Government Monopoly or Private Monopoly - Updated

One of the implicit argument being made by Democrats is that if we're going to have monopoly or heavy regulation over the delivery of a service, then government might as well deliver it, because it will be cheaper and not tainted by evil profits. This has been applied to the take over of student loans and is also implicit in the argument for "single payer" health insurance. Never mind that we could pay for the nation's health bill for about two days on the profits from insurers. However, a personal experience of my wife's brings home the fallacy of this argument. Before reading the rest of this post, you might want to check the background at B-Daddy's Other Blog about Mrs. Daddy's horrible encounter.

We deal with any number of private monopolies in our every day lives, and while they aren't particularly responsive or innovative, they never seem to raise the bar for contempt of their customers the way the DMV and various branches of the City government seem to. My power company is SDG&E. When I had an issue with a gas main, they were very helpful in sending someone out to check it. They encourage energy savings with rebates and seem genuinely happy to answer my calls. My cable provider, no longer quite fits the category of monopoly, with competition from DSL and satellite, but even when they were, they were helpful in setting up new services and repairs.

Meanwhile the bureaucracy of city government just seems to delight in making our life harder with every encounter. Whether it's the inspector for my pool, telling me something that I later proved was false, or the inability to provide a garbage can in a reasonable manner, or heaven forbid if you don't follow just the right procedures at the DMV.

So this is why I absolutely recommend voting against a guy like Steve Hadley in the District 6 election. If you think that government can deliver services to citizens/customers better than the private sector, you need more trips to the DMV.

UPDATE:

Fortuitously, Richard Rider has a story about a bizarre encounter at the post office in Oceanside that only reinforces my point. Rider was trying to get some information about what would happen if he dropped his tax return after 8:30 p.m.. (Even if UPS were a monopoly, I would never expect them to act in the manner described.) Some excerpts:

The first guy I spoke to outside almost immediately went postal on me – in that he was openly hostile, derisive and bullying. He would not allow me to say more than five words at a time.

He proudly announced he was a shop steward and waved his badge in my face. You could see why he was elected steward – he was a bantam rooster, only not quite as bright.

Rider makes the point at the end of the article that this behavior has not been the norm when dealing with postal employees, but even so, in the private sector, anyone who was so combative with a customer would probably lose their job.

Getting My Passport

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On Friday, I had another opportunity to experience first hand what things look like when government tires to run things like a business. We are planning a family trip to Australia next June, and want to get our passports early. So clearly, to make sure we aren't delayed, getting our paper work in order now is required. It seems outrageous that we have to plan so far in advance, but who would argue that we are not prudent to do so. I had an appointment for 10:30 a.m., but when we arrived there is no separate line for people with appointments, so I can't really say how that should have worked. Fortunately there was only one person ahead of us in line.

We had taken our passport pictures, carefully following directions as to dimensions and carefully stapled them to our application. However, we were told that because they were paper pictures they could not be used. No where is the type of paper to be used explained on the State Department web site. The postal worker explained that because the word "photograph" was used, I should have known to use photographic paper. I will let the reader be the judge. So as not to delay our application processing; we acquiesced to having our pictures taken on site at $15 a pop. How they decided on that price is unknown.

We had very carefully filled out our forms and were ready to sign. However, my 17 year old son was told, to "spell out his full name in cursive" rather than sign the form, despite the form's instructions that those over 16 sign a particular line. We also had to submit original birth certificates, which we are assured will be returned to us in six to eight weeks. Hopefully, we won't need them before then.

Finally it came time to pay up. Now in principle, I don't complain about paying for government services for which I am the direct beneficiary. It's the way I had to pay that amazed me. Credit card payment was only available to pay for the pictures and "processing fee" of $25. The passports had to be paid for by check, and one check for each application. I ended up making four payments. What business operates that way?

And I am not really angry, mind you, I just point this out, because even when Government tries to be business like, operating a fee for service operation, it just can't be. The pressures are different, the incentives are different, so it ends up operating differently.

The lesson for health care is that the public option will probably be a huge flop, if it is not subsidized, because the government won't be able to compete as a service provider. But that very fact will cause the bureaucracy running the public option to lose money. Then the President and the Democratic Congress will say, "We need more time to establish the public option." They will start feeding the future Health Choices Administration cash, the same way they do for AMTRAK and the Post Office. Logic and experience tell us that the President is not telling the truth when he says that the public option won't be subsidized. Only when the government has a monopoly, like my example with my passports, does their business model work.