The 'Liberal' State delivers very unequal outcomes because it uses, standardized, supposedly nomothetic, monopolistic or monoposonistic means of delivery. This means that, in practice, there is wage, price and service provision discrimination on the basis of costly to disguise signals. This is the reason ethnic minorities often get the dirty end of the stick unless they can afford a 'costly signal' based 'separating equilibrium' permitting them access to superior outcomes. However, competition on open markets cause the problem of discrimination to completely disappear. The resulting 'pooling equilibrium' is superior because it has better dynamics. Correlated equilibria evolve on the basis of public signals of a competitive, and thus more robust, type. This, at any rate, is how Economists should view the matter.
A contrary view is that whatever is done by Public officials is necessarily morally superior to a similar function carried out by a private contractor. Moreover, the actions of public officials strengthen our bonds as a political community.
In my opinion, Alon Harel, a Law Professor holds a view of this type. He argues in Aeon that Putting public services in private hands is bad economics. Worse, it undermines our bonds as a political community
Sadly for the Professor, in Economics, as in Biology, all hands are private and confined to the bodies to which they are attached.
Furthermore, political communities don't have any 'bonds'. They only have more or less incentive compatible mechanisms. Thus, from the perspective of an Economist, he is bound to have written nonsense.
Let us verify this for ourselves.
Barbara and Mary are happily married. Barbara wants to buy Mary a new ring for her birthday. The problem is that Barbara knows nothing about jewellery. Fortunately, their neighbour John is an expert. Barbara can ask John to select the ring, or she could invest the time and energy to learn about gemstones and alloys herself, and choose the ring on the basis of her own judgment. What should Barbara do?The answer is, because Knightian Uncertainty obtains- i.e. possible states of the world are not known in advance- she should 'minimize regret'.
Any other answer is wrong.
One answer might be that, given John’s expertise, Barbara should delegate the power to select the jewellery to John. After all, he’ll probably make a better choice. Another equally compelling answer, though, is that Mary might care not only about the beauty and quality of the chosen ring, but also about who selected it. Mary might want Barbara to engage in the task of buying the ring, even if Barbara’s choice is ultimately inferior to John’s.This is silly. Barbara would regret not pleasing Mary's 'best self'. So she seeks to buy the piece which matches Mary's own informed and reflective choice. She is welcome to outsource relevant information. But she should also 'hedge'- e.g. by ensuring there is a 'cooling off period' so Mary can trade in the thing.
This little fable illustrates something that’s often missed in debates about a very different subject: privatisation.It is also often missed in crazy rants.
The project of selling state or public assets to be owned or run by private businesses has always been controversial.Nonsense! It only became controversial in the Nineteen Eighties for ideological reasons which only elderly cretins continue to obsess about.
What characterises the controversy, though, is that both advocates and opponents tend to cast it in instrumental terms.This is not true. The argument against public ownership focuses on agent-principal hazard- bureaucrats will prefer to pursue their own interests rather than serve the public- while the argument against private ownership focuses on the unacceptability of self-interest, greed, as mediating a 'noble' public service. Consider the ban on paying people for blood in the U.K. It is considered repugnant that self-interest rather than pure altruism dictate the actions of donors.
What is relevant here is 'regret minimization'. If we permit a repugnancy market to flourish, in the short run we may be better off but, long term, or under exigent circumstances, we may greatly regret this decision.
That is, the identity of the body or entity doesn’t matter in and of itself; what matters is whether or not they achieve a good outcome or do a better job.This is similar to 'Coase's theorem' or the contemporary 'Law & Econ' approach. One argument for it is that 'identities' can be wholly paranoid. Keeping things out of the hands of the Jewish-Freemason-Bolshevik cosmopolitan cabal is not, historically speaking, a good motivation.
Whether or not something should be privatised, then, appears to depend on who is more likely to make the right decisions for the right ends.The problem here is that incentive mechanisms to ensure this can be improved without changing ownership. On the other hand, changing ownership can raise or soak up funds with alternative uses. Thatcher's Privatization occurred in the context of bringing down the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement which in turn reduced the 'crowding out effect' on Private Investment while permitting slower monetary growth and thus less inflationary pressure. A Government concerned with raising living standards for the poor may prefer Privatization as a means to divert Government resources from subsidising inefficient Government run industries to helping poor people.
