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Efficiency isn’t the goal of government. Serving everyone /every edge case is. A classic example is usps vs fedex. The postal service has to deliver to everyon

Efficiency isn’t the goal of government. Serving everyone /every edge case is. A classic example is usps vs fedex. The postal service has to deliver to everyone. Not just people living in high density areas. Fedex can choose to only deliver to profitable areas or use the usps for delivering to more rural areas. Not to mention we don’t actually want the govt working at maximum efficiency. That implies that in an emergency there isn’t any slack left in the system to offer help where it is needed.

junofan 4y ago
You’re describing “universal service obligation.” It’s not a feature of all government services. You can get a landline at nearly any address from a private company. Whereas if you call the police, they can use discretion on whether to provide service.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > You can get a landline at nearly any address from a private company. Whereas if you call the police, they can use discretion on whether to provide service. The availability of landlines to remote locations is in large part due to government subsidies. There are programs at both the state and the federal level to help offset the costs of providing services in areas that wouldn't otherwise be as profitable or indeed bring in any profit at all. If the government hadn't been helping to ease the burden on telecoms for providing those services we wouldn't see nearly as much copper being strung/buried/maintained in rural or difficult to reach locations. As for police, I think most everyone agrees that it's not an ideal situation to have areas too dangerous for police to effectively respond, but at a certain point it becomes a matter of safety. Private companies also won't deliver services in extremely dangerous neighborhoods and have a long history of using "discretion on whether to provide service" based on much less.
_-david-_ 4y ago
>The postal service has to deliver to everyone. Not just people living in high density areas. Well unless they decide not to. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/us/usps-mail-attacks-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/us/usps-mail-attacks-cali...

junofan 4y ago

You’re describing “universal service obligation.” It’s not a feature of all government services. You can get a landline at nearly any address from a private company. Whereas if you call the police, they can use discretion on whether to provide service.

autoexec 4y ago
> You can get a landline at nearly any address from a private company. Whereas if you call the police, they can use discretion on whether to provide service. The availability of landlines to remote locations is in large part due to government subsidies. There are programs at both the state and the federal level to help offset the costs of providing services in areas that wouldn't otherwise be as profitable or indeed bring in any profit at all. If the government hadn't been helping to ease the burden on telecoms for providing those services we wouldn't see nearly as much copper being strung/buried/maintained in rural or difficult to reach locations. As for police, I think most everyone agrees that it's not an ideal situation to have areas too dangerous for police to effectively respond, but at a certain point it becomes a matter of safety. Private companies also won't deliver services in extremely dangerous neighborhoods and have a long history of using "discretion on whether to provide service" based on much less.

_-david-_ 4y ago

>The postal service has to deliver to everyone. Not just people living in high density areas. Well unless they decide not to. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/us/usps-mail-attacks-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/us/usps-mail-attacks-cali...