[JoeRedskin]

Wow. Let's all just miss the point.

Democratic governments, by nature are less efficient b/c they are concerned with fairness. National Socialism, Facism and other autocratic/authoritarian forms of government are more likely to be "efficient" b/c they need not worry about being re-elected.

The original comment was something like "when have we relied on governments reducing inefficiency". I only used the fascist/national socialism example b/c of the infamous quote about Mussolini and the trains. To me, it summed up the inevitable price we pay for living in a democracy.

Obviously, their are exceptions, but, in general, and b/c we value fairness, any time we devise a system to determine how benefits should be divided, built into that system will be ways to challenge and test the fairness of the govt's actions. An authoritarian form of govt. (such as Nazism or Fascism) is not bound by these strictures and simply says "You get X, if you don't like it tough sh**."

That was my only point.