What’s more, the mainstream conversation about privatisation assumes that civil servants and public institutions are mere tools, more or less, for making these decisions.The argument for privatization views civil servants and public institutions as selfish 'rent-seeking' entities pursuing their own agendas- e.g. less work for more pay.
But that view is shortsighted. We don’t just care about what the decision is and whether a decision is right, just, efficient or good.No. We want our decisions to be 'regret minimizing'. Only if the thing doesn't matter very much or if no Knightian Uncertainty involved would utility maximization apply.
We also care about who makes the decision. As the story of Barbara, Mary and John shows, we often feel strongly not just about which ring gets chosen, but also about who chooses the ring.If so, there is an easy workaround. Barbara buys the ring after consulting John, who knows about jewelry, and Mary's Mom and Dad and ex g.f and b.f. etc who can offer guidance re. Mary's tastes and preferences. But she has enough caution to verify that Mary can return the thing if she doesn't like it and pick something else.
Similarly, a public institution differs from a private one not only in the quality or justness of the outcome, but also because decisions made by a public body are attributable to citizens – as a matter of fact, they are the decisions of the citizens.Nonsense! When's the last time anybody came out of the DMV saying- 'It is we, the citizens, who have decided that renewing one's license must involve a descent into Dante's Inferno such that one must abandon all hope. Also, losing one's sense of smell would be highly desirable.'
Only a public agent can speak in our name.Very true! That's why one's barrister is a Civil Servant as opposed to the smoothest talking shyster one can afford to hire. Similarly, L'Oreal sacked Eva Longoria when they discovered she wasn't an elderly Government clerk.
So mass privatisation doesn’t simply shift decision-making away from public institutions to unaccountable, private entities; it also undermines shared civic responsibility and the very existence of collective political will.In Stalin's Russia, people felt a shared civic responsibility for all the purges which kept happening.
At the level of the state, the equivalent of allowing John to choose Mary’s ring could theoretically be a nation in which all parks, public museums, prisons, forests, health services and other institutions are private.No. It would be equivalent to Parks being run by experts in Park Management and so forth.
It does not matter if services are supplied by contractors or by direct employees of the State. What matters is if they face competition to keep their jobs. If they can be replaced easily by someone better, then quality is likely to be high.
In such a world, citizens couldn’t really affect how these services operate.In America today, the call to defund the Police arises because citizens feel they don't really affect how the Police operates. In Minneapolis, it seems the Head of the Police Union- who advocated 'killology' training for police officers- had more power than the Police Chief or the Mayor.
What’s more, they’d be unlikely to feel responsible for these institutions – to sense that these institutions are theirs.If citizens can ensure that they don't pay crap service providers then their purpose is served so long as a competitor takes over and does a better job.
They might have grudges or complaints but, ultimately, the power of making decisions would rest with the private owner of the service or institution.Ultimately, the decision is whether to do what benefits the people who ultimately pay the bill or whether to do what is easiest or most profitable.
In this scenario, people would lose their very sense of belonging to a political unit, whose future they should control through collective effort.That may be a very good thing. Stalinism and Hitlerism and so forth fostered a sense of belonging which took delight in the killing and looting of alterities so as to forget the miseries and privations imposed by the regime.
Historically, ownership of assets differs radically in different times and places. In some legal systems, such as in medieval Iceland, all property was private.Iceland was very poor and subject to ruthless Danish colonial exploitation. It may not have been able to afford public services- e.g. an effective police force. Those who could not defend themselves, went to the wall.
The system ‘might almost have been invented by a mad economist’, as David Friedman, one of the leading scholars of law and economics, put it in 1979.Only a mad economist would believe that scarcity does not obtain. Public services don't use up scarce resources.
Thus, in Iceland, there was no public enforcement system of what we now call criminal law. Killing was a civil offence that triggered compensation to the family of the victim, an approach that was also true in other medieval systems.This may be a sensible approach. Some shepherd kills some guy from another clan in a remote glen. Maybe the other guy was a rustler. Maybe he was intent on sodomizing the shepherd. Maybe not. There would be no point imprisoning the shepherd. He wouldn't be able to produce food and Society can't afford to feed him. So a deal is done. Some sheep change hands and maybe a couple of slaves or nubile women to act as 'peace weavers' between clans.
