Of all of the things Mark Twain said,

the one that seems to stick in my head the most is when he said that 'A camel is a horse designed by a committee'.

That is a truth you can pass on and put in The Gosppel According to Piccolo right on page one.

It seems that everyone and their cousin will have a bright idea and want to have it included.

Of course, when the thing, whatever it is, gets finished you can rest assured that it will be big and cumbersome and pretty much useless.

I am astonished that things in this planet work as well as they do.

Let's say the problem is hooking up New York with a direct, non stop train line because, for some reason there are aa lot of people that have lost their driver's licenses and are afraid to fly.

A governmental subcommittee is given the job of connecting the two by rail.

It seems like a pretty straight forward operation to me if you'd just give it to a single senator from Hawaii or Alaska to work it out. Inside a short period of time, things would start happening and in a reasonable short period of time, the railway would link the two.

The reaason I said giving the job to a senator from Alaska or Hawaii is because he has no real vested interest in it as it really does not concern him.

If you gave the same job to a committee in congress, the job would turn into a total hash because every single one of these idiots would decide that the route should include their home state and that it should service several cities in it.

Of course, the result would be a 17,000 mile rat maze streching from Coast to coast along a route covering most of the states in the union and it would take weeks for a person to get from New York to Los Angeles.

The cost of such an undertaking would be astronomical.

Of course, if the private sector looked at it and it seemed profitable, they would be on it in a heartbeat and it would be as straight as an arrow and they would redesign the train to travel almoat as fast as the SST.

A big part of the reason is because there would be one single person in charge who would make all of the major decisions, delegating the minor ones as needed to get the job done.

I drive the Pennsylvania turnpike all the time and it is without a doubt the worst deal for the money I have ever seen in this country. The tolls are insane and keep going up regularly, the road is in lousy condition and there is always work going on rebuilding sections that were not built right the first time.

I'd bet that if they privatized the road, the company that took it over could build three times the road at a fraction of the cost and charge a nominal toll and make money hand over fist.

Think that's going to happen?

Fat chance.


my other blog is:

http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Posted 1/3 with a dateline of 3/3 because I foresee IP problems at home.