Olivia Barr, Question 2, Chapter 4

The issues discussed in this chapter directly affect my life on a daily basis. With regard to the example of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), it is true that they often have inconvenient hours, and can be very busy, which makes replacing your license a big pain; however, it is also true that the issuing of licenses is a necessity that should be controlled by the private sector (government) because it helps prevent from unfair pricing, and bad practices. The same goes with roads. It would take a very long time to get the public to find the building of a bridge, and when they came to an agreement the builder would probably be low cost, and have shoddy practices. In contrast, the government takes over with these types of projects, and applies tax dollars to pay for the construction, which is outsourced to a public company that has competed with other companies to earn the job, thus insuring (theoretically) the best product and the fairest price. The government can also use tax dollars with poor digression, like when president Bush chose Texas as the site for a new nuclear particle accelerator, even though Illinois already had a lot of the necessary infrastructure (so it would cost less in Illinois), this project was later abandoned after 1 billion tax dollars were spent on the project. In short, these things affect me because I have to trust that the government will make good decisions with my tax dollars (when I file taxes), because if it were left to civilians, we would probably not have good bridges, and there would be many more drivers licenses with false information on them.