So Well wrote:There is a huge difference between incompetent companies in a free market and incompetent governments. Incompetent companies will soon cease to exist (unless incompetent governments protect them with regulation, bailouts and other favors).
Agree.
Incompetent governments go on and on to the distress of the citizens.
Eventually the citizens find a way to undermine or sabotage an incompetent government. USSR for example.
No one is forced to buy products from, work for, invest in, or in any way deal with incompetent businesses. All dealings are voluntary.
Theoretically, yes, in reality, not the case. Try to tell that to the former employees of Enron who were prevented from moving their retirement funds from the investment in Enron. Tell that to computer makers who 2 decades ago were given the choice, install the MS operating system, or sell a computer with only a blank HD.
Incompetent governments at the threat of violence and imprisonment, force the citizens to work for them, invest in them, and buy their products and services no matter how poor the quality and how high the cost.
Dictatorial governments maybe. Only incompetent ones, no. You are not forced to work for Uncle Sam, yet you label it incompetent.
I bought a new vehicle from GM in 1973 and learned enough to not buy another one for 37 years and counting. I have also avoided Chrysler products. The market has consistently given me much better choices.
Not consistently. The market today gives us crappier plywood than ever before, wrenches that break more easily than in the past, food filled with chemicals. Alternatives are either not available or are much, much higher priced and out to reach of most. The market today gives us telephones with a life expectancy of 3 to 5 years. Sixty years ago Bell Labs built telephones to last 40 years. The market gives land line telephone service to homeowners for a comparatively much higher price today than 50 years ago.
The government gives me no choices. I must use and pay for their services even when they are of poor quality and high price.
Free market monopolies do the same thing.
The free market is different. I have choices and only engage in voluntary transactions.
I guess you've never engaged in discussions of how Microsoft strong armed computer builders to pay for an MS operating systems even if they wanted to install OS/2 on a PC. Cite me one major retailer who sells Apple products at a steep discount from the Apple mandated retail pricing structure.
During my lifetime the free market has created a level of prosperity that my generation could not have imagined. What our government did during WWII was invaluable. Much of what it has done since is tyrannical.
Review history. Much of what you would consider tyrannical, such as trust busting, took place before WWII. The tyrannical approach of government is often a response to tyranny by private industry. Pollution control laws, for example, in response to the free market created Love Canal.
A government cannot be run like a business. A business has to compete; has to offer a product so good that the customer will voluntarily pay for; is at the mercy of the customer; and is under constant threat of failure.
Your idealism clouds your view of reality! Doesn't look like that's the case with the big banks. But then again maybe it is a free market result. The banking industry has succeeded in putting into place the best Congress money can buy!
If George W. Bush said government should be run like a business he was wrong. The U.S. government was formed to protect us from foreign threats and preserve our God-given rights. Read the U.S. Constitution.
And therein lies the crux of the problem today. What some view as their God-given rights others see as human-given intrusions into their rights. Your rights end where my rights begin.
