Once again, it’s the trash service thing, this time it’s Springfield:
A study of Springfield’s trash and recycling collection finds it is not the most efficient system available, and city council members are looking at some potential changes.
Springfield has a free market system, with 12 licensed residential haulers within city limits. Citizens had previously expressed concerns about wear and tear on streets, noise and traffic congestion. A Kansas City consulting firm, Burns and McDonnell, hired by the city, gathered opinions from people by phone, in a survey and in open houses.
They found Springfield residents pay more than people in some surrounding communities, without added services like recycling or yardwaste and bulky item pickup. It found most citizens care about the environment, but only 55 percent recycle.
This is only a preliminary study, but the city has given waste haulers the two year notice that would come along with a change eliminating the citizens’ choice.
It seems a small thing, the trash hauling bit, that I harp on it over and over, but that’s because, at the root, the principle that the city can mandate a single provider for mandatory service flies against a whole lot of liberty and limited government. It’s not even that the trash trucks provided the roads they run on, which is the rationale behind government-granted monopolies in cable television, telephone, and electrical service. The “principle” as it is is not limited to trash service and could be extended to grocery stores and gas stations (whose trucks use the roads too, donchaknow it would be more efficient if there were only one set of trucks on the road every day!).
But I guess that ship has sailed.
Meanwhile, watch as I, like Natty Bumpo, have to move further and further into the country as “civilization” advances.
