OT: But Worth The Time to Read

[HeyBub]

Correct.

Whether a private enterprise makes a "profit" is often more of a bookkeeping tactic than a reflection of the real world. I'm reminded of the old REA (Railway Express Agency) that was in business for over a hundred years, starting with the Pony Express. They never made a "profit."

Even so, profits for most businesses are in the range of 2-5% of revenue. Here's a sample of usual industry profits:

• Networks - 29%

• Mining, crude oil - 24%

• Pharma - 16%

But

• Specialty retailers - 4%

• Energy - 4%

• Airlines - 4%

• Hospitals - 3%

• Pipelines - 3%

• Car parts - 1%

• Homebuilding - -9%

It doesn't take much inefficiency to crash the bottom line and governments are unrivaled at inefficiency.

[Larry Jaques]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:07:37 -0400, the infamous "J. Clarke" scrawled the following:

...or what burned to the ground waiting for said dept. 2 competing agencies had a dispute on a fire in Merlin last year and the result was that two truck companies sat and watched a house burn to the ground while the first responder's water truck lumbered there. The second responder (the company who serves me) responded with a real water truck and was prevented from stopping the blaze by the new guys on the block. It was truly criminal.

That said, there are three types of protection:

The govt's tax-base-supplied fire dept, the fire protection we pay to the fire dept ($277/year for me), and the fire insurance.