David McElroy

If there’s one thing that most conservatives and libertarians agree on, it’s about the gospel of privatization. Both groups agree that everyone is better off when governments contract with private companies to perform services.

If you look at the Reason Foundation’s website, you can find all about the glories of privatization and why it’s better than having government employees perform the work.

You’ll see praise of privatizing public works, garbage collection, lotteries and airport screening, among others. I’m sure the facts of the reports and studies are accurate as far as they go, but they’re missing the most basic point, as far as I’m concerned.

If I am forced by a city or state to fork over the money to pay for paving roads or collecting trash or maintaining public parks, how much does it matter to me whether the employees who do the work are government employees or on the payroll of a company that I’m required to support, whether I like the work or not?

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been noticing horribly incompetent companies I deal with lately. That’s made me wonder why I should prefer dealing with one of them — if I didn’t have any choice in the matter — rather than government employees. Why is an incompetent private company with a monopoly any better than an incompetent government?

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Nothing points out the banality of news like missing a few days of it. After nearly a week away from news, I wondered if I’d missed anything that mattered to me. After looking around for a few days, I haven’t found anything yet that was worth paying attention to.

From the middle of last week until Monday of this week, I was preoccupied with other things and didn’t read any news. For most of that time, I was taking care of a dying cat. Even when I wasn’t directly dealing with her, I was concerned enough about her that I lost interest in following anything in the news.

Since Tuesday, I haven’t found anything that I missed by ignoring the news for five days or so.

Hundreds and hundreds of websites, TV channels and newspapers are devoted to keeping us up to date on the news. Surely some of what they publish must be vital to me. Right? Or is it just habit to keep paying attention to what they’re saying?

I missed the run-up to the birth of a royal baby. I missed various people in Washington yelling at each other for various things. I missed minute-by-minute coverage of a couple of high-profile political races in New York City. (Both of the races are in the news because of the past sexual escapades of candidates, not because of anything related to the issues in the races.)

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What do you do if you want to buy vegetables? If you’re like most people, you head to the grocery store to buy food grown far away from where you live by people you don’t know under conditions you aren’t sure about. What if you had a choice to buy veggies from somebody around the block instead?

Sadly, I don’t eat vegetables the way I should, so I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in the vegetable section of a grocery store unless I was on my way to the meat counter or the ice cream aisle. But if I did suddenly become a healthy eater, I’d have a choice that a lot of people don’t have. I could walk two blocks to the little old house you see above and buy fresh vegetables grown in their yard — all without any licensing or health permits.

I feel pretty certain that this must be against city vending ordinances to do it in a residential area, but this older couple have been doing this since before I moved to the neighborhood more than 20 years ago. They’ve lived there in their modest little house since long before an affluent suburb grew up around them. The mayor of this little suburb lives within 50 yards of the house where these folks live, so I’m sure the city knows about it. Even though my little suburb likes to see itself as progressive and upscale these days, it leaves these people alone. Why? I assume it’s because they’ve been doing it for so long and because the people who live nearby actually like it.

This older couple aren’t going to win any awards for marketing or merchandising displays, but there’s something reassuring and honest about their little operation. I was thinking last night — not for the first time — that what they do is a perfect example of how commerce works when the state doesn’t give orders.

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