What should government do?

In the age of ever expanding government, perhaps we should take a step back and askourselves: what is the purpose of government and what activities should a government be involved in and control? In the beginning, the USA had but four departments: state (foreign affairs), justice, defense (or war), and treasury (money). It seemed fine for over a hundred years. Somewhere in the 20th century, it was decided that government need be involved in education, labor, commerce, transportation, etc, etc. Today there are many that believe the government needs to be FURTHER involved and more controlling. A question I have is if we know government is bloated, spends excessively, has way too many people doing little or nothing, and adds nothing to the economy, why do we want to see it bigger? Beyond debating what services people want, why not address who will provide those services.

For instance, many municipalities have their trash and garbage services provided by private contractors. Besides from the public unions, few notice or care and the service is more than adequate for most if not all citizens. In Indiana we contracted out the administration of welfare and medicare/medicaid to the private sector at a huge gain. Now Contress wants to mandate only public employees provide these services? Does it matter? In the beginning the TSA, that monolith that most flying Americans hate was to be a privately provided entity. But the democrats made it public so it could join the federal unionists. Why? Why not private? And on and on. If a private firm can do the service, why not? Almost without exception it ends up more efficient, responsive, and saves taxpayers in the end.

In Indiana, we leased the toll road for $4Billion to a private consortium. Many balked at gibing away state property(which as a lease it was not). Many wondered why should we the public give profits to someone else (at the time the tollroad was a losing proposition and no one knew how much it was losing it was so poorly run). Is there any law that says a government property or service must be government run forever? The post office is a splendid ezample of an entity that could well be privatized without any lost of service. It is not a matter of possibility but of political will.

My position is quite simple: privatize anything you can. The Governor of Indiana proposed three new tollways inIndiana which were to be built and maintained by private entities thus providing additional transportation options to Indiana citizens without a dollar of tax money. You would have thought he was selling state secrets. Privatize. Why is federal government in education at all? Isnt it a state and local function? Eliminate the department and the tens of billions of dollars it spends a year. Ask yourself do we need this service? If we do, can't it be privatized? Even national security and DOD use contractors for everything from kitchens to stores. Why not. Concentrate your efforts on your key functions and let others do the more mundane non-essential activities. That is the key in Private industry (I once worked for a high tech firm who specialized in minicomputers but were building their own printers at great cost and effort; I recommended getting out of the printer business and letting printer companies supply them to us; they did and not only did we end up with more modern, cheaper, more sophisciated printers but our capital was available to be put to use in our core business--the same can apply to government services).

Privatize when you can. Wholesale if you can. Eliminate those services government has no need being in. Use pricing mechanisms to price those services to make those using them pay appropriately for them.

Comments?