# Conversation and Fun > Just Conversation >  IRS Incident...

## Uncle Fester

You can vote for more than one statement.
Which one of the following best describes your opinion of Joe Stack:

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## obxeyeguy

> Which one of the following best describes your opinion of Joe Stack:


Dead??

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## Fezz

This is an easy one!

NOTHING!

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## Johns

Toast?

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## DragonLensmanWV

At least Rush now has one less listener.

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## shanbaum

> At least Rush now has one less listener.


You should read his "suicide blog."  It was a bizarre mix of complaints; he seemed to be incredibly upset about a change in the law in the 1980's regarding independent contractor status for engineers, and equally upset about the system's bias towards wealthy individuals and corporations.  Hardly your typical dittohead.

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## Fezz

> At least Rush now has one less listener.



I doubt that Geddy Lee will miss him!

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## For-Life

A man hoping his actions would change things?  

Sounds very Al-Queda like to me

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## braheem24

> Sounds very Al-Queda like to me


His name was Joe, He's Just disgruntled.  

He has to have a foreign belief or name to be what you're about to insinuate.

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## Johns

The first thing I thought of...(caution: PG18)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCLU4...eature=related

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## Jubilee

I had forgotten about the movie Falling Down. As soon as I saw where it was from, I have to agree whole heartedly.

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## k12311997

> At least Rush now has one less listener.





> You should read his "suicide blog." It was a bizarre mix of complaints; he seemed to be incredibly upset about a change in the law in the 1980's regarding independent contractor status for engineers, and equally upset about the system's bias towards wealthy individuals and corporations. Hardly your typical dittohead.


 
Thank you shanbaum. I know you are far from conservative at least you show the ability to reason unlike Dragon who won't let the facts get in the way of his opinion.

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## DragonLensmanWV

> Thank you shanbaum. I know you are far from conservative at least you show the ability to reason unlike Dragon who won't let the facts get in the way of his opinion.



Well, k, you are right. I retract my Rush statement. After reading his manifesto, I would place him more along the lines of the Tea Baggers, upset at any taxation.
Problem is, there are many wackos out there that promote the idea that they can help you to not pay any taxes at all. Of course a lot of those are now in prison, where they belong. But for every one they jail two more pop up. To me, that's like treason. They are actively working against your government.I see no difference between these jerks and Al Qaida, other than their methods. Oh, wait - they used the exact same method, just on a smaller scale.

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## k12311997

> Well, k, you are right. I retract my Rush statement. After reading his manifesto, I would place him more along the lines of the Tea Baggers, upset at any taxation.
> Problem is, there are many wackos out there that promote the idea that they can help you to not pay any taxes at all. Of course a lot of those are now in prison, where they belong. But for every one they jail two more pop up. To me, that's like treason. They are actively working against your government.I see no difference between these jerks and Al Qaida, other than their methods. Oh, wait - they used the exact same method, just on a smaller scale.


I agree with everything in your statement. I certainally don't condone his actions and I don't listen to Rush so I don't know or care his take on things. I personally and many conservatives are not against taxation, just the level of taxation and where it is spent. My main problem is the cost of government. The government is the least efficient business model spending more to administer services than the actually value of the service. You and I will never agree on the level of need for the social programs or the military, however I hope we can both agree that the government spends too much just in the administration of these programs. how many bureaucrats does it take to- screw in a light bulb? -approve a welfare application? - requisition a bullet proof vest?

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## shanbaum

> I agree with everything in this statement. personally and many conservatives are not against taxation, just the level of taxation and where it is spent. My main problem is the cost of government. The government is the least efficient business model spending more to administer services than the actually value of the service. You and I will never agree on the level of need for the social programs or the military, however I hope we can both agree that the government spends too much just in the administration of these programs. how many bureaucrats does it take to- screw in a light bulb? -approve a welfare application? - requisition a bullet proof vest?


So, tell me what you know about the cost of administering various government programs.  

