Hello dKos,
Over the last couple months I have been watching the health insurance reform pretty closely. I started having conversations with my coworkers about health care and in particular the public option. My conversations with them about the health insurance reform evolved into a discussion of whether government-run institutions are desirable in opposition to private institutions. I am a software developer and a Seattlite, so I expected that most of my coworkers would be democrats or at least sympathize with the ideal that the government can be a force for good and solve problems (since both higher education level and living in Seattle are correlated with being liberal). I was surprised to learn that I have a number of coworkers that sympathize strongly with the libertarian ideals of limited government involvement and non-progressive taxation.
I personally believe that government institutions can be effective and serve as a force for good. However, I lack the information I need to argue effectively that this is true. My coworkers listed a number of examples of government institutions that have problems.
- DMV: Everyone has to wait forever in line at the DMV.
- Post office: They have to have laws to protect them (like that they are the only institution that can deliver letters as cheap as they do)
- Medicare: This institution is on the path to being non-viable due to growing costs.
I talked to a liberal friend later and he named a few examples of government institutions that are important - universities and public transportation.
My coworkers are not the pig-headed teabaggers that currently represent the stereotypical republican; they are well-meaning intellectuals. Their main complaints are the "inherent" bureaucracy, and the tendency of government institutions to create lazy workers because they are harder to fire and have less incentive to perform well.
I think if I can present them with the right information, I could at least soften their objection to government institutions. I spent an hour doing some google searches on the DMV (of course there isn't a federal one, there is one per state) and the post office. The only substantial stuff I found was negative towards the post office. So the goal of my diary here is to ask for pointers to resources on this topic (defense of government-run institutions) from the daily kos community. I am interested in both general articles and articles about particular institutions, both in the US and outside of the US. After I gather enough information, I intend on writing up an article of my own.
Update 9/20/2009: I ran across a great site that defends government at www.governmentisgood.com.