In reply to this:
So America’s infrastructure has suffered what you describe as "decades of underfunding and inattention" ("Before Another Bridge Falls," 23 February 2008). This fact should shake the foundations of your faith in big government. Adequately supplying public goods such as roads and bridges ranks among government’s least objectionable and most widely agreed upon duties. And yet government fails even at this core task.
Perhaps one reason for this failure is that government has loaded itself with too many other tasks that drain its attention and resources away from attending well to its chief duties. Or perhaps government, even at its finest, is incurably clumsy and untrustworthy. Whatever the reason for government’s failure to supply sound infrastructure, don’t you see the danger in entrusting this same agency with the power to govern our diets, to "redistribute" our incomes, to regulate our industries, and, indeed, to intervene in nearly all of the ways that you famously demand?
Sounds like a critique of N.C. state government one of us would have made on this blog. North Carolina has over 2500 bridges in poor repair, according to the Reason Foundation, and ranks 31st in overall road performance.
-Max Borders
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