eavesdropper…my post was simply meant as a tongue in cheek response to the original post on this thread: that government is the solution to all of our problems–that money confiscated by the government from the private sector is ALWAYS spent more wisely and more productively by the government than those that it was confiscated from.
CLEARLY this isn’t the case…
However, even as a conservative, I see the danger in unfettered free markets where externalities are ignored.
I do find it ironic, however, that the very people that advocate larger and larger governments seem to dance around events like the gulf oil spill (we had regulations and bureaucrats to enforce them that were corrupt or incompetent) or the continual problems with the food supply (ecoli in spinach and salmonella in eggs, recently) even though IT is also heavily regulated and we supposedly have an army of bureaucrats and inspectors policing the industry. These are examples of this awesome government that some want more of at work. Of course, some will argue “we just need more regulations and more inspectors”; these are the same people that, in spite of every increasing budgets and flat or declining test scores argue that the solution to declining education efficacy is more money…and of course, more laws and government involvement.
