Hi El Kabong...

What needed consumer benefit does the DMV provide? To keep this from being a trick question, here are some possible benefits...

-make roads safer by limiting entry to the 'privilege' of driving (but the existing requirement that we have insurance would, in the abscence of the DMV, take care of this issue).

-provisioning of identification (But I am against mandatory universal ID as it is a basic violation of human liberty, and besides DMV ID is basically useless at solving the problem)

-making it easier to recover your vehicle if it is stolen because it is identified (but as in #1, giving some external entity a financial interest in recovery of your vehicle would better handle this).

-I certainly do not, in any way shape or form, consider it a 'consumer benefit' to suck up to the government in order to secure the rather basic human right (not privilege) of human transport. Yes...I honestly believe that I have a basic human right to drive my car on the public roads, subject to the same sorts of 'time place and manner' restrictions that apply to my First Amendment rights to free speech.

So...does that cover the possible consumer benefits provided by the DMV, or did I miss something?

I don't know about the position of other's, but I am not arguing that the government is _generally_ more responsive to people's needs.

I am arguing that the empirical evidence that I have seen shows that municipal provisioning of 'public utilities' works better than market based provisioning of those same services.

You write this "Similarly, is a brilliant, innovative FTTH expert likely to look for a civil service job with his town, or with a company that eats, lives and breathes FTTH?"

To which I would offer the observation that in my area (Sonoma County 'Telecom Valley' California), all of the companies that eat, live and breath networking have laid off all of their brilliant engineers. And every commercial effort to provide high speed internet is suffering.

I will further offer that a large number of the truly brilliant people who come up with truly brilliant ideas in our society are not motivated by money...

And I will finish by reiterating that municipal utilities appear to provide better service at a lower cost than private utilities. This is observation (and of course subject to observer's bias on my part!), not theory.

Rich Gibson, I am unable to decode the meaning of the paragraph, "The DMV slam is always used to indict government provisioning of services, but the key difference is that basically no one involved with the DMV transaction is served by the DMV in any meaningful way. It is a government 'service' that _may_ be needed for tracking/etc but neither the consumer nor DMV benefit."

The DMV definitely provides a needed consumer benefit. Perhaps because they're so poor at providing it it's hard for you to imagine that that is exactly what it does.

And jleader I agree wholeheartedly with your Scott Adams quote. Cable service has sucked for a long time because most all of them have monopolies granted by local governments. Now that satellite is coming on strong, my local company is offering all sorts of deals, discounts and much more responsive service.

If you guys think of the government as generally MORE responsive to people's needs you're welcome to your delusions.

Everything about the government militates against giving really outstanding service. One prime reason is that the nature of government makes it hard to adequately compensate truly brilliant people who come up with truly brilliant ideas.

There's a parallel in the private sector. A corporation has a cafeteria. Should they run it themselves or outsource it? Outsourcing will almost always be a better deal. Why? Let's say the cafeteria will cost them 1% of their gross. A genius who could slash a massive 25% off of their cafeteria bill will only save a quarter of 1% for the company. But if that same guy works for a cafeteria contractor he will lower their costs tremendously. He would be a very minor cog in a very big machine at general corporation but I heroic genius at a cafeteria contractor.

So what kind of company is he likely to end up at? What kind of company is likely to get the best cafeteria managers?

Similarly, is a brilliant, innovative FTTH expert likely to look for a civil service job with his town, or with a company that eats, lives and breathes FTTH?

Specialization is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's the reason you can go out and buy a pair of shoes instead of having to make them yourself.

El Kabong, that reminds me of what Scot Adams said a few years back about cable vs. DSL (paraphrased from memory): the phone companies are staffed by slow moving, arrogant incompetents, but cable companies are staffed by people who couldn't get a job at the phone company! At least local agencies have to answer to local voters.

El Kabong,

Municipal provisioning of water, sewar, power and data services have a rich and effective history.

Almost all municipal run utilities perform far better than their market run counterparts.

The DMV slam is always used to indict government provisioning of services, but the key difference is that basically no one involved with the DMV transaction is served by the DMV in any meaningful way. It is a government 'service' that _may_ be needed for tracking/etc but neither the consumer nor DMV benefit.

That is not the case with municipally controlled utilities.

I think the municipal FTTH deployments have a better track record so far than the private one(s).

Lemme get this straight. To assure open access for FTTH you want to put it in the hands of local government bureaucrats.

Sort of like getting your Net access from the Department of Motor Vehicles. I'll pass.