It's a little hard to discuss the cost of running the armed forces, because we don't have a private analogue.

One activity in which government and the private sector engage, at least somewhat independently,  would be the provision of health care.  What do you know about the administrative costs of Medicare, versus those of private health insurance?

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## k12311997

I know that I can google and find comparisons that favor my point of view and I can find comparisions that favor yours. I bet I can find examples of wastefull government spending and examples of thrifty government spending.   I know that when my exwife was pregnant we were told to sign up for WIC and just not say she was married by a government employee (padding the roles to maintain the program).  

I believe that there are 3 government employees for every 1 needed, can you prove that wrong?  

Why does my daughter's catholic school survive with 1/3 the funding of the public school and have better results?

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## shanbaum

> I know that I can google and find comparisons that favor my point of view and I can find comparisions that favor yours. I bet I can find examples of wastefull government spending and examples of thrifty government spending. I know that when my exwife was pregnant we were told to sign up for WIC and just not say she was married by a government employee (padding the roles to maintain the program). 
> 
> I believe that there are 3 government employees for every 1 needed, can you prove that wrong? 
> 
> Why does my daughter's catholic school survive with 1/3 the funding of the public school and have better results?


I think you actually can't find a _proper_ study that shows that the government's administration of Medicare to be less efficient than private insurance. You can find at least one _flawed_ study in which the author (rather surprisingly) fails to recognize that his own argument undermines his conclusion. That's at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2505.cfm. He claims, first of all, that it's not reasonable to use administrative costs as a portion of total costs as the point of comparison, which is the method that shows Medicare administration as costing a fraction of private insurance administration. The reason for that, he claims, is that Medicare beneficiaries use their coverage a lot more, generating much higher costs (as one would expect for an older cohort). So, he wants to divide administrative costs by the number of persons covered in each case - private vs. public). But to argue that costs divided by the number of persons covered is the proper benchmark is wrong for the same reason - utilization. Head count would be the wrong measure for exactly the same reasons that costs would be. Including all persons covered by private insurance comprises millions of persons who don't use their insurance coverage at all, and millions more who use it very little. If you want to use some factor other than total costs, an obvious one might be the total number of _claims_. And while I haven't done the math, given that the author's method comes up with Medicare administration costing slightly more than private, it should be obvious that using cost-per-claim as the benchmark would show Medicare as the more efficient. Not so much more efficient as the total cost divided by admin cost method - but enough to refute the assertion that government is always less efficient. But then, you seem to have admitted that that can happen when you said that examples of "thrifty government spending" _can_ be found.

The fact that you and your ex-wife were able to successfully commit fraud suggests not that there are too many government employees, but too few. You admit that you broke the law, and now you want to blame the government for letting you get away with it. And how do you know that the purpose of this corrupt government employee was to inflate the rolls of the program, and not to simply provide a benefit to you? That he acted out of venality and not compassion? Do you know that inflating the rolls of the program is necessary to ensure its continuance?

You can believe whatever you want, but ordinarily, if you want to persuade someone else that your belief is valid, you have to provide some supporting evidence. Have you seen a study that purports to show that there are 3 times as many government employees as are truly required to bear the workload? I haven't, and it seems to me that Departments of Transportation aside, I can't really think of anecdotal evidence that supports your assertion. On the contrary... shall we have 1/3 the number of air traffic controllers? 1/3 the number of agricultural inspectors (pass the peanuts, please)? 1/3 the number of troops in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld? 1/3 the number of prosecutors (if you weren't aware, they already have to husband their resources by prosecuting only the most promising cases, thus letting lots of people get away with all kinds of crimes, including welfare and tax fraud). 1/3 the number of people answering the help lines at the IRS? 1/3 number of border police? Where do think this 3X misappropriation occurs?

