- Have you heard the one about how your government will
be put into private hands? That's right.
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- Privatization, known as "market based government"
by the Bush administration and "privateering" by others, is well
under way and is probably already a part of your life.
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- Privatizing the government has been in the works for
years but until now mostly involved using business contractors for things
like building maintenance. No longer. President Bush has decreed the immediate
replacement of about half the federal civilian work force with private
sector employees, and that's just the beginning. Coming soon, the same
folks who brought us corporate headquarters residing in offshore post office
boxes, endless financial scandals, big name bankruptcies, and the expanding
expatriation of American jobs will be providing the air traffic controllers
for your next flight, the computer workers who keep tabs on your once-private
social security records, and much, much more. The private sector and the
Bush administration have big plans for us.
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- The general acceptance of the Bush administration's spin
that the work of government can be done by private parties is an indictment
of every high school American history class taught. So called "big
government" began it's rise in the early 20th century as an antidote
to the abuses and excesses of big business, and, in the face of rising
public rebellion, helped to stabilize the capitalist democracy. The numerous
incidents of popular revolt that occurred around that time are invisible
in most history books.
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- Fast forward one century: Robber barons are amassing
great wealth, once again with the collusion of the government. This time,
instead of railroads, banks and oil, their path to riches centers on unraveling
the hard won gains in the living standards of their employees.
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- The public sector, with its huge concentration of GNP
and its multibillion dollar budget, has been coveted by corporations for
a long time. Why shouldn't they, instead of the public, be the beneficiary
of all that treasure? Their lucky break came with the adoption of GATS,
NAFTA and IMF principles as free trade articles of faith by those who get
paid to govern in the best interest of the taxpayer.
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- Predictably, the path from corporate profitability to
the hoped for unspeakable profitability is through the line of least resistance,
in this case that's the third world's most vulnerable, who get to continue
their subsistence level existence but now at the largesse of the globe's
major businesses. Corporations justified their craving for global tariff-free
access with the mantra that this would raise living standards around the
world. Instead, they relentlessly dispatch jobs to the lowest international
bidder thereby causing waves of unemployment and sometimes unrest not only
in the United States but also in Mexico, India and beyond, as jobs continue
to migrate to the next hot spot of microscopic wages and nonexistent worker
protections.
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- In think tanks, the media, policy papers and corporate
reports, expatriating jobs to maximize corporate profits is called globalization.
On the other side of the looking glass, in unemployment offices where an
increasing number of middle class professionals turn up, it's called a
few other things, none of them printable. And when free trade principles
are applied to government, it's called privatization.
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- In this brave new world of private government it makes
perfect sense to the corporations who are its beneficiaries to transfer
public functions and tax dollars to the business sector and away from public
oversight and accountability. You may have noticed that accountability
is not a strong suit of corporations. In fact, it's usually in direct conflict
with business interests, as convincingly demonstrated by the duplicity
revealed in the recent, costly corporate failures that helped scuttle the
stock market along with legions of pension plans.
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- The future of a privatized government is undeniably breath
taking. Let's say that the private sector succeeds in its current effort
to take over airport flight control operations. Once in command they run
their usual drill, maximizing profits at the expense of the professional
staff and dealing with constant employee dissatisfaction. Suppose they
find that air traffic controllers in, say, China will accept low pay and
as a bonus are quite flexible about their living conditions. The corporation
then begins importing them on special visas, as is currently done with
information technology workers from India, to fill jobs formerly occupied
by those pesky US citizens. Poor English? No problem. The goal was never
air safety anyway.
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- At the point where foreign labor is used instead of American,
we have stepped beyond privatizing the government and into the unfettered
kingdom of globalization. Why, for example, couldn't the hundreds of thousands
of public school teachers in all those cash strapped districts also be
globalized? Once the schools are privatized, an experiment now underway
in a number of locations, the low pay country of origin of the teacher
would be of no undue concern to the employer. Firefighters? Police? The
possibilities are limited only by the imagination. You aren't xenophobic,
are you?
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- There is another important advantage to corporations
doing public business: the cost overruns that can add significantly to
their bottom line. When built-in profit margins are deemed too low, the
corporation has a ready solution, tried and true, compliments of contractor
experience with the Department of Defense. The business need only threaten
to close down to wrest a larger subsidy. If by this time the skeletal remnants
of a once-thriving government agency no longer has the capacity to do the
job itself, allowing the corporation to default may not be a viable option.
Costly taxpayer bailouts to meet the price of corporate profit margins
may well shadow our future.
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- With no long term experience, no contingency plan and
no solution for the accountability issue, the privatization of the United
States government is already well under way. Once the bloodless corporate
coup against the public sector is finished, the remains of American democracy
could be a shrouded memory.
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- jolyjuly@earthlink.net
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- © 2001-2003 Democratic Underground, LLC
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- http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/08/30_globalizing.html
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