Privatization has proved a boon to rich contractors who are also donors to right-wing political parties, both in the United States and Britain. As a result, a small group of contractors and privatised monopolies have profited at the expense of the taxpayer, and have regularly proved to be incompetent.

Now we witness another scandal – not only have the contractors for the website of the Affordable Care Act failed to do their job on time, they have the gall to blame their employers, the government, and in a public Congressional hearing! O.K, it is the government’s ultimate responsibility, and, after numerous examples of profiteering and incompetence (in both countries, I might say), the Administration should have been nervous as kittens about the reliability of contractors such as CGI, a global tech conglomerate (how did it get so big?)

The fear of “big government” is now so general (fine bit of propaganda from people with an axe to grind!) that every Administration feels obliged to sub-contract work previously done at a lower cost by civil servants, who at least were answerable for mistakes.

Tech companies in the US get about $80 billion (!) from the taxpayer. Teflon coated by the right wing, the government feels obliged to sub-contract all sorts of silly activities, such as flipping hamburgers. Recent studies have shown that contractors charge the government on average 83% more than in-house work would cost.

Epicurus would have used his common sense – he wouldn’t have allowed any open-ended arrangement and would have fired any contractor who, having been given a target launch date, then blamed the client for the fiasco.