Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Big Business vs. Big Government

What baffles me is how the Left Liberals seem to believe there is a difference between big business and big government.

There is but not how they think.

All human endeavors, profit or nonprofit, are nothing more than collections of human beings.

And because no one is infallible, people make mistakes. Judgements are in error. Temptations and egos abound.

All businesses (large and small) and all governments (town, state, federal) are people. Period. Both have to follow The Law. And in our US capitalist democracy, both have to answer to voters/consumers.

So in this respect big government and big business are the same.

The differences like in two details. First if a company makes a bad product, consumers can freely choose to reject it and the company must either fix the product, kill the product or risk going out of business. A government makes a bad policy/law, voters are stuck with that bad policy for years if not forever. There are very few options or choices.

The second difference is that all business workers whether a janitor or CEO still has to answer to a boss who can fire her or him fairly quickly if they fail to do their job. A government worker or bureaucrat basically has a job for life and a fiefdom to protect. They do not have to worry about answering to a boss on quite the same level as a private sector worker.

These are important distinctions.

Because if you do not like your health insurance, you can find a better one but once the government takes over the business of health insurance, your choice will disappear. A private health insurance business must supply its customers with the service they need. A government health insurance bureaucracy is answerable to no one.

Just look at Medicare and Medicaid. While many people have reasonable experiences that are equivalent to private healthcare insurance, many more have miserable experiences. Fraud and waste are endemic because there are no shareholders to answer to.

And voters don't get to vote bureaucrats.

Why the Left Liberals believe that a big government is "better" than a big business reveals a stunning ignorance of reality at best and a wilful belief in the failure that is socialism at worst.

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