We don't care. We don't have to.

Sometimes proponents of bigger government express puzzlement as to why the rest of us think that's a really bad idea. Herewith a simple illustration.

In January I experienced a service issue using King County Transit, the Seattle area bus/train operator. I filed a report online explaining the incident and asking a simple question: Why did this happen? Four weeks later I received this response:

 Hello and thank you for contacting King County Metro Transit. A report has been generated in your name regarding the information that you provided to us.  The report will be forwarded to the appropriate Metro Transit department for review.

Again, thank you for contacting King County Metro Transit and have a great day. 

Now, this tell me a couple of things:

1. Responding to a customer is of such little import to them that they couldn't be bothered for four weeks. 

2. My question will now enter another phase of bureaucracy of indeterminate length before being answered. 

If you were running a business with a terrible reputation for efficiency and customer responsiveness, would you reinforce that perception with such a late, lame response? And then would you express puzzlement as to why your customers wouldn't want you to take over even more of their lives?

To paraphrase Lily Tomlin's send-up of ATT in the 1970s:

"We don't care. We don't have to...we're the government."