and let’s do away with the FBI, CIA, Military, FISA, NSA, NASA etc: they are all govt run

And aren’t they just the perfect models of efficiency and effectiveness!

You know how to prove the CIA wasn’t involved in JFK’s assassination? He’d dead isn’t he?

The military, intelligence services and police suffer from all the faults of the rest of the government. They’re expensive, wasteful, often inept, corrupt and make horrific errors. Unfortunately, we have no choice but use the political system to manage violence.

If I could figure out a way for the free-market to handle mass violence I would get rid of the military. Unfortunately, the “free” in free-market means free of violence. The free-market processes all the myriad tradeoffs in all the voluntary interactions between all the hundreds of millions of people in society. It can’t process involuntary interactions carried out by violence. The only way to suppress violence is with counter violence. The government would ideally only deal with matters relating to violence and leave all voluntary interactions to the people.

Today we have a report that they have decided to build their new Ares rocket system, which is intended to replace the space shuttle, based on old space shuttle plans that are in U.S. customary units.

I suppose that they are from the government and they do not have to care.

You seem to have some strange idea that Metro is somehow a private company.

-Metro cannot fund itself through taxes. Metro’s capital budget is funded by annual appropriation of participating governments and is subject to political whims.

Metro is a government agency and is supported by compulsory taxation. It does not matter how many layers or compartments of government are involved. Politicians decided how much money they will take from the people and give to Metro. Private companies do not have that option.

-Metro is not immune from lawsuits.

But Metro can only be sued as much as the government allows the people to sue it. I’ll eat my hat if Metro can be sued for punitive damages that are 10 to 100 times as great as the actual harm. Private companies have to deal with almost unrestricted lawsuits.

Metro does not have the power to change laws for its own benefit.

The politicians who created and maintain Metro have the ability to change the laws for its and their benefit. Again the layers of bureaucracy in the system mean nothing.

This accident was not caused by a “risky investment”…

I didn’t say it was. I said the accident resulted from politicians choosing not to spend money on safety just like a corporate board of a struggling company would. Again, a government organization makes the same mistakes as a private one. The only difference being that private companies can’t make it illegal for people to compete with them.

Metro is the only transit agency in the nation without dedicated funding.

Again, the organizational details are unimportant. If all the politicians work up tomorrow and decided to double Metro’s budget they could do so and the rest of us would have to cough up. If Metro is poorly designed as a transportation agency, whose fault is that, the free-market? Again, you make my case for me. Metro is just like an underfunded department in a poorly managed company.

It’s easy for the NTSB to say that Metro should have replaced these cars. But nobody wanted to pony up the $800m it would cost to do so. What should Metro have done? Removed a third of its fleet from service and flood the road with cars?

And would you have accepted a claim of poverty from a private company? Would you have accepted the excuse that they couldn’t attract investors or that customers were not willing to the pay the fares need to pay for new equipment. No you wouldn’t. You would say that the private company was most likely lying and if they couldn’t run a safe operation they should just go out of business.

Political paralysis is another blow against the myth of government competence.

And yes- there is magic that causes people in government organizations to make different decisions than private actors would in the same circumstances. This is the magic of not serving a profit motive.

Profit motive is far from absent in government and is overshadowed by the evil possible by those who with an unhealthy desire for status, fame and power. Do you really see ordinary business people as evil and politicians as noble? That is childish. Preed is far more dangerous and destructive than greed.

My last two examples illustrate preed in action. In both cases, politicians cut corners and made bad decsions in order to satisfy their own lust for status, fame and power at the expense of the welfare of the people.

Trying to score political points off a tragic, fatal accident with some cheezy unicorn trope is pretty offensive…

I know, that was wrong of me. I broke the rules. Only leftists are allowed to exploit tragedy to illustrate a point.

No matter how you cut it Metro is a government creation and its failures are the failures of government. My point remains, government is no more competent or worthy of our trust than private enterprise. Given its inherently violent nature, it is even less so.

They also assume a “frictionless transmission” between lofty goals and government action. Government failure can’t happen, because everyone working in the government is a selfless altruist, while everyone working in business is a evil greedhead.

Well, I’m stealing that one!

