[Superman]

A government might be run like an efficient government, but if you question is whether they will be run like an efficient business, the answer is an obvious "no." they are different kinds of organizations. There are things that efficient businesses do that you would not be pleased to find your public agencies doing.

The post office is a good example. Like with telephone deregulation, private business "skimmed" the market. I recall the day when theprivate attorneys pretended like the FCC outwitted them but in reality the market that was opened to them was the long distance market (very profitable) and the market left to the public (for a time anyway) was local access (high cost, low revenue).

With the movement of packages, the same has occurred. Let's ask the question another way. If we were to privatize letter handling, what do you think are the chances that for $0.37 you can get a letter delivered a hundred miles away the next day with almost complete reliability. It's 1:00 pm here right now. If I call a business in Everett (70 miles north) and ask them to send me an application today, I can be pretty confident it will be sitting in my mail box at home (25 miles south) when I return from work tomorrow. For thirty-seven cents.

Okay, and one more time I am going to remind you guys that while it's really fun to pretend to be brilliant by pointing at your perceptions of inefficiency in gubmint, sometimes those perceived problems become les nonsensical once you have looked more carefully into how and why a particular organization operates the way it does. And I will also remind you that government is not "them." Government is "us." You are part-owner. As my generation used to say, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Lots of things in this world are head-scratchers, until you learn more about why they are the way they are. And in the case of government, you have a duty to do this. And if you do not, then I'm not going to give you brilliance-points for your opinion of how screwed up things appear to you.