Thought of the Day 09.11.09

My wife recently started selling some of my books online, and, amazingly, 8 of the 25 sold in the first week. As a result, she’s been going to the Post Office a lot and has learned all about mail options; “media mail” usually being the best choice.

To avoid waiting in line every time, she asked if there was another option, and the clerk recommended using the automated kiosk. Unfortunately, the kiosk doesn’t dispense media mail postage, which meant she had to wait in line again on the next visit. So this time she asked if she could buy postage online, and was told she could. But again she discovered that the website only offered first class and priority mail, so it was back to the line again.

When she told me this saga, all I could think was: this is what happens when the government runs something. Sometimes people are great, but other times people are incompetent to a degree you don’t expect in an ordinary retail store.

And it’s experiences like this that influence my thinking when someone tells me that the best approach to any of our problems is to let the federal government solve them for us.