I don't really know much about how Catholic schools are funded, but I do know that the Catholic school here in our town has a tuition of $10,500 per year. That is in fact less than the $12,000+ spent per student by our public school system, but it's certainly not 66% less. I don't know if the Catholic school receives some kind of subsidy from the Church (or if they show a profit), but I do know that they do not bear the high cost of the special education programs mandated in the public schools. Of course, I suppose we could just let those kids' parents fend for themselves.

And look, I wouldn't argue that government is invariably, or even frequently, going to provide the most efficient means of doing something. But sometimes, it will. I know that people don't have the time to do independent analysis of how government is performing, but I really don't see how democracy can work well if people are simply going to stake out beliefs grounded in nothing more substantial than popular epithets and bumper stickers. There are still people out there who make a living out of studying these issues in an honest way and writing about them. Were more of us to spend a little of our spare time reading their work, and thinking about it, I can't help but think that the childish partisanship that characterisizes public discourse would be diminished.

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## Fezz

> The fact that you and your ex-wife were able to successfully commit fraud suggests not that there are too many government employees, but too few. You admit that you broke the law, and now you want to blame the government for letting you get away with it.


In all fairness, I believe that K said that they were told to sign up. Unless I missed something, I do not see any evidence that they actually did. Are you reading into this, or am I missing something?

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## shanbaum

> In all fairness, I believe that K said that they were told to sign up. Unless I missed something, I do not see any evidence that they actually did. Are you reading into this, or am I missing something?


 
Yes, fair enough, I jumped to that conclusion.

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## k12311997

> In all fairness, I believe that K said that they were told to sign up. Unless I missed something, I do not see any evidence that they actually did. Are you reading into this, or am I missing something?


Fezz your way too fast:).  

Fezz is right I did not say we committed fraud I said the government tried to entice us, to "prove" the value of the service. Look at how many people we have signed up it must be a valuable service.

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## shanbaum

> Fezz your way too fast:). 
> 
> Fezz is right I did not say we committed fraud I said the government tried to entice us, to "prove" the value of the service. Look at how many people we have signed up it must be a valuable service.


Sorry about that.  Release him, Dan-O.

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## k12311997

> Yes, fair enough, I jumped to that conclusion.


ok your fast too.  I'd like to think I've made my position on the waste in social programs that you'd not believe I'd waste your tax dollars.

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## opticianbart

> Why does my daughter's catholic school survive with 1/3 the funding of the public school and have better results?


 
From what I've seen of church based school systems the teachers tend to get paid considerably less than teachers in a public school.  That might factor into it somewhat.

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## k12311997

> From what I've seen of church based school systems the teachers tend to get paid considerably less than teachers in a public school. That might factor into it somewhat.


that may be a small part of it.  I have had this discussion with a fellow Optiboarder whos wife is a public school teacher and although I put the cost with the results they should be seperated to be fair.

The results is easist to address and that is the parents are involved, the kids aren't smarter, the teachers aren't better, however everyone is involved in the education.

The cost. One of the things told to me by the fellow Optiboarder is that money for the school district is allocated for certain items and is spent on those items so the money is available next year whether the item is needed or not.  totally made up numbers here ie there is $50000 for computers $50000 for books so even if the school district only needs $20000 in computers they have to spend the $50000 and if the school district needs $60000 for books too bad.   Doesn't seem very accountable to me, but what do I know I'm just a right wing nut job, makes it easier to discount my opinions.

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## DragonLensmanWV

> that may be a small part of it.  I have had this discussion with a fellow Optiboarder whos wife is a public school teacher and although I put the cost with the results they should be seperated to be fair.
> 
> The results is easist to address and that is the parents are involved, the kids aren't smarter, the teachers aren't better, however everyone is involved in the education.
> 
> The cost. One of the things told to me by the fellow Optiboarder is that money for the school district is allocated for certain items and is spent on those items so the money is available next year whether the item is needed or not.  totally made up numbers here ie there is $50000 for computers $50000 for books so even if the school district only needs $20000 in computers they have to spend the $50000 and if the school district needs $60000 for books too bad.   Doesn't seem very accountable to me, but what do I know I'm just a right wing nut job, makes it easier to discount my opinions.



