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interesting rant, however some points are incorrect, for example, toll highways are not necessarily done by the big central government, albeit it is generally the state govt. that is involved, and they are not for profit. perhaps you would rather have general motors build and own the highways? who would you have build your local streets? GE? unfortunately even in the old days, towns needed roads within the town and connections to other towns and cities, and these were not just rail connections, there were road connections along which many of the older US highways followed the same paths. how would you propose to achieve the same connections? without right of way laws how would a private company that was planning on building a road/highway obtain the necessary land? also, where do you suppose the railroads got their land, they didn't buy it, it was granted to them by your favorite central government in the form of land easements, vast, huge easements wich the railroads turned into extremely profitable ventures, such as coal fields, gas/oil rights, downtown office buildings, etc, etc, etc. as for your example of the private/public partnership in airlines, sorry, that too is a taxpayer subsidized infrastructure built and maintained by us with some (although definately not sufficient to cover expenses) user fees paid by the air carriers. the entire air traffic control system as well as most of the airports are central government at work. I'm sorry but in general I would have to say that your opinions, although thoughfully presented and complety entitled to, are way off base as far as the reality of todays situation. about the only thing that I could see changing (although not likely) is that trucks/airlines/barges be charged a sufficient user fee that the true costs they impose on their respective infrastructure be fully recovered, i.e. no taxpayer subsidy for air traffic control/airports, barge lines completely cover the costs of dredging/locks/canals etc, trucks and truck lines pay, in highway user fees, the true cost of the damage they do to highways, local roads, etc. Of course, these would be extremely painful courses of action, as the companies would have to pass these higher fees on to the customer, resulting in huge price increases on virtually everything, and a large number of small to mid-size companies would simply not be able to compete as their cost per unit would be higher than the larger corporations resulting in a vast number of companies going belly up with the resulting layoffs. End result from all this chaos would be a recession/depression and further consolidation of most industries into large multi-national/multi-layer corporations, which would actually be the antithesis of what your goals are, namely limited central control (whether it is government or large corporate control it is still the same) and a reduction in taxes (if they reduce the tax on bread, but the price doubles due to increased costs to the manufacturer/monopoly control, do you actually gain anything????). While this is an interesting topic to discuss, it is clearly not as black and white as you seem to think. Privatization of everything more than likely does not live up to the "promote the general welfare" portion of our government, nor does it save us from being a quasi socialist government either, as we still have to have some central planning and control from somewhere, unless you are promoting anarchy, in which case i would suggest visiting some of the third world countries you mentioned, where the central control is being divided by wars. <br />in any event, an interesting discussion on a very difficult subject. <br />respectfully...
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