Before You Run, You Gotta Crawl

(Sequel to Tuesday's post)

Socialism, according to Webster's: [bold added]

1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
2 b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

OK, I get it, young Socialists, you want a world with no profit, because profit makes it possible to have obscenely rich billionaires and stark inequality.

Last November I experienced the joys of the DMV.

So let's get rid of profit by having government own the means of production for all goods and services. But before we put the government in charge of the millions of products in our consumer society, why don't we take a close look at how well the government runs just one function? Let's look at the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

SF Chronicle, August 7:

Their constituents have bombarded them with stories of daylong waits to renew driver’s licenses or obtain new Real ID licenses, which will be needed to board domestic airline flights starting in 2020 unless people show a passport. Even people who have made appointments have reported waiting for hours, and the appointments themselves are booked up to three months out

San Diego Channel 10 News:

In July, lawmakers added an extra $16 million to the DMV budget. The extra funding would allow them to hire 500 more employees, offer Saturday services and upgrades to some self-service kiosks....

DMV officials say you can expect to see reduced wait times by the middle of September, but they don't expect what they call "reasonable" wait times until December. They said that means 15 minutes for an appointment and 45 minutes for walk-ins.

SF Chronicle, August 8:

A Republican-backed proposal to audit the state Department of Motor Vehicles to investigate the reasons for its customer-service meltdown died Wednesday when three Democratic senators did not vote.

The DMV service is abominable, it asks for $millions more to solve the wait problem, and pleas for a DMV audit get killed in committee. Under socialism there's no Amazon DMV or Nordstrom DMV to switch to. You can file a complaint, but we've noticed that you've been complaining a lot lately....