The Gummint

One old friend updated her Facebook status last week to read "...is happy that the dealer finally found my car, which they towed to the dealership yesterday." That's right--she had them tow her car, and then they lost it. A whole car. We can all think of dozens of incidents like this, where we've encountered unbelievable incompetence in the private sector, but for some reason it's always the incompetence of The Gummint that people get all worried about. No doubt the government is less efficient than the private sector, but they make up for it by not having any real incentive to screw you over (the government's inefficiency is a function of the safeguards against corruption built into the sytstem). Hey, I'm not saying "Trust The Government", but they do have their place, and I find my satisfaction with them to be about equal to my satisfaction with any private enterprise. I wonder how many residents of the Superdome would have been terrified of the phrase "I'm from the government and I'm hear to help."