It is important to understand that the Justice and Penal system are Service industries. They are driven by effective demand- the ability to pay- and supply side constraints re. cost and availability of necessary resources.
In modern times, mass nationalisation of key enterprises in Western democracies began during the 1929 financial crisis, and continued after the Second World War.This is not true. Apart from specific cases of 'sick industries' or where 'rationalization' was required there was no Nationalization save for Ideological reasons or so as to placate militant Trade Unions.
The programme rested on the view that the government should interfere where there was a ‘market failure’. This includes monopolies in the provision of water or electricity, for instance, or anything that disrupts the efficiency, fairness and accountability of market operations.'Municipal Socialism' had indeed made the 'natural monopoly' argument for public ownership of the Water and Electricity Company and so forth. But economies of scope and scale were only available on a National scale. Moreover the question of 'cross subsidization' meant that a municipal approach couldn't get very far. One workaround was to have a National Grid in public hands while the 'high value added' inputs remained in the hands of oligopolistic Corporations.
There was also the 'zero marginal cost' or 'non rival' argument for Nationalization. But as Abba Lerner- who sought to convert Trotsky to marginal cost pricing!- knew, this could be achieved by regulation. Nationalization might create a monopoly with that best of monopoly profits for the employees- a quiet life. In other words, supply would fall and be rationed by political considerations.
But, as early as the 1960s, some industries began to be privatised. In the United Kingdom in the 1980s, the government of the prime minister Margaret Thatcher supercharged the process, which most western European countries followed. The fall of communism led to a similar process in eastern Europe. The World Bank supported these initiatives and the writings of the economist Friedrich Hayek provided the intellectual foundations for this process. Much of the work of influential economists, such as Milton Friedman, was designed to show that governments often fail to promote the public interest, instead working in the interests of organised lobbies.So, voters did not want to subsidise loss making enterprises- like the car manufacturer British Leyland- because this meant a falling real disposable income for themselves.
However, there’s something missing in a conversation that focuses exclusively on efficiency, fair distribution and accountability; an agent’s excellence in executing a function or realising a purpose can’t really be judged independently of their identity or status.This is certainly the view of 'Race Science'. Anton Wilhem Amo, who died in 1759, was accepted as a philosopher in Germany. However, he was Black. As Kant observed in another connection, this meant he couldn't possibly have been smart. The identity of Black People is one of Stupidity, Ignorance and going Oooga-booga, sticking a bone through their noses and eating White Missionaries.
In the United States, for example, the law defines a category of activities known as ‘inherently governmental functions’: functions that are so intimately related to the public interest that they can only be performed by employees of the federal government. This isn’t because the federal government necessarily makes better choices, but simply because it’s an institution of the people – one that’s freely chosen by the people and acts in their name.Equally, there are inherently personal functions which can't be discharged by one 'closely associated' with a particular person. Thus, parents may be allowed to make many, but not all, decisions regarding a severely disabled adult son. But some things they can't do- e.g. give the boy in marriage.
The same is true of office holders responsible for Corporations with legal personality. They can delegate some decisions and responsibilities- not all.
It would be ultra vires for an official employed by a Public or Private Organization to abnegate their own executive function in favor of even a 'closely associated' party not so employed or empowered.
Other legal systems have similar strictures concerning public officials. In November 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on whether or not it would be constitutional to establish private prisons. They decided against it. In her decision, the chief justice Dorit Beinisch said:This is a defeasible judgment. Israel is a special case in that some prisoners may have ties to ruthless external enemies.
The power of imprisonment and the other invasive powers that derive from it are … some of the state’s most distinctive powers as the embodiment of government, and they reflect the constitutional principle that the state has a monopoly upon exercising organised force in order to advance the general public interest.
There are numerous other instances of private entities attempting to take over state functions concerning the use of force.'Attempting to take over'? Surely they are paid a lot of money to do dirty jobs which people entitled to Government pensions won't want to do.
The US company Academi, formerly known as Blackwater, sends private contractors to fight wars and interrogate war prisoners. Private police aren’t nearly as accountable to the public,Because the CIA was real accountable, right?
raising concerns that they promote the security of some at the expense of the security of others. Here, privatisation appears to challenge the monopoly of the state over the use of violence.States don't have the monopoly over the use of violence or, indeed, over