Privatization

Poverty, Inc.
Government’s decades-old experiment in letting corporations deliver social services has been a disaster—for taxpayers and the poor. (6/24) Washington Monthly

Why Privatization Is Wrong

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.
FDR

No financial alchemy will ever get the private sector to build or rebuild common goods that by definition cannot be profit makers -- water and sewage systems serving the poor, public school buildings, rural broadband networks and highways, or mass transit that the poor and middle class can afford. These need government money. That is what government is for. Tailspin by Steven Brill.
... the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
— Noam Chomsky
“Privatization is not capitalism; it's feudalism. It's like the private toll bridge a peasant would have to pay a Lord to cross.” —Michael Lind
‘The myth of private-sector superiority has three components that feed off and reinforce one another. First, that the private sector is always dynamic and best; second, that the public sector is costly and inefficient; and third, the conclusion that everyone benefits from the continual incremental privatization of the public sphere. All three elements are false.’ Andrew Simms, British author and campaigner
‘Privatization means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny. Public institutions have many side benefits. They’re not out for profit. They may purposely run at a loss because of the side benefits. So, for example, if a public steel industry runs at a loss it’s providing cheap steel to other industries. Maybe that’s a good thing. Public institutions can have a counter-cyclic property. So that means that they can maintain employment in periods of recession, which increases demand, which helps you to get out of recession. Private companies can’t do that in a recession. Throw out the work force because that’s the way you make money.’ Noam Chomsky, speaking in the film The Corporation (2003).
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
Crazy Ideas
"The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the transformation of American politics and its political culture from a system in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major contributing elements, to one where the remaining democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically dismantled." Sheldon Wolin
Privatization ideology softens people up to accommodate the rule of markets. It encourages them to welcome financial capital as a servant of financial capitalists and forget its role as a servant of democratic peoples and their interests. It reverses the traditional logic of social contract thinking on which America was founded and on which an international order must be founded as well. Rather than privilege the power of a common will and public goods over the anarchy of private power, it celebrates private power unencumbered by law, regulation, or government. It insists that freedom is secured not through cultivating justice and the law but by assuring their absence. It denies vehemently the traditional wisdom behind America’s historical devotion to multilateralism and international institution building. Thus, it ignores the “the secret of the United States’ long brilliant run as the world’s leading state,” described by G. John Ikenberry as “its ability and willingness to exercised power within alliances and multinational frameworks, which made its power and agenda more acceptable to allies and other key states around the world” Fear's Empire, War, Terrorism, and Democracy: Benjamin R, Barber
In Michigan, what we are seeing is an effort to change the ideology, to make people think of water as a commodity, rather than a public good. And since the citizens of Michigan could vote to privatize US access to the Great Lakes, there is special incentive to make citizens think about water as a commodity, since there is special incentive (from many powerful concerns) to get the citizens to accept privatization of such a valuable resource. And that requires getting them to stop thinking of it as a public good. The Emergency Manager: Strategic Racism, Technocracy, and the Poisoning of Flint’s Children: Jason Stanley
‘People often don’t understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to power. If it is the corporations that are powerful, then they will be corrupt.’ Arundhati Roy, Indian author and public intellectual
One irony about climate change is that some states hit worst — Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — have climate-denying leaders. But when a hurricane hits they’re at the trough demanding FEMA support. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Why America stopped building public pools (7/23/2023)

From Pittsburgh to Flint, the Dire Consequences of Giving Private Companies Responsibility for Ailing Public Water Systems (5/20/2018)

Why Do Republicans Really Oppose Infrastructure Spending ? (5/15/2015)

Deride And Conquer: Dismantling the USPS (5/4/2014)

Sheppard Air Force Base: Uncounted Costs of Privatizing Government Services (3/29/2014)

Darrell Issa's Got a Plan to Put the Postal Service in a Death Spiral

Predatory Privatization: Exploiting Financial Hardship, Enriching the 1%, Undermining Democracy (7/2012)


The law locks up the man or woman</a> Who steals the goose from o the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from the goose.

Remember that 8 men own the same wealth as half the world. It is wealth inequality that corrodes democracy, and it is a hallmark of right-wing, bad government.

