check on expenditures save the restraint of the government itself. There is certainly waste in a free market, but in a free market the waste is isolated to individual firms. If they lose money, they go out of business.

jessedhillon 15y ago
I don't think your war analogy works. There is a good case that the cost of the war(s) is so high because the administration which prosecuted them relied so heavily on private companies for services. Donald Rumsfeld came into the DoD with an ideological belief that private companies could do the job more efficiently, and, based on that belief, he turned the DoD into an ATM for the largest defense and security contractors. And waste in free markets definitely is not isolated to one firm. Ask a bank.
- jwallaceparker 15y ago
  The cost of war is always high and has always involved private industry. This didn't start with Rumsfeld. The government has never made its own guns, bombs, planes, tanks or any other tool of the trade. > And waste in free markets definitely is not isolated to one firm. Ask a bank. The banks are not a free market! They were all bailed out by government. In a free market they'd all be gone. When I say "one firm" I mean "one at a time." Instead of systemic waste like in a government-run industry.

jessedhillon 15y ago

I don't think your war analogy works. There is a good case that the cost of the war(s) is so high because the administration which prosecuted them relied so heavily on private companies for services. Donald Rumsfeld came into the DoD with an ideological belief that private companies could do the job more efficiently, and, based on that belief, he turned the DoD into an ATM for the largest defense and security contractors. And waste in free markets definitely is not isolated to one firm. Ask a bank.

jwallaceparker 15y ago
The cost of war is always high and has always involved private industry. This didn't start with Rumsfeld. The government has never made its own guns, bombs, planes, tanks or any other tool of the trade. > And waste in free markets definitely is not isolated to one firm. Ask a bank. The banks are not a free market! They were all bailed out by government. In a free market they'd all be gone. When I say "one firm" I mean "one at a time." Instead of systemic waste like in a government-run industry.