Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-06-03 07:15:05 - Graham Ellis
A sign that said "Free Computer Training" in Cambridge a couple of months ago set me thinking. And an email yesterday from someone telling me that [his] visitors to Melksham are being accommodated by W******* Town Council so won't be staying in the town got me thinking made me carry on that thought.
Is it the role of Government to compete with private business? To provide - at the taxpayer's expense - services which directly compete with the open market economy?
The Open Source movement was - in some of its elements - born out of the American Government's refusal to compete with software houses. To quote - "At the time, I worked for the American Government, so I could not sell Perl as that would be seen as competing with private companies" - Larry Wall (I may be paraphrasing slightly as he said that to me in 2000). And we should - most certainly - celebrate his move to make Perl available to the wider community rather than leaving it locked up - a useful tool, but with restricted circulation.
Businesses should be encouraged. But one of the ways to discourage them is to compete with them, on a sloping playing field, using the public purse to provide products and services at below cost to the user of the product or service. I worry when I hear of heavy cuts in public expenditure, but perhaps there will be some excellent elements if the various tiers of government manage to remove themselves from areas where they shouldn't be - competing directly with (and undercutting) otherwise buoyant private businesses.