And you're from PA! :D
I get what you mean. Here the volunteer fire department sends out every single vehicle it can for every single accident however minor. That way, they can go to the County Commission and say "Look at all the vehicle hours we put in - we need a bigger budget allocation!" Then of course they hit up every one in their district for "donations" based on the square footage of your domicile. If you "donate" and have a fire, you won't be charged for their services, otherwise....$$$.
Same with schools. If they have an allocation of 20K for computers and they don't use it all, then they'll get a smaller allocation next time. Since their entire purpose seems to be getting larger allocations, they go on a spree near the end of the year so there's nothing left. That way they get a bigger one next year.

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## k12311997

> And you're from PA! :D
> I get what you mean. Here the volunteer fire department sends out every single vehicle it can for every single accident however minor. That way, they can go to the County Commission and say "Look at all the vehicle hours we put in - we need a bigger budget allocation!" Then of course they hit up every one in their district for "donations" based on the square footage of your domicile. If you "donate" and have a fire, you won't be charged for their services, otherwise....$$$.
> Same with schools. If they have an allocation of 20K for computers and they don't use it all, then they'll get a smaller allocation next time. Since their entire purpose seems to be getting larger allocations, they go on a spree near the end of the year so there's nothing left. That way they get a bigger one next year.


OK now don't go voting Republican on me.  That is what I'm talking about the waste of tax dollars, I'm not sure the public schools would do better with their money without the restrictions on what it's spent on but I'd like to see it.

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## shanbaum

That kind of thing does not happen in Connecticut. Even so, it's an odd system, where our "Board of Directors" (the town council) approves a budget based on a request by the Board of Education, which then allocates the money. But the BOE allows the superintendent to shift the money around, too.

So, are you now saying that there are 3X as many employees in public schools as there should be, or is the problem that parents of public school children don't take a sufficiently active role in education; or do public school teachers make too much, or do private school teachers make too little? If there were 1/3 as many people employed in the public sector, would the regulations (the ones that cause the budget foolishness you describe) be better?

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## k12311997

> That kind of thing does not happen in Connecticut. Even so, it's an odd system, where our "Board of Directors" (the town council) approves a budget based on a request by the Board of Education, which then allocates the money. But the BOE allows the superintendent to shift the money around, too.
> 
> So, are you now saying that there are 3X as many employees in public schools as there should be, or is the problem that parents of public school children don't take a sufficiently active role in education; or do public school teachers make too much, or do private school teachers make too little? If there were 1/3 as many people employed in the public sector, would the regulations (the ones that cause the budget foolishness you describe) be better?


I love how you take 3 seperate conversations and blend them together, you really are a lawyer (what do you call 300 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? a good start).  No there are not 3 times as many employees, there may be three times as many administrators and there are superintendants making six figures and not getting results in the public sector they'd be fired. Please note I'm not stating that the job is not worth the pay, just that for the pay results should follow.

Where did I say anyone makes too much or too little I said in all the different directions your trying to lead this is the money is not spent wisely and never did I link it to any individuals salary, just my belief that in government there are redundant employees.

I believe that more teachers and smaller class sizes would be great however money keeps being thrown into the system we don't get more teachers, we don't get results and it seems the only answer is throw more money at it.

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## shanbaum

> I love how you take 3 seperate conversations and blend them together, you really are a lawyer (what do you call 300 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? a good start). No there are not 3 times as many employees, there may be three times as many administrators and there are superintendants making six figures and not getting results in the public sector they'd be fired. Please note I'm not stating that the job is not worth the pay, just that for the pay results should follow.
> 
> Where did I say anyone makes too much or too little I said in all the different directions your trying to lead this is the money is not spent wisely and never did I link it to any individuals salary, just my belief that in government there are redundant employees.
> 
> I believe that more teachers and smaller class sizes would be great however money keeps being thrown into the system we don't get more teachers, we don't get results and it seems the only answer is throw more money at it.


