You want unfettered, deregulated business?

For anyone who still clamors for unfettered and unregulated business--yeehaw!--take yourselves to our good friend's country of China. They give us yet one more example of how great an idea unregulated Capitalism really is right now:

China’s Bridges Are Falling Down

Early Friday morning, just before dawn, four trucks were driving on a 10-month-old ramp to a bridge in Harbin, a major city in northeast China, when the deck suddenly tilted and collapsed, sending the trucks crashing to the pavement almost 100 feet below.
Three people were killed, and five were injured. Photos of the accident indicate that the trucks were carrying heavy cargoes, including stones, and were likely overloaded. But accounts by journalists and photos from the scene also suggest serious problems with the bridge itself. Some images show that key structural components were stuffed with sticks, pebbles and bags of unidentified materials.

Nobody in China was surprised by this. Since 2007, China has experienced at least 18 bridge collapses resulting in 135 deaths and untold economic hardship, according to records aggregated by the South China Morning Post, the leading English-language newspaper in Hong Kong. These are not mere footbridges: They are major, expensive spans connecting key corridors. The almost 330-foot-long section that collapsed on Friday, for example, is part of the more than 9-mile-long, nearly $300 million Yangmingtan Bridge, a span that connects the two banks of Harbin, a city of 10 million people.
What is causing this epidemic of collapse? In Harbin, some authorities were quick to blame the overloaded trucks and then -- in an act of revealing bureaucratic cowardice -- to claim that they couldn’t locate the contractors responsible for the span (statements subsequently denied by higher-ups).

China’s netizens, accustomed to bureaucratic double-talk, were hardly inclined to believe the local government’s explanation, no matter what it was. Instead, they turned to what is almost uniformly the explanation for everything that goes wrong in China these days: corruption. “Every time I walk down the street and see a new project about to break ground, I know that several billionaires are about to be made,” wrote Li Chengpeng, a well-known blogger and agitator, on Monday (as translated by Tea Leaf Nation, an English-language blog). “In this country, the completion of an infrastructure project lays the groundwork for the beginning of an anti-corruption project.”

So there's your answer, all you Tea Partiests and Libertarians. China. Unfettered Capitalism, no Environmental Protection Agency--everything you'd want in a country and government.

But nothing the people want.

And if you want no government at all, take the now-old suggestion and move your sorry body to Somalia.

You'll love it there.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-29/china-s-bridges-are-falling-down.html