Hybridization of government

[Belsnickel]

(03-16-2017, 02:42 AM)Dill Wrote: I suppose I could be persuaded, on a case by case basis, that some privatization is good.

But overall, I am very suspicious of it. I think that when the public sector markets of various types are saturated, it is natural for private corporations to regard the government as a new market sector into which to expand. That is why you have corporations running prisons and HMOs and power plants and using untrained civilians to guard military bases in the Middle East.  It is not clear to me that any of this has been for the public good, though I admit that some businesses and their stockholders have made a killing.

Can you provide a specific example in which the privatization of a formerly public service has benefited the public? Maybe it has happened and I am just unaware of it.

You argue before Congress that government is inefficient and get them to put up tax dollars for the private sector--sometimes with bidding or sometimes not.  Even if waste skyrockets it is still hard to convince the public the move was wrong since, as everyone in this country knows, the private sector is more efficient.

I can get what you're saying, especially for certain types of hybrids and for privatization. I can certainly point to some examples of hybrid organizations that are doing well. The quasi government is monstrous and reaches all over the place. There are different types of these organizations and to take it all as one broad thing can be a bit difficult.

I, for one, am in favor of public goods being provided by the public sector. I do not have an issue with a premium service that goes beyond being available in the private sector. For example what you see in many single payer health care systems with higher priced private markets available to those who can afford it. What's interesting, though, is much of the NHS in the UK is made up of quangos. So even there we are wading into the whole hybridization issue.

In case anyone is interested, and unless you're a policy/administration wonk like me it's doubtful you will be, here is the 2011 CRS report on the quasi government: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL30533.pdf