THE CORPORATION: Private Takeover of the Commons

[marmar]

We used to regard many areas as too essential to the public good to be commercialized; they were protected by tradition and regulation. Now, everything is
becoming fair game in the private taking of the commons -- land, oceans, air, water, education, health, energy and social assistance. Where do we draw the line?

[saras]

1. Each individual gene leased from a corporation. More money = better genes.

Your genes dictate who educates you, who you work for after that, and who gets harvest your organs.

Stuff? That's all rented from them.

[TruthBeTold65]

2. Great video...now I want to see it all. Question?

What I see is that because many municipalities lose tax revenue from people who lose their jobs and are no longer part of the tax base, all sorts of public entities lose revenues they use to run on...then this opens up these public entities to privatizations where the municipalities can off-load their responsibilities, mainly their monetary obligations but also their accountability. Hopefully they get that privatization at a discount to what they currently pay so they still making money off the deal. It is a win-win-win for the municipalities. It works for schools, prisons...just about anything that currently is under public/federal control.

I am sure there is quite a bit of ignorance in what I am noting above but this is my sense of it. I am sure it isn't as simple as this.

Is this just the march towards the end game of capitalism or is it just the result of our current economic condition...or both??

[marmar]

3. "It is a win-win-win for the municipalities"

That's not usually the way it ends up working out:

The Perils Of Privatization

By Matthew Yglesias
| Posted Monday, Jan. 2, 2012


Mike Konczal attempts to construct a 2 x 2 ideological classification of different modes of municipal parking provision in order to attempt a critique of a deal whereby Chicago have J.P. Morgan a 75-year lease on all its city's parking revenues:



The Chicago deal had a number of problems with it, and is inferior to LA's Express Park (basically a high-tech city-owned system to dynamically price spaces according to scarcity) along a number of dimensions. But I think this emphasis on the fact that Chicago created a privately owned monopoly ends up understating the main problem with deals of that sort. The basic "problem" that we're confronting is that land is valuable, it's bad for society when land is mismanaged, and municipalities often mismanage the land they own by turning it into dedicated underpriced parking. One possible solution, à la Express Park, is to try to manage the land better. Another solution, appropriate in many cases, is to simply sell the land. The Chicago "third way" manifests itself as inferior primarily by inserting a new layer of parasitical rent-seeking into the ecosystem.

Consider what happens if some enterprising city councilman devises a proposal that will be good for the city, but will reduce demand for downtown parking—a cost-effective way to drastically improve bus service. An actual private landowner operating a parking lot will of course be hurt by the decline in parking demand, but fundamentally if the city becomes a better place the land he owns becomes more valuable and he'll end up simply adapting it to a non-parking use. A private owner of a parking monopoly, by contrast, has now become the sworn enemy of anything that would reduce his revenue stream. Buses, the L, bicycles, taxis, pedestrian-oriented mixed-use projects, it's all bad bad bad bad for business. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/01/02/the_perils_of_privatization.html

[fasttense]

4. Privatizing a government function has never, ever saved the tax payer a single dime.

It's common sense. When you sell off a function to a commercial entity, you have now added a layer of profit where before profit was not necessary in the function. Who pays for that corporation's profit? The tax payer.

You also add in another layer of management. Someone has to make sure those contractors are following the contract. Someone from the government has to deal with those contractors at some point in the function. That person is usually a government worker. Who pays for the extra layers of management? The tax payer does.

Contracting out does NOT save money. It wastes money. It always has wasted money but stupid people have bought the RepubliCON propaganda that magically a commercial business can do it cheaper. No they can't do it cheaper. It is always more expensive.