Ken's sadly humorous rant about the bureaucratic nightmare of getting a fictitious business name reflects some recent experience I had with Texas' drivers' license authority, the Department of Public Safety (a name with chilling parallels to the Committee for Public Safety in the French Revolution). After wasting many hours to conclude the nine minute transaction of renewing my driver's license, I could only conclude that such galling inefficiency was the result of monopoly power. In the case of the DPS, it's ARMED monopoly power.
I asked the woman who finally did accept the paper work for my license whether the half-day I wasted at the DPS office was typical. I was informed that, no, it was actually a "light" day. Most days were worse. I asked her whether other people had ever made the observation that the office's procedures seemed inefficient. She responded that yes, it was a common observation but "What people don't understand is that driving is a privilege, not a right."
Rather than continue the dialogue, I counted myself lucky to have gotten through the ordeal and left, more confirmed than ever in my opinion that a little competition would be a good tonic to most ills of government inefficiency.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<burchg@liddellsapp.com> Attorney ::: Director, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must
be driven into practice with courageous impatience." -- Admiral Hyman Rickover