Privatization is a blatant attempt by national and multi-national big business to undermine and shrink any aspect of government that has a vague chance of making a profit.   It was invented by Thatcher in Britain and applied to everything that moved or had an income, including the water Brits drink and the hopelessly unprofitable railways they use to get to work.   Nobody opposing it has much of a say because the media act as the guardians and gatekeepers and ignores complaints and downsides – – ownership and advertising revenue reign!

The government services, such as telephones and airports were paid for by taxpayers and were owned by them.  These taxpayers were ripped off by the simple expedient of reducing the price of each service to one which  some well-connected businessman was happy to pay for and make a first-rate return on capital.  Guess what?  The prices paid for these huge eneterprises were a pale shadow of the investment put into them by the taxpayers. 

The outcome?  Some Brits got very rich at the public expense.  if you wanted to invest in British Telecom you were allotted a small handful of shares (I know, I tried!).  The big tranches of shares went to Conservative Party supporters and those who contributed to party funds.  The newly privatized British Telecom retained ownership of the infrastructure and could thus dictate pricing to new "competitors".

Then of course, the rest of the world cried "What a wheeze!" and bundled in and copied the British.  The World Bank, which at one moment was wanting every government to own a cement plant, suddenly were passionate converts to governments selling off everything in sight.  The World Bank advocates were like sheep that bleat around in flocks, following the latest fad,  the possession of a PhD not invariably denoting a capacity for independent thought.   Thus the virus spread world-wide.

I maintain that world now suffers greater inefficiency, more corruption, more price gouging and less service. Service? Hah! This fact is cruelly hidden by the mavens of irregulated capitalism and constitutes a plot against the common man.

Privatized companies can be efficient.  More often they are unresponsive to the public and undemocratic. British Gas is the most incompetent corporation west of the Urals.  British Airways wouldn’t listen to their customers if you held a gun to their heads. Water costs, dictated from France, go up exponentially every year with no added service.  The most extraordinary of the privatizations has been the privatization of American jails, where companies cut costs, provoking deaths, disturbances, physical and sexual abuse from poorly trained staff and no rehabilitation.  This is a cruel abuse of human rights, bjut the exponents of the system are profiting from the misery caused..

Meanwhile in Britain, which started it all?  The National Health Service, the jewel in the crown, is being privatized little by little by a "Labour" government in hock to special interests.  Thank Tony Blair,  heart-on-sleeve Catholic convert and Britain’s greatest threat to democracy and common sense.   Is there an inaccessible island somewhere where these shills of Big Money can be dumped  and forgotten?   It would have to be a Big Island!