distrust of liberals.

in studying for my communications history course, one of the readings that we had to do concerned the formulation of a communications and computing policy on the part of the canadian government in the early 1970s. and it was all that i could do to get myself through the reading without slashing important arteries, because it was just the most painful shit that anyone could ever have dreamed up. basically the government thought that it would be a good idea to have a national "computer utility" along the lines of power, phone, water, gas, and the like. so businesses could purchase their computing power just like they purchase their hydro! what a good idea!

no, what a terrible idea. the people who thought it up are a bunch of (for lack of a better word) retards. it could never work in a million years, and the debate that surrounded the issue was about as big a waste of time as a government could ever dream up ... and governments waste a lot of time. the real problem was that government bureaucrat types couldn't see past computing technology ever evolving out of the "room full of vacuum tubes" era. and if every government was as idiotic as that particular canadian government, it never would have evolved out of that era.

let's say that the canadian government wasn't presiding over a backwater republic, and that our industries actually had some real influence when it came to computing technology. let's say that for god-knows-what reason, canada was the world's leader in computing technology. and that once computers turned into big hot shit, our government stepped in and nationalized the computer industry and got us a national computer utility. thus we would have big'ol computing plants full of room-sized contraptions of vacuum tubes, and businesses would pay to have those computers do their computing. now what incentive would our good old Computer Utility have to do the kind of research that was necessary to develop microprocessors and personal computers and the internet all that fun stuff? none! none whatsoever. in fact it would be counterproductive to the utility's functioning, because when businesses got microprocessor technology, they wouldn't need to have their computing power piped in from who knows where... instead they could do it in-house, like they do now. plus the whole fact that a computer utility could never, ever work, and is completely retarded. this whole policy debate is a bunch of politicians with absolutely no comprehension of the technologies involved trying to butt into legitimate business like a really drunk guy trying to get into a bar.

so there's my distrust of liberals in a nutshell. i mean, i've got some very liberal points of view in terms of socialized medicine and public broadcasting and monopoly restrictions and that sort of thing ... but when it comes to industry, the invisible hand of the market really is where it's at. it's really kind of a dilemma, after all. public services mean that they don't seek to make a profit from us, which keeps prices down in the short run, keeps distribution egalitarian, and avoids all the troublesome dangers of corporate monopolies like price fixing and the like. yet in the long run, bureaucracies tend to look out for their own interests, and if we're not careful, those same public utilities have no incentive to innovate and to bring prices down in the long run. corporate services seek to profit from us, with all the attendant worries to that fact, but their profit-seeking nature drives them to seek economy and efficiency and avoid wastefulness - those that don't avoid wastefulness just end up going out of business. i suppose after all it's just a question of what services we care most about and what we care most about in each of those services.

i really wish i knew more about economics. hmmm.... one day perhaps.