Crossposted at 415Blue.
Government is inefficient and slow. Corporations know how to get shit done.
The bracing efficiency of America’s private sector has withstood many a bureaucratic assault from meddlesome government regulators, but the past year has seen our corporate titans really step up their game. Any investment advisor will tell you a diversified portfolio is key, and American Captains of Industry have worked hard in every major sector of our economy to improve your life.
The überprofitable Goldman Sachs has showed our financial markets a thing or two about outside-the-box thinking by defrauding investors and betting against their own customers.
West Virginia’s mining industry has the good sense to realize that 29 dead miners and their grieving families are a small price to pay to avoid burdensome safety regulations.
BP likewise noticed that the Gulf of Mexico had been looking a bit watery of late, and responded by creatively viewing the gulf as a giant wok full of seafood that only needed a bit of oil to get the party started. And no goddamn government busybodies were gonna get in the way of their tasty stir fry.
“Sure,” you say, “they know their way around Wall Street and energy extraction—but what about health care?” No worries, Sparky. Our nation’s largest health insurance company has you covered. Unless you have the bad manners to develop breast cancer.
Hiring alleged human beings to toss you off your coverage when you need it most is, like, so 2007. WellPoint knows information technology is a key component of today’s health care non-delivery, and deploys forward-thinking software algorithms to more efficiently 86 those diagnosed with breast cancer. Can single payer systems in socialist Meccas like France deliver that kind of innovation? Fuck no, they can’t.
One can therefore hardly begrudge the company for a bit of gloating in its tag lines (“Did you ever notice how big ideas seem inevitable after the fact?”). Translation: Blue Cross, you’re amateurs sucking our tail wind.
Contrast this free market know-how with Big Government Socialists, doing socialisty things like inspecting the groceries you buy for food safety, providing handy “roads” to complement your automobile, paying our troops, making a college education accessible to millions of Americans via Pell Grants, the GI Bill and guaranteed student loans, and prohibiting a toxic waste dump from being sited next to your kid’s elementary school.
Every time our elected officials perpetrate that shit, freedom dies a little.
The government, as any patriot knows, is a slow, bureaucratic institution that lacks creativity. And nothing provides a more bracing counterpoint to it than our own Silicon Valley. Facebook built up its biggest and indeed only commodity, the 400 million users it dangles before advertisers and app developers, by enticing them with notions of control over their online privacy. Having thus lured them into the door, there’s no reason to adhere to said policy forever. Or, like, for an entire year.
Which is not to say that government is always bad. Just because we privatize the profits doesn’t mean we can’t socialize the risk. If your company’s hardware prototype is leaked prematurely, it’s always handy to have local cops around to put a boot through somebody’s door. And holding a teabagger rally in government funded and maintained public spaces after arriving there via public roadways is just plain clever.