I'm just trying to figure out what you actually think. On the one hand, you made what appeared to be a rather broad statement that there are "3 government employees for every 1 needed", except now you say that's maybe only true some of the time, and you'd like _more_ teachers (does that mean that there are _six_ times too many administrators? Ten?). 

I gather that you didn't _really_ mean that there are three government employees for every one that's needed... except sometimes. And I can tell that you're ****** off that government isn't more effective (for example, it isn't very good at providing education, except that's really the _parents'_ fault for not being more involved, as they are in your private school).  You don't think you get good bang for the buck.  Beyond that, I can't really tell what you're trying to say.

I agree that lack of parental involvement is a huge detriment. And I agree that sometimes government can behave stupidly. But few of the things that we ask of government are easy. What, for example, do you propose that government should do to get parents more involved in their children's education? In my experience, in the places I've lived, they have actually tried to do a lot on that score. But that's not an easy problem to solve. And do you expect teachers to solve it? Or "administrators"? They all seem to have more-than-full-time jobs. Speaking of which, I have to get back to mine...

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## FVCCHRIS

What ever happenned to the guy in the airplane?! oh yes, I believe his intention was to be a Tax Martyr.  :Eek:

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## opticianbart

I'd like to point out that he got what he wanted right? I mean he doesn't pay taxes anymore, right?

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## For-Life

Yeah, but the repairs to the building will mean that other taxpayers will foot the bill

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## fvc2020

> I agree with everything in your statement. I certainally don't condone his actions and I don't listen to Rush so I don't know or care his take on things. I personally and many conservatives are not against taxation, just the level of taxation and where it is spent. My main problem is the cost of government. The government is the least efficient business model spending more to administer services than the actually value of the service. You and I will never agree on the level of need for the social programs or the military, however I hope we can both agree that the government spends too much just in the administration of these programs. how many bureaucrats does it take to- screw in a light bulb? -approve a welfare application? - requisition a bullet proof vest?


 
I completely and totally agreed 

christina

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## obxeyeguy

> I'd like to point out that he got what he wanted right? I mean he doesn't pay taxes anymore, right?


Not so fast.  I believe that his estate is responsible for any 2009 taxes, as he was alive then.

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## opticianbart

well phoey, you just shot an arrow through my (not so) well thought out thought. :)

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## DragonLensmanWV

Remember what they say about death and taxes.

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## Judy Canty

Which family?  His ex-wife or his daughter who lives in Norway? I'm pretty sure that any taxes collected will not begin to cover the cost of repairing the building nor will it replace the IRS employee or cover the emotional and financial damage wreaked on his family.  
Violence is not the answer.

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## Spexvet

> ... I personally and many conservatives are not against taxation, just the level of taxation and *where it is spent*...


That makes it sound like you'd be OK if _you_ were the one who decided how to spend tax dollars for the rest of us. You _could_ run for office. Or you could acknowledge that there are people out there who know better how to spend tax dollars, and that we live in a republic, where we elect representatives to spend our tax dollars.

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## finefocus

> If they have an allocation of 20K for computers and they don't use it all, then they'll get a smaller allocation next time. Since their entire purpose seems to be getting larger allocations, they go on a spree near the end of the year so there's nothing left. That way they get a bigger one next year.


This is SOP for just about every entity that is outside-funded; government departments, business divisions, research facilities (public or private), school districts, police departments, muni transportation systems, practically everyone. This proves little about schools except that they've learned how the game is played.

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## For-Life

I am going to offer my opinion here from working in both the public and private sector.

*1.* Is government more inefficient - I would say that I do agree with that on many levels.  My boss is not stockholders.  The stockholder's main concern is profit.  My boss is the taxpayers.  What is the concern of taxpayers?  Cost of the service, availability of the service, who provides the service, how efficient is the service, and many other things.  What does this mean?  Well we have to do a little more hoop jumping. It also means we have to be WAY more transparent than any private business.  We cannot get away with the back-door deals a private business can.  We have to move slower, because we have to prove the worth of our decisions. In the end, we are slow like this to protect the taxpayers.  

