mrstickball said:
I think there needs to be an understanding of what we determine is 'privatization' Privatization may not be to where people pay a direct amount of money to hire people to provide services. Privatization may be to where companies compete for government contracts to provide services, rather than the government forcing the assignment to themselves. ...Many systems can be privatized in a hybrid 'socialized private' system - where private companies are contracted via public funds, such as the concept of school vouchers. |
Oh God No.
Government contracting is even less efficient (and has far more scope to be run badly and have deals behind closed doors) than either a free market or government services. Worst of both worlds. Ever read the UK's Private Eye? Every two weeks, it has like 30 pages of news about how govt contracting fails hard.
It gives them a great excuse to spend public money, but not provide a breakdown of the expenses or the methods used, in the name of corporate security. And when it all goes wrong (see also: Britain's train franchises, the NHS IT contract) the company can just dissolve (or worse, demand a bailout and THEN dissolve) with no contract done, no penalty to the owners (who get hired under a new name next week), no bad press for the government even though it was ultimately their fault, and no company still in existence to blame.
