A simple comparison...

...proving why government usually does it better than private.

What do most American's think of their cellphones, much less their cellphone plans, when you look at the customer satisfaction surveys...what do they usually tell us? The majority Americans are severely disgusted and dissatisfied with their cell phone company. They complain often of shitty customer service, and shitty call service in general.

When you pickup ANY land-line phone anywhere in the USA, you immediately get dial tone. Without fail you get dial tone. Ask anyone who has lived in Europe, Asia, or another country of the developed world, and you'll find that is not the case in their country.

Why is that? Because way back when, the federal government took great expense at laying the expensive, nitty-gritty, backbone (cable/wires) of the telephone industry. It wasn't the private companies that did the expensive hardware implementation, yet they benefited greatly from that backbone that was essentially built on taxpayer funds. This backbone still exists today, and the phone companies continue to reap the benefits from the vast majority of people who continue to use land-line phones to make long-distance calls.

Now lets look at the cell phone industry that exists. It was largely built on private companies. The same companies who continue to charge exhorbent rates, and scalp their customers. The same cell phone companies who refused to put out phones that allowed users to skip voice mails without listening to them and going through that asinine menu, until Apple essentially forced the beginnings of change when they launched the first iPhones.

Moreover, anyone who knows anything about the Asian market knows that Americans are really getting screwed over in a huge way. Asian's have much more sophisticated phones, which are able to do many more things, and overall much better technology of connecting to the network even when in their subways.

The truth is that the private monopoly these companies have here in the US, actually have stifled innovation, stifled progress, produced really shitty customer and general phone service, and charged rates/fees they have had no business charging. There has been NO reason for them to shake up the system that has rewarded them with outrageous profits, while delivering service they KNOW by virtue of their offerings in the Asian market is sub-standard.

Republicans often say competition is always better for us than government run products. Not only is that statement factually untrue, it's often used in a very misleading way to scare people of government programs.

Do government programs often waste money? DUH, I live in the state that had the Big Dig abomination. Clearly, government does waste.

But, to suggest private companies don't waste is naive at best, absolute knowing falsehood at worst.

Color me as someone who'd rather spend an large amount of money to get it right the first time (the backbone of phones and the federal highway system), as opposed to paying corrupt private companies to line the pockets of greedy businesses.