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For perspective, if you filled this volume of typical one litre milk cartons and laid them end-to-end, the line would span 288,000 km, enough to circle more than seven times around the Earth’s equator (40,075 km). Editors, columnists, talk show hosts, callers and letter-writers have rapidly identified the fact something stinks in the city, but I have yet to hear anyone ask the most important question. It is a question of philosophy, not of operations: what is the ideology behind a government monopoly on the water supply and why does it lead inevitably to this type of problem?
There will be at least three investigations into this event – city, province and federal governments will all take a crack at it and are doomed for the same reasons. Can you recall a government investigation revealing that the problem was government interference in the lives of citizens and then taking action to return control back to the people? I don’t remember one either.
Every time the state uses its power of unilateral force to take control of a part of an otherwise free people’s economy the logical outcome is a stifling of competition and an eventual wasting away of infrastructure, flexibility and innovation. As the bureaucracy takes over costs rise, interests become entrenched and institutional sclerosis sets in. Since the overflow switches for sewage treatment are required, Ottawa is obviously not capable of handling all the waste all the time and must periodically dump raw sewage into the river – how often does this happen anyway?
In his Weekly Journal column Walter Robinson correctly says that if this incident was perpetrated by a private company there would be many heads rolling, massive lawsuits and fines, and likely the bankruptcy of a business followed by jail times. If a business ran the water supply and sewage treatment the investors and the board would be so afraid of such an incident, knowing their assets and livelihood depended on excellent performance every day, they would be darn sure no raw sewage would ever reach the river. If it did, there would be a clear line of true accountability – and I don’t mean a few suspensions or firings. Compensation would be obtainable in court for anyone injured by such an action.
When government owns the facility, there are only underlings to fire – no business owners are liable and no compensation is possible in most cases – how can we all sue an entity (government) that is us? It is not simply that there is a double standard in the pursuit of justice between public and private sectors, for there can be no justice from the public sector, by its very definition. It is a variation of the tragedy of the commons, where a resource is squandered because everyone owns it but no one owns it.
The ideology behind state-owned facilities of any kind is collectivism – the ideology that holds that the individual is not an end to himself, but is only a tool to serve the ends of the group. From this follows the notion that individual freedoms may be removed by majority rule and conformity to the group enforced by legislation.
In a free country all supply, distribution and treatment of water would be done by private individuals acting alone or in groups such as corporations. All consumers would be free to buy supply and service from any producer. Producers would be completely accountable to consumers or be quickly driven out of business through competition to provide the best service at the lowest price. No one would have to worry about failing infrastructure because it would be the responsibility of the producers, who would naturally see it as the key to their success and a valuable asset to be preserved and enhanced as economically as possible.
We aren’t hearing, and certainly won’t hear from the three inquiries, that water management should be returned to the people – privatized to restore the stolen accountability, efficiency and innovation that is the birthright of a free people. To do so would be to confront the elephant in the room, challenge the dogma of socialism, require individuals to be accountable to themselves (uncomfortable for many) and dismantle the bureaucracy of the state that has so many politically entrenched interests.
(C) Orleans Star