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marcrosoft

> messaging that the government can't do anything properly

I would love to hear about things the government has done exceptionally better than private companies. Please go on.

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"What have the Romans ever done for us?" [0][1]

...

"All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo [1] http://www.epicure.demon.co.uk/whattheromans.html

USPS is often faster and cheaper than private delivery companies, delivers to all addresses (unlike FedEx and UPS, which contract to USPS in rural areas), and would be profitable if not hamstrung by pension funding restrictions from Congress that are more stringent than private companies.

USPS is almost never cheaper than UPS or FedEx except for areas highly subsidized (AK and HI) and light weight international items. USPS has special (and anticompetitive) arrangements with foreign countries that UPS and FedEx can't have. Even with the special arrangements USPS is more expensive and less reliable than private carriers.

  Prisons
  law enforcement
  firefighting
  warfare
  regulation of industry
  regulation of environment
  protection of civil rights
  equal opportunity employment
  employee benefits
  retirement
  healthcare
  research & development
  protection of intellectual property
  passenger rail
  postal mail
  industry standards

The Interstate Highway System, manned spaceflight, and National Parks come to mind.

The first is crumbling and a major cause of urban sprawl and global warming. The second has brought some benefits like a microwave, but nothing of any meaningful use. We lack moon bases for example. National parks should be state run. This is a massive power grab by the feds under feel-good logic.

National Parks exist because we are a nation of united states, not an independent fiefdom of states. All citizens of these united states deserve the same right to enjoy the natural beauty of this country, and no individual state should have the right to remove such privileges from the rest of the citizenry through inaction, nor through lack of management make it less than ideal to enjoy.

Conservation of land is a national priority. As such, no state or private entity should be entrusted or made to be solely responsible for the upkeep and management of said valuable resource for all the people. That's why Yosemite Valley's management was transferred from the State of California to the Federal Government.

As Wallace Stegner said, "National Parks were the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." (Except for that whole disinheriting the native peoples of their own lands thing... but definitely American...)

Then there is no limit to the power of the Federal government. If they can say, “We can do a better job than you, person or State”, then can run roughshod over personal and State’s rights. I guess that’s fine as long as they are running over people and States you don’t like. What happens if Trump goes into California and takes over due to the humanitarian crisis that the State brought in itself ie the tent cities?

The states are subservient to the federal government as restrained by the constitution. If the federal government (Trump, Obama, Nixon, Clinton, it does not matter) wants to take over California and can find an emergency power to do so authorized by Congress then the federal government will take over California.

The argument isn’t “we can do a better job than you” it’s “we are allowed to do this job for you”. Whether they can do it better is irrelevant.

As an aside, if we are looking as a whole, the federal government generally can and does do everything that they do better than the states could do it.

Healthcare comes to mind since we're discussing US politics.

Roads might be the canonical example but I'm not familiar with any examples of privatized roads.

Toll Roads? Generally better maintained and provide a shorter pat for a small but willing-to-pay segment of the population that government programs overlook.

I do pay several hundred a year in tolls but as far as I can tell it all goes to state or local DOTs.

Countries with public rail systems (or railway companies that are largely owned by the state) are usually way better than privately operated railway lines. Private railway service almost always sucks (crappy trains, high fares) and is only profitable on the most popular routes.

The M6 toll is a pretty nice road as roads go. I believe it was privately funded.

How about fire fighting, defense, and the Internet?

Private schools have never succeeded except for tiny % of rich kids

Also, big one, GPS

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