-Metro cannot fund itself through taxes. Metro’s capital budget is funded by annual appropriation of participating governments and is subject to political whims.
-Metro is not immune from lawsuits.
-Metro does not have the power to change laws for its own benefit.
-This accident was not caused by a “risky investment” but because of aging infrastructure that Metro cannot afford to replace, precisely because it does not have the authority to tax or even have a dedicated funding source. Metro is the only transit agency in the nation without dedicated funding.

Whoever wrote this didn’t do even the tiniest bit of research.

I should also point out that riding transit is still safer than almost every mode of transportation, including walking. According to the National Safety Council says there are 0.71 highway fatalities per 100 million passenger miles and 0.05 per 100 million passenger miles for rail systems. Twelve passengers have died in the 33 year history of Metro. Metro currently moves over 800,000 people a day on the railroad.

It’s easy for the NTSB to say that Metro should have replaced these cars. But nobody wanted to pony up the $800m it would cost to do so. What should Metro have done? Removed a third of its fleet from service and flood the road with cars? These railcars are still within operating standards.

And yes- there is magic that causes people in government organizations to make different decisions than private actors would in the same circumstances. This is the magic of not serving a profit motive. Look at the safety of government subsidized rail service vs that of profit-oriented (but even more subsidized) air passenger service.

What happened was a catastrophic failure, to be sure. But what happened is not because “government knows better” arrogance or any such bullshit.

Trying to score political points off a tragic, fatal accident with some cheezy unicorn trope is pretty offensive, especially when the author hasn’t bothered to check any sources.

My apologies for not emailing you with this tip, but, if I ever had your email address, I have lost it.

Our emails are now listed in the upper right hand corner of the page under “contributers emails”.

It isn’t. But the difference is that in the private sector mistakes made by one actor will not necessarily be made by another. In fact, it is probable that those mistakes will be observed by others and avoided. The process is far more diffused and therefore each mistake is usually less catastrophic, and there are more diverse opportunities for learning ang avoidance. In government, there is far more uniformity, far less diffusion, and far more likelihood of catastrophic mistake.

As for the maintenance issue, we pay more taxes than we ever have, yet our schools, roads, bridges, etc. are said to be crumbling. Why is that? Because no politican gets to put his name on road maintenace or fixing old schools. They get their names on new bridges, highways, arip-orts, school buildings and so on. So the money, even much of the money appropriated for maintenance gets…re-appropriated for new projects, while mainatenance on the old goes begging. Just one example of how humans in government do NOT act more in the coollective interest than those in the private sector.

(My apologies for not emailing you with this tip, but, if I ever had your email address, I have lost it.)

Your first example is meaningless, the second type of old equipment causing death happens in the private sector all the time.

You misunderstand. I am saying that government and the private sector make the same kinds of mistakes in the same circumstance. Private actors cannot anticipate environmental harm and so does government. Private actors cut corners on safety and so does government. Private actors make foolish investments and so does government.

I love all of the nice us versus them emotional drivel in the comments…

We have different political groups because people think differently about the same problems. You can’t pretend these difference don’t exit. People that are in groups that are the targets of government coercion advocated by other groups, seldom have friendly feelings towards those other groups.

As far as I know, the federal government (on its own behalf and that of the D.C. government), like every state, has, by statute, waived sovereign immunity to permit people to bring tort suits against the government and its various agencies

Sovereign immunity exist by default and has to be explicitly waved for specific acts of government in each individual piece of legislation that authorizes the act. Even when such waivers are granted, damages are usually capped and no punitive damages are allowed. Governments don’t face anything like the pressure from lawsuits that private citizens do.

A more significant example that makes your point is the phony WMD argument going into Iraq followed by undersized occupation force that allowed AQI to set up shop.

Another example is having Goldman Saks running the Fed/Treasury as a government agent and driving the economy into the ditch.

I love all of the nice us versus them emotional drivel in the comments… a great boost to the old self esteem.

Some years back the IRS took over the Mustang Ranch in Nevada for failure to pay its tax bill. As required by law they ran the place in an attempt to make enough to pay off the tax bill, and of course they failed and lost money for a year or so. Now, the question is, if these guys couldn’t make money running whores, operating slot machines and selling whiskey, what on earth makes you think they can run anything successfully????