Government Competition Again?

Recently local business owners expressed their excitement over a "prime" piece of Gulf-front property being developed for a resort. These business owners feel this will bring more business to their area. Sounds great right?

So who is offering the property for development? The US Air Force. That's right. According to the news report, the Federal Government is looking to make better use of "it's" properties. In this case, apparently they'll charge rent for a private company to develop and use the beach property for a resort. What's wrong with that, right?

Here's the thing; is our Federal Government supposed to be in the business of land development? If the land is sitting idle, why not turn the property back over, completely, to private industry. In addition to this, many private enterprise operations (especially off-shore oil rigs) get denied for the area because they'd have an "adverse impact" on the military's ability to perform training missions in the area.

I've ranted on this before and I believe few people see the actual long term damage done by government that controls more and competes more with private sector businesses. Just look at the local trend; city rents prime office space to private company, city gives property to local company and now, Air Force rents out prime beach property for resort development.

Though this issue will probably have little affect in my lifetime, I keep on this because the slow disappearance of free enterprise will eventually lead to the total loss of freedom of the people to conduct commerce without significant government competition.

Pay attention, the returns on your investment are great!