While I have to listen to the Ultra Conservative bunch tell me time and time again that the Government does not work, and we should let the free market/private sector do the work because they know better how to get the job done.
I will now make it a mission to explain point blank that they are dead wrong !
To be clear, I’m not here to say that the Government does no wrong or anything resembling that.
It would be clear that if what they say is true, they would not currently be clamoring that the CDC is at fault for Ebola spreading within the boundaries of the United States.
It does not require much thought. If Corporate America could do it better, it would not have needed the Government to tell it what to do in fact it needs to step up personal protection for workers in the field. And that it what caused it to spread on the U.S. soil.
So now let me hear the same bunch tell me again that the private sector knows better. It was not the CDC that told them to NOT use better PPE with workers in the field. If they know better, it would not have happened.
But as with anything profound as this, finger pointing almost always leads to the Government because they did not tell you enough of what to do. And those agency’s that get that finger probably have had their budget slashed over the past 15 years. So there are limited resources to monitor or enforce what rules remain on the books.
In any case, even with the new insight on how to handle a new threat that will be sure to yet pose some new problems, we will learn from it and overcome. The real problem is if we either fail to learn or fail to act on what we have learned. That would be a threat that the private sector would be sure to give us in the name of profits. Of course, we only here about that after the disaster happens.
Those that do not like the Government “telling them what to do” got their way when we took regulation off the banks in 1999 and look what that rewarded us with in less than 8 years. That would be the same as done to the Savings And Loans in the 80’s and I’ll bet most of you now have not one Savings And Loan in your zip-code.
If those that tell you that you should not like Government telling you what to do then please ask them why they are the same folks telling you the Government needs to tell women what they can do with their bodies or that we all should have to say prayer in school or say the pledge of allegiance.
I agree that the Government could use a few lessons on spending wisely. Most of these types of problems goes to the root of a corrupt officials getting a kick back for other favors.
It would be a more prudent position to take to spend the same time and energy to make the system work better by eliminating the corruption problems first and the individual issues second.
In any case, the Ebola problem was corrected quickly and I doubt you would have got the same response from the private sector, or, as I said, it would never had been a issue to start with.