Why, a new visitor to this blog has inquired, am I so dismissive of government?
I won't try to count the reasons, but I will mention just two or three based on matters currently in the news.
At the national level we currently are witnessing the inability of the federal government to come up on a timely basis with a sufficient quantity of the swine flu vaccine to inoculate all the citizens who should and want to be immunized against the disease.
Locally, in the San Francisco Bay Area we are seeing our transportation system grinding almost to a halt, paralyzed by the failure of a fix to one of its key components. A Labor Day weekend fix to the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge yesterday turned out to have a seven week shelf life before falling apart. As the fix had to be approved by the engineering experts as well as the executives in charge of the governmental infrastructure, one has to question their competence and the safety of all of our tunnels, bridges, and roadways -- every component of the transportation system for which they are responsible.
That's at the micro level. At the macro level, it is noteworthy that the failure of that single component has had such widespread devastating effects on the overall transportation system and the economy of the region. Everything has slowed to something less than a crawl. The lack of redundancy is startling. For a fraction of the economic effects of the breakdown, we could and should long ago have built a southern crossing of the bay that has been talked about -- and only talked about -- for decades. No matter though -- Even if a decision were to be made to construct a southern crossing bridge or tunnel, given the way that things work these days, it probably would take another two or three decades to build it, and that would be after all the political and litigation delays were resolved.
What would happen were a similar breakdown to occur during a real emergency?
What would happen were a similar breakdown to occur during a real emergency?
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