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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (36687)	5/11/2014 5:49:12 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

OT Truth is they can't, and if they could, wouldn't want to do it. There are private airports, and if government did control, or finance or subsidize the bigger ones then more private one would be built. In your response you say they wouldn't want to do it, then you say "it would cost us an arm and a leg". If it would cost that much that would create the profit incentive to build the airports. Over time there would be some competitive pressures to push prices down. Larger cities could support multiple airports so there could be competition there, there would also be competition for airports to be hubs or transfer points of lesser importance than full fledged hubs. Smaller cities with no prospect of being significant transfer points might have a relative lack of competition for providing air line slots, but rail and bus and car transportation would provide some competition and help keep the prices from becoming too crazy. Also any high prices going to pay for landing slots would get mitigated by a lower price paid through taxes. Even you admit government should do certain things... but then you balk when one is mentioned. Middle level roads might be an example. Major limited access highways can be toll roads, local courts can be (and often are) paid for by developers. But I don't see much of a model for making a profit for roads in between, at least not often enough and in enough places to generally supply the infrastructure. It might be a lack of imagination on my part, rather then an actual area where the market would not provide something, but it might not be. Also the classic national defense (can possibly be provided privately but there is a serious potential for a free rider problem, its a true public good, so at most it would be government's contracting out for the service, and historically when the going gets really tough mercenaries are often less reliable, at least than quality armed forces, so I think its a good role for government not just to fund, but also to provide), a court system (you can have many disputes settled privately but probably not all of them), police (along with national defense, keeping the peace, and going after criminals is the main justification for government). Maybe funding of basic research (which could be and to an extent is done privately but again the free rider/public good issue is likely to cause it to be underfunded if government plays no role). And that isn't necessarily and exhaustive list.