Cats can be dogs

PANAMA. Philip Edmonston in his June 30 article, “conservatives can be socialists”, brings to our attention the interesting fact that most governments nowadays are socialist in many respects; and I would say tainted with this affliction since this tendency is a slippery slope inclined leftward.

Their problem is not being one thing or the other but otherwise? think about that one for a moment.

The neo-liberals or middle of the road policies are comfortable for politicians whose main objective is to be elected and stay in office, even if it means leaving their country just as they found it, or most probably worse, for in human affairs inertia is a negative tendency.

Being infected with a little socialism is like having a little cancer.

And if we pay attention to world affairs and the economic and social hurricane we are headed into, we surely must be aware that whatever we have been doing is not right; so, either we move really left, which has not worked well for anyone, or we become real capitalist, just as our forefathers intended us to be.

Every little bit of government we suffer is like chemotherapy, and we know that this type of poisonous medication should be carefully dosed and administered.

If a little socialism or redistribution is good and works, why not have more of it?

The first Pilgrims that landed in the US tried it and most of them died of hunger, until they switched to capitalism.

Did we learn nothing from this experiment?

Is the cure for “dysfunctional price gouging business”, nationalization?; in other words, changing a private monopoly for one run by politicians.

Why does this make me very uneasy?

Would it not be preferable to open up the service to all comers, and let government act within its oversight role?

And, what is a fair price?

Is the H2O that the government monopoly of IDAAN sells, priced fairly?

We know that 60% of the stuff is lost in broken pipelines and in thousands of homes that have no meters.

IDAAN says that the average consumption is 125 gallons per person per day.

I’m in the upper middle class bracket, have a swimming pool, and my household average is about 25 pppd.

From the very moment that something belongs to the government it belongs to no one.

And how good is the accounting of a government entity that has no true incentives for excellence, and carries thousands of dead headers in its payroll, which we Panamanians call “botellas”?

Fact: only 9% of the social expenditures of the Panamanian government reach the really poor; the rest is lost somewhere in the process.

Meanwhile, this kind of government process, that takes money from the taxpayers, dulls the natural charitable nature of the people; for now they come to think that it’s the governments business to be charitable.

Is a slippery slope towards serfdom what we really need?