Some people are dead-set against any organized collection in any scenario. Even if it costs more, they feel that the ability to choose and the preservation of what they see as a free market is worth it. Often, these same comments are followed by a “what next?” and some speculation about the iceberg of government interference in private lives that organized trash collection is only the tip of.
Well, that slippery slope can slide the other way too. If we can't even consider organized hauling -- which 72% of the cities in the United States have, and you can't blame on Obama or anything else recent when cities like Minneapolis have had organized collection since 1902, making it hard to argue that it's somehow "un-American" -- then I suppose the next step after squelching any of
that talk would be to roll back other things that are handled by government on a local/regional basis, like sanitary sewer.
Wouldn't a truly free market approach be to remove the government sewers, or brick them up, and leave people to contract with private vendors to install any of the various individual sewage treatment systems that are available through many different suppliers, servicing companies, and technologies?
That would be a big mess, though, in more ways than one! To me, the savings of having a central sewage treatment plant and all the benefits of a publicly owned sanitary sewer system far outweigh any choice I gave up when I decided to live in a city with sewer, rather than the outer suburbs or rural areas where I could choose (and pay more for) my own method for disposal of such waste. I just can't see that trash hauling is that much different in principle -- if it makes economic sense, and saves the average resident money and time, I'm willing to consider it. Just as I'll sign a long-term contract for a service if the discount is good enough, I'm willing to give up the ability to choose my own trash hauler if it saves enough money and the service is the same.
I think a basic purpose of local government is to represent us as a group of citizens on the local level in precisely the things like water, sewer, waste removal, and roads that make the existence of a city as we know it possible. If other means of attaining the goal work better, that's great; I have no love of government involvement for its own sake. (In some areas, it
does make more economic sense to have individual sewage treatment rather than sanitary sewer infrastructure.) But I won't accept that the whole discussion is off-limits for ideological reasons.
Labels: organized collection
