"You never give me your money..."

I'm in an economics class...yes, I'm back in school, but that's quite besides the point. Tonight we were discussing several things that inspired my cogs and whatnot to start turning and I think the spark point was the topic of social security and it's impending doom. Now the magic word, of course, was "privatization." I know two things about the world, businesses are extremely efficient because if they aren't, they die. The second things I know is that the government wastes more time and money doing whatever they do, that if there was an antonym for efficient, it would be government. This brings me back to "privatization"- what if...some sort of magical world, everything would be privatized. Now, follow my thoughts here because parts of it are easy, others...not so much. My first thoughts of government functions was the functions of the Secretary of State - I thought of this, naturally, because the State of Michigan will be all but shut down starting Monday. Now, hypothetically speaking, why couldn't we (as a State) franchise out the duties of the Secretary of State? Think about it - when was the last time you went to a SoS office? Terribly inefficient, but what if a company paid the State to run the office and then any fees they collect from being a well-operated facility, they profit from. Guess what the State just did - cut costs of running the stupid office AND made franchising fees from it, which they can use to pay a examination team to make sure these offices are operating fairly within structured guidelines...just like a franchised restaurant - concept! Solution - Nathan. What are your thoughts? My next post I'll tackle some more useless government utilities...tomorrow night. Ta.