Republicans say privatization is good policy. It is an effective tool to extract wealth from everyone else. The private sector has enabled a corporate feeding frenzy for vital social functions like healthcare and pharma, it is a failure at childcare, or eldercare, continues to make failed incursions into public education, public lands. It is oblivious to the state of the environment, which is systematically being destroyed. Privatized media keeps the public from awareness of these issues. In the US, the public competes with well-funded lobbyists and usually loses.

Privatization removes functions from public accountability, and gives them to oligarchs...so it is anti-democratic. Result: Blackwater, Enron, prison-industrial complex, privatized vote counting, worst of all money-driven politics.

There is now considerable doubt about election integrity because right-wing corporations make the voting machines. Most vote rigging is computer fraud, but there is little to prevent it.
Privatizing vote counting makes elections untrustworthy.

Right wing propaganda (almost all corporate media) has largely convinced the public that the private sector is more efficient and more reliable than the public sector. This ought to be open to much broader discussion because we know that a single payer healthcare system is much less expensive and more effective than our privatized one. Privatization under the Bush Jr administration really was a cover for profiteering for companies like Halliburten, the Carlyle Group, and other cronies. It is, of course, much worse under Trump.

The deregulated financial sector devoured the productive economy and through its excessive speculation caused a major market crash. Now privatization threatens public schools, the post office, and even Social Security. There is massive funding for these efforts from oligarchs.

Many Republicans would privatize Social Security, and they are doing their best to privatize education as well.

It appears the Post Office is going to have to shrink for the benefit of private companies. When the Constitution was signed, the Post Office WAS the media...which is why it is written into the Constitution. Republicans have all but destroyed American media.

Privatized healthcare in the US is not only the world's most expensive, it does not cover a large fraction of the people, It is highly bureaucratic, and it is not particularly effective in overall quality. Even so, it is about to be cut so that Republicans can spend unlimited amounts of money for tax cuts for the wealthy, war, and not much for our civilization.

American healthcare, for example, is the most expensive in the world, doesn't work well, and doesn't even cover everyone. Republicans reject even the most minimal reforms. Electronic health records obscenely expensive.

Republicans are determined to privatize public schools. They call it school choice and they will tell you that charter schools perform better than public schools. Except they don't. When confronted with the evidence, the Bush administration decided to stop collecting the data, a typical Republican response.

Compare other privatized sectors: find oligarchy, expensive services, downsizing, corruption, off-shoring where possible, ...

Although Republicans, particularly, like to believe that private institutions function better than public ones. Public libraries do well. Social Security is efficient. Public sector health care (Medicare) works pretty well, and, according to a Yale study, a single-payer system would be much more efficient than the insurance bureaucracy controlled, expensive system for medicine that we have in the U.S.

We should carefully decide where to draw the line between public and private.

Take, for example, software as a product. The first copy requires a large investment, but after that, the marginal cost of copies is near zero. Free software (as defined at fsf.org) is steadily improving, and it has the potential to be a public good. As a matter of public policy, every citizen should prefer it.

In 2021 the Federal government has poured more than $29 billion into health information technology.
 
All that money produced proprietary, closed source, unauditable, software packages, covered by non-disclosure agreements, of varying security. Naturally, these packages don't talk to each other because there was no standard. So, most likely, the doctor's office can't share data with the hospital, and hospitals cannot share data with each other.

Free software (defined at fsf.org) is licensed to be shared, open source, auditable, improved, and built upon.

Software, like other information, is extremely expensive to produce for the first copy, but every new copy afterwards has close to zero marginal cost.

Think what 29 billion might have done in the public sector. If the medical community used free software, many of the demonstrated problems would disappear.

Since armaments are a major industry in the US, it is also a (government !!!) jobs program. Notice that when Republicans decide it is time to balance the budget that programs to get cut are always those that actually benefit people: like healthcare, social security, Medicare, or infrastructure...not the military

Privatization requires the profit motive that corrupts many industries including media, health care, elder care, pharma.

Capitalism knows no limits, and that is why it will destroy us.

Make no mistake, they have no particular regard for the public, only for their own self-serving profit.

Links

Commons

Free Software

Education

Healthcare

Corporations

Government

Corruption

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Private vs Public Comparisons

Stand Up To ALEC

Open Democracy

Bibliography

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, and Erik M. Conway

Privatization of Everything by Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian.

The Privatized State by Chiara Cordelli: Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free

Blackwater Jeremy Scahill