Friday, September 13, 2013

Seriously? We Have Been Doing This?

I'm astonished the government has been operating this clandestine program.

No, not NSA spying.  That is not surprising. 

I mean the subsidies from NASA to billionaire owners of corporate jets.  You didn't know?  See what I mean?

The lagniappe?  After sucking down all that heavily discounted jet fuel, now Google is encrypting, so the NSA can't spy on them any more!  It's a beautiful thing.

3 comments:

Joel said...

I know this looks like another pubic agency gone bad but.... if a government agency rents out unused space at an airfield for a tidy sum and then charges tenants fuel on a cost plus basis - this is bad?

This is bad for taxpayers?

A better question might be whether the government should own things like airfields - but if they do I wish more government agencies managed their assets like that - and so should you

Anonymous said...

Google is encrypting the messages sent over the internet, then grants the NSA access to their servers. So what exactly does the encryption stop?

Mungowitz said...

Anon: You are right, of course.

Joel: To the extent the government is providing PRIVATE services (and air services to individuals is a private good, not a public good), in competition with private providers, it is preventing innovation and subsidizing those who are best off, at the expense of taxpayers who can't possibly qualify for this special treatment.

If the state owned EVERYTHING, I suppose it would be an improvement if SOME things were rented out to rich people. But why not sell off all that excess capacity, and stop holding on to all that space for reasons of pure bureaucratic empire-building? You can't be so much of an incrementalist that you think that the government should hold empty hangars and terminals, just so it can rent out the "extra space" at 1/200 of its actual cost, can you? REVOLUTION, baby! Sell, baby, sell!