except I'd like to point out that we have exposed some of those things to the profit motive. Think of all the private companies that profited immensely from the Iraq war. Flawed free market ideology applied to death and destruction, the belief that private companies are more "efficient". It used to be that the military drove its own mail trucks and peeled its own potatoes and did its own laundry and fought in combat. All of those functions have been privatized to one degree or another, at tremendous expense to the taxpayer (and they taxpayer's grandchildren) while enriching a select few well-connected "contractors"

And back here at home, all sorts of public assets are being privatized. The tollway connecting Chicago to Indiana was sold (or leased or whatever) to a private FOREIGN company a few years ago. And just this year Chicago took a payment of a billion dollars (not sure if that's totally accurate but it was BIG) from a private company in exchange for rights to the parking meters. And sure enough, a few weeks ago, parking meters all over the city doubled in price, some places it quadrupled. It's not the money that bothers me as much as the fact that I'm plunking quarters into the coffers of a for-profit company whenever I park somewhere. Both of these examples illustrate the following point. Infrastructure (tollways/urban parking) shouldn't be a for-profit transaction. People are forced to buy a product that used to be a public asset. It's the worst kind of monopoly because there is no "free market" for roads and parking. It's bullshit!

And our society will crumble because of it.