the funny thing about it is that no one is advocating more government regulation and control for its own sake. it doesn't take a conservative to figure out that government solutions, without a profit motive to moderate them, are often inefficient, especially when they have to be burdened down with all sorts of caveats to keep businesses from taking advantages of loopholes and gotchas and perverting them for their private benefit.

what conservatives really get steamed about is any suggestion that totally unregulated private enterprise might not be the most efficient way to solve THEIR problems. (yeah, my keyboard has capitalist, i mean, capital letters too). this really means they are not eager to give up an activity they find profitable. is it starting to make sense now?

an example from the real world. everybody is complaining how inefficient the post office is, and how much more sense it would make to have private enterprise take it over. it doesn't take a mental giant to figure this out, look at how successful and profitable ups and fedx are. what nobody points out is that the post office is inefficient because private enterprise has taken over the most profitable aspects of its activity and the us mail has been left with the task of delivering subsidized junk mail and magazines at cut rate prices, and personal first class correspondence has been forced to fund it.

if all us mail charged the same rate for everything, by weight and size, the price of sending a simple letter would plummet and the postal service would make a profit. this doesn't happen because the advertising and magazine lobbies make sure that their businesses are supported at taxpayer expense. the reason the post office is losing money is because the private sector is ripping it off.

ok, so maybe it's a price worth paying to get our magazines delivered to our door cheaply. and maybe the free world's economy would collapse if i didn't get twenty pounds of advertising crap in my mailbox every week. fine, so be it, but come right out and admit it, spare me the crocodile tears about how inefficient the big bad gummint is.