Consumers & Citizens

Having watched the Sunday morning politics shows followed by a blur of commercials I was struck by an idea in the shower this morning.

As consumers we're treated by even the biggest companies with the most respect. Their profit comes from our wallets thus the pitch is to create products and services that benefits its customers.

However, as citizens, if we do not take advantage of the government programs, we lose out, funding goes to projects that the mayors, senators, or public leaders dictate. There really isn't motivation to work towards the citizen's desire in the same manner companies do. Case in point: the Iraq war, health care, welfare, etc. 

The private industry claims to work for us, because if they didn't, we would buy the competition; the government claims to do the work of the people even though they publicly do stuff we do not approve of, because there is no competition (no alternatives to choose from). At one point, congress used to be ran differently, because there was competition (the commies)...

Perhaps, future leaders of the free world need to compete over our approval? Imagine if on issues like health care or retirement... government competed?

Perhaps such a world is only a pipe dream... *<:,)

~J out