HOV ECONOMICS

I was driving out the Hamptons today. Wife and two kids in tow. The traffic was not terrible. I contemplated taking the HOV ,since I clearly qualified entering during rush hour, but I noticed something that reminded me of our current economic situation: Instead of driving in the HOV lane (a municipal/government idea to promote car pooling and economical consumption) in the designated entrances and exits, I watched other cars switching lanes freely to the convenience of the speed they were going. No cops enforcing the HOV law. No dangers, just a whole lot of highway real estate used.

The interesting part of this is that there is a law prohibiting cars from jumping HOV lanes as well as a minimum occupancy requirement, yet who really wants to police such a trivial traffic offense? We pay our police officers to to police, but how punishable is crossing the HOV lanes in reality?

This is a government idea that is supposed to promote traffic efficiency, but in the end no one follows the rules. So we end up with two wasted lanes of highway (four if you include both sides) and no one to admit it may have been a mistake.

Fast forward to today. We are living in a central bank/bailout economy, where we keep throwing money at the problem without getting to the real meat of it. No one to police them while they try to "fix" our current economic issue. And when a central bank passes on yet another bailout the market tanks. What's the definition of insane? Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.

No one, especially our government, will admit there is an ideological problem with "bailing out" a true capitalist society, because that would be like admitting the system is a failure (yet a true capitalist society would function more like a Darwinist society where the weakest are allowed to fail) and then there would be no confidence left in the short run. But the question I ask is this:

Is it better to put newspaper over the spilled milk on the floor and cover the problem temporarily, or get down on the ground clean it up and explain the lesson of being more careful?

Maybe it's simpler for me since I'm a parent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tDj02kUZCc