“I will
hook up a five liter bag of IV fluids, but this
horse must go to another hospital for colic
surgery.” Dr. Bodner explained. “He could drop dead
at any moment.”
Before John placed the period at the end of his
sentence, the gelding exploded in a death panic. He
glanced off the metal panels and plowed through the
small opening leading from the large animal
treatment room into the grooming area. Tables,
clippers, scissors, and brushes ricocheted around
the small room while the horse flailed
uncontrollably before collapsing in a heap. What
began as a simple appointment of a horse with a
belly ache, suddenly became complicated. Extracting
an eleven hundred pound dead horse back over the 32
circuitous feet from the grooming room through the
treatment room to the nearest door would be an
ominous task. Let’s leave Dr. Bodner with his
dilemma and jump to a similar predicament which
happened this winter in Colorado.
The “Washington Post” reported two Air Force Academy
cadets snow showed into an old ranger cabin and
found the frozen carcasses of six dead cows trapped
inside. Due to the eco-sensitive nature of being in
the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area, US Forest
Service officials are considering three options:
One, use explosives to break up the cows. Two, burn
down the cabin. Three, helicopter the carcasses out.
Each solution is quirky by itself, but I will bet
they will begin with option one, which will quickly
ignite into option two, which will then default to
option three to clean up the remnants. If you get
the feeling correcting this mishap could get
expensive, we have arrived at my point.
Compared to the private sector, big government is
inherently inefficient and expensive. Ruling class
advocates for an intrusive federal government claim
our problems are caused by government being too
small so they expand it at every opportunity. Here
are two examples: Medicare and Medicaid effectively
removed free market influences from health care
delivery and costs subsequently sky rocketed, yet
they demand more control via Obamacare. Similarly,
by eliminating coal generating plants, the cheapest
source of electricity, the EPA is about to drive the
cost of energy to heights similar to health care.
Predictably, they promote and will force more
expensive and unreliable wind generation as an
alternative. This is wrong. When government is so
small you barely know it exists, is when various
commodities becomes both affordable and available.
To close the loop, Dr. Bodner removed the horse
carcass, step by step, one manageable piece at a
time. There were no explosives, fire, or
helicopters, nor did he seek the permission or
counsel of any government agency…oh, and it did not
cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Such is how life operates in the private sector.
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