Friday, December 30, 2005

Bye Bye Blue Sky

Dear Blue Sky,

Thank you for your great service to the people of American Samoa with your cool cell phones, competitive prices and neat promotions. But I like to save the ASG, Governor Togiola and the Fono the trouble and ask you to cease and desist with your operations. To tell you the truth, we don’t want you anymore.

See, with you around, the danger of the ASTCA not repaying the $10 million LBJ loan is great. We do not want to pay for the actual costs of healthcare individually. We want our telecommunication consumers and retirees to pay for it in our elaborate redistribution scheme. American taxpayers are starting to refuse to pick up the tab this time around and are actually demanding accountability. They’re horrible, cruel and mean for doing so, and so it’s time to steal from somebody else.

Living life without being personally financially responsible for the costs of healthcare has been good to us. We don’t have to watch our weight, exercise and eat healthy to avoid such health problems that plague our society today. What is responsibility anyway? Plus, we can't ever imagine giving up spending money on alcohol, cigarettes, SUVs, and other luxuries and pass-time favorites before paying for healthcare ourselves.

Yeah, and we really don’t want to pool our money together because some say we’re just too stupid to account for it on our own. We can’t learn by trial and error, and market incentives and economic principles don’t apply in our territory. Some people also suggest charity, but who really does that? Our politicians don’t do it, but they sure are pretty generous with other people’s money.

No one really cares to help his or her neighbor voluntarily and everyone should be spared from the embarrassment of asking for a helping hand. Hell, we even made it illegal to stand alongside the road and ask for money.

Nope, people should be forced to give because their property doesn’t belong to them. You have no right to your property. It belongs to the good of society and to the will of the majority.

If it wasn’t for that damn constitution, we could vote your competitive business off our island tomorrow. As a result, we’re going to have to work around it.

If you start to lower prices to attract more customers away from your government competitor, we will pass a law to set fair market prices for you and your customers. If that doesn’t work, and consumers still freely choose your company over the government, we will vote in a quota system and limit the number of cell phones you can sell. If you’re still around, we’ll bury you underneath a 1000 pages worth of regulations and complicate your life with ridiculous licensing requirements.

We just can’t thank you enough for being silent on this issue, Blue Sky. It’s easy to sacrifice the lamb when it’s not squealing to stay alive.