Now, on the other hand, we do have some efficiencies where private businesses do not.  My office is responsible for 12 hospitals, 92 community providers, and 14 Long Term Care centres.  Now, if these hospitals, community providers and 14 Long Term Care centres were completely separated, the cost of health care would sky rocket.  We are having them work together to lower costs of the service.  For instance, by sharing electronic health records, we can increase the speed of service and lower the cost.  At the same time, I would like to point out that the Public Long Term Care beds are more popular than the Private ones, because the public ones are forced to continuously reinvest their dollars into maintaining care, where the private ones have been using that money for profit

*2.* There was some discussion about organizations spending money inefficiently in order to keep their surplus monies.  This has some truth to it.  If I give your organization $100,000 and you only spend $80,000 in a year, the other $20,000 is returned to the government (versus being kept as a profit).  So you are encouraged to spend that money, even irrationally, to keep that $20,000 for yourself.  While that is the scenario and I believe it is something that needs to be looked at, there are many things that are not mentioned.  First off, my main goal is that money is used to improve health care.  So during the year, I will find a way to take that $20,000 and reallocate it to another provider, on a one time basis, to use it to improve health care.  Now, you can argue that they may not give that money back.  But we do have cheques and balances.  

First off, the organization has to set a reasonable budget at the beginning of the year.  This includes percentage spent on salaries, percentage spent on administration, percentage spent on equipment ect.  It also includes services, such as how many people they will see, how many times a year they will see them, what improvements they are making to the health care system.  The reasonableness of these budgets are verified through logic and comparison to other organizations.  For instance, you cannot tell me that it will cost you $600 for one hour of service.  

Through this, we require quarterly reports to determine if that organization is within those targets.  We also have them request permission to move funds from one area to the other or for certain dollar purchases.  This means that it is quite difficult to waste the surplus, so we either reallocate it within the system or it goes back to the government.

*3.* Most private business models argued about are those in a pure competition or a very competitive market.  If you have 100 businesses fighting for you as a customer, you will get a very efficient model.  However, most of the items that people push for government regulation or controlled are not competitive.  If you have one hospital that you can choose, it will not be efficient.  Now, to think the government is not competitive is not always true.  In the Province of Ontario, the health care system is broken up into 14 regions.  Those 14 regions are competitive against each other.  Then there are 10 provinces who are competitive against each other.  Then Canada has to compete against the health care systems of other nations.  In the end, if yours is not up to par, those who are running the system are gone.

*4.* Freedom of business is not always there in a private situation.  I look at the posts on this very board, and there is so much discussion about the private insurers and how they are affecting your business.  While a few of you have had great success without VSP, Davis, Eyemed or whoever, many feel controlled by these companies.  At the same time, the cost of health insurance in the US is huge.  Then you are limited in the services you can receive and where you can go.  We do not have the same problems here.  In the optical world, our vision insurance companies are private, but they are not as big as the ones down there.  So they do not force you to carry certain inventory at certain prices.  Instead, they usually give customers a lump sum dollars to spend on eyewear and the customer can go ANYWHERE to buy it.  

So, you really have to ask yourself, if you are paying way more for the service and you are being controlled more by the companies, who is the tyrant here?  Seems like in this situation that these businesses have more control over your decisions than the government ever had.

*5.* In conclusion, it is difficult to know where to implement government control or regulation?  Not everywhere, that is a definite.  But it does have to go in some areas.  The areas where screwing around the user is devastating is priority.  The areas where it puts the advantage to future growth as a person in the hands of money seems like another.  Not everyone deserves the same pay or the same wealth or the same luxuries.  Everyone is entitled to have an opportunity to earn more pay, wealth or luxuries.

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