Busing our way to bankrupcy: whatever happened to capitalism?

I lived in Guatemala for two years as a missionary for the LDS church. During that time, my means of travel was mostly on buses like the one below. This didn't bother me at all; I enjoyed riding on the buses. I enjoyed being among the people, and feeling like I was one of them. I enjoyed talking to them as I rode with them. I couldn't find my own decent picture (or one I took) of one of the buses, so I borrowed this one from the web:

My first ride in one of these buses scared me and made me quite sick. It wasn't quite like the public transit I have used in my home town of Salt Lake City. First of all, the bus does not have air conditioning or a heater; it is either very cold or very hot inside. Secondly, the buses are much more crowded. I couldn't believe how many people they had fit into our bus. I thought there was no way they could possibly squeeze more people on, but we kept stopping, picking up people standing on the side of the road. Finally, the bus driver seemed bent on driving like a maniac. On the curvy mountain roads of Guatemala, my head started to spin as we raced past other buses. Later, it donned on me that the drivers go so fast to get in front of the other buses. It's simple capitalism to get to the passengers before the competitors. Over the two years, I became accustomed to the Guatemalan bus system.

Upon my return to the states, I again began using the buses as my primary means of transportation. I was rather unenchanted with their approach to transportation. Mass transit in Utah is unreliable, uncourteous, and overall quite disappointing.

There follows a table of my gripes with the Utah Transit Authority and the accompanying solutions as determined by hard-working Guatemalan bus drivers.

UTA	Guatemala
UTA buses arrive late to the stop. If you say you're going to be at the stop at a given time, I expect you to be there at that time or within 3 minutes of it.	Guatemalan buses do not have scheduled route times. They travel as quickly as possible to each destination. Whoever's waiting on the side of the road gets on the bus.
UTA buses arrive early to the stop, then leave early. I can't tell you how many times I have watched the bus pull away from the stop, and I have looked at the time and noticed they are two minutes early. Those two minutes mean the difference between getting somewhere on time and standing around waiting for a half hour. If they are going to have a schedule, they should be stringent about leaving neither before nor after the scheduled times.	Since Guatemalan buses don't have schedules, they can't leave early. However, since the buses are owned privately, they run a little bit more often. Also, if you are close enough to see the bus, and you wave your arms a little, it will wait for you.
UTA bike racks: 2 bikes, and that's all. If the rack is full, you can wait for the next bus or ride your bike wherever you're going. The bus can have two dudes on it, each of which has a bike, and be completely empty besides that, and you'll be refused entrance, even though there is plenty of room for your bike	Guatemalan buses carry things on top. You can carry live chickens, bicycles, luggage, desks, or anything else with you on the bus.
Next stop in fifteen miles. There are literally buses that don't have stops for fifteen miles. That's great if you don't want to stop in between, but if you do, you're just out of luck. Or, if you are standing on the road somewhere in between, and one of those buses goes by, you're not getting on it.	Buses in Guatemala don't have stops. They stop when you wave your arm at them. They let you off when you yell "BAJA!" and they do it all very quickly. Guatemalan buses get places quickly, even though they make lots of stops.
About half the bus drivers are old dudes who drive like 4.2 mph the whole time. Cars are passing you like you're standing still, and the driver is going so slow that a little jog would be faster.	Capitalism drives these guys to fly. If you get a reputation of being slow, you lose business. If you pass the other buses and get more customers, the other guy loses business. Buses are fast in Guatemala, not slow.
The UTA is funded by taxes and by stealing money from college students. That's right, every student at the University of Utah pays upwards of $60 each semester straight to the UTA. It's disguised as a "transportation supplementary fee" or something, and written on a big list of fees, so most students don't know about it. Whether you ride the bus every day or never, the fee is the same. Whether the bus is completely empty or completely full, it still runs every route. It is poorly managed and seems a little bit too far away from capitalism for my liking.	In Guatemala, every person on the bus pays the same price, and if no one is on the bus, the bus makes no money. It is completely capitalistic, and the prices are reasonable, since you have someone to compete with. The system is very well done.

Basically, my conclusion is that buses in Guatemala are motivated by a true return, while buses in Utah are a leech on society. It might pose a problem for some people if the bus system in Utah were completely capitalistic like the one in Guatemala, but I think that if the bus were more reliable and reasonable, many more people would ride it, especially with today's gas prices. This reminds me of the way the government controls the space program and purposefully stints the privatization of the space industry. The government doesn't have any business regulating the way we live our lives. Its true purpose is to protect us from ills and menacing entities, not to run empty buses through our towns and waste all our money.