Private Efficiency vs. Public Inefficiency

From the front page of last Saturday's WSJ:

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina flattened two bridges, one for cars, one for trains. Sixteen months later, the automobile bridge remains little more than pilings. The railroad bridge is busy with trains.

The difference: The still-wrecked bridge is owned by the U.S. government. The other bridge is owned by railroad giant CSX Corporation. Within weeks of Katrina's landfall, CSX dispatched construction crews to fix the freight line; six months later, the bridge reopened. Even a partial reopening of the road bridge, part of U.S. Highway 90, is at least five months away.

"It shows the difference between the private sector and the public sector," says a government bureaucrat. "By the time CSX was done with its bridge, we were just getting around to letting the contract on ours."

MP: The main difference between capitalism and socialism? Capitalism works.