Let free enterprise bloom
The Orange County (Calif.) Register: Even some of those in power in our nation have long recognized the value of competition in most effectively providing goods and services. In January 1955, the Eisenhower administration asserted, “It is the general policy of the administration that the federal government will not start or carry on any commercial activity to provide a service or product for its own use if such product or service can be procured from private enterprise through ordinary business channels.”
Oftentimes, governments at all levels do not heed this wise counsel. To highlight this problem ... the Business Coalition for Fair Competition, an association of businesses, trade groups and free-market organizations, has collected examples of egregious instances of government unfairly and unnecessarily encroaching upon the private sector.
Among these are the Federal Communications Commission’s attempts to pre-empt state laws to encourage local governments to compete with private telecommunications companies to offer subsidized high-speed Internet access and the $28 billion bug-ridden intelligence collection, mining and dissemination software the Army designed and promoted, despite the fact that soldiers preferred similar, much more user-friendly commercial software.
Such examples serve as a reminder of government’s tendency to overstep its bounds.