In our township we have private trash collection. There are, to my knowledge, two companies that provide this service, call them Co. A and Co. B.
Co. A seems to be rather larger, judging by the number of trash cans with their names on them out in front of people’s houses. However, Co. A also has terrible reliability, such that in the neighborhood email lists people are constantly complaining about missed pick ups, and report actual on time pick ups as newsworthy events.
Co. B seems to have fewer customers in the area, but are dead reliable, at least by my personal experience. (They probably are cheaper too, otherwise my wife wouldn’t have selected them, but I am not 100% on that. Doesn’t matter.)
So, over the course of the spring and early summer, Co. A’s performance has been especially abysmal. So bad that the township decided it was going to take over garbage collection, collecting extra taxes and using the money to hire a third party company to do the work based on competitive bidding.
As it turns out, they have received exactly one bid, from Co. A.
If the township is not in a position to go back on their decision and reject Co. A out of hand and leave things as they are, we will now have given Co. A a monopoly on local trash collection as a solution to the problem of how badly Co. A is performing the service of local trash collection.
At this point, one might have some questions, such as:
As Co. A was the problem to begin with, why didn’t they explicitly bar them from submitting a bid?
If the bylaws prevented them from barring particular companies from submitting a bid, why didn’t the council make sure other companies would be bidding before deciding on this course of action?
If it wasn’t simply gross incompetence that led to this situation, who got payed by Co. A to ensure that the company got a monopoly on trash collection?
When’s the next election?
Where did those buckets of tar and feathers get to?
It isn’t often one gets such a clear example of governments exacerbating the exact problem they were asked to solve. I am hoping that pressure from voters over the next few meetings will get the council to retract their ridiculous intervention, but that requires that mere incompetency was the driver. I fear that instead this process has worked precisely as intended by those controlling the process.
As I was reading, before I got to the conclusion, I was like, what is the problem here, this is what government does. Yes?
I actually have a piece in the works, about how they don't even bother with a scapegoat anymore.
This is nothing, my friend. You’ve made me want to tell my own story, but I musn’t. I’d be arrested. Not because of anything done wrong, but as a menace to the peace.
I will explain that both your problem and mine are due to the same basic issue; otherwise competent people don’t want the job. Township supervisors where I live are paid $1,500 per year. The only reasons anyone would want the job would be 1) to do a service to the community or 2) have power over others.
We have three supervisors and one is a total, everlasting jerk that no one likes. He is deliberate in his authoritarian trespasses on persons he doesn’t like, which is everyone. The road crew hates him, the sewer plant operators hate him, the cops hate him.
That known and expressed, is it any wonder that agencies and departments at the federal level have been weaponized?