Ronda Hauben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But this is precisely why there is government and there is science.
> There will be private sector companies that can make a mint off
> of the pollution of the public water supply and thus they will
> become strong advocates of doing nothing to solve the public
> problem.
But what if some of them used to be government employees and/or
contractors, and became fed up with the immense amount of bureaucracy
involved in getting support for water treatment, and decided to form
private companies that supplied water? Aren't they doing something to
solve the public problem? Is it the fact that they make a lot of
money doing what they do that means they aren't solving the public
problem? What if it would have cost the government that much money to
solve the problem?
Greg Skinner wrote:
>> You should not expect "government" or "science" to be able to solve
>> any problem that comes along, particularly when those problems are
>> highly complex and controversial.
> To the contrary. That is why there is a need to have governemnt
> put its foot down and declare the situation a public question
> and NOT allow private interests to prevent a public solution
> to the problem.
OK, but what if the public demands that the private interests be
allowed to solve the problem? What if the Los Angeles taxpayers say
"Why should we be forced to drink your foul water, when we can buy
clean water with the money you are charging us?" Isn't the job of
government to do the work of the people that elected it? Why should
government ban the private sale of water and force its citizens to
drink foul water until it can figure out how to provide clean water?
> And that is why I feel it is important to learn how government
> functioned as ARPA/IPTO as that was doing something good as
> government, rather than the current way that government in the U.S.
> is welcoming the private sector interests to take care of their
> desires at the expense of the public.
Don't you think the situation is much different now than back in the
1970s and early 1980s? The Arpanet and Internet were developed under
circumstances that were highly favorable. Most of the issues that
needed to be solved were technical or logistical. There were far
fewer political hurdles that needed to be overcome. Most of the
economic hurdles were overcome by the fact that the USG was able to
make huge sums of taxpayer money available for basic networking
research. (And dare I say, at the expense of other funding, such as
public water works, for example. I am sure that some people who live
in parts of LA where waterbugs crawl out of faucets believe they live
in areas that should be declared Federal disasters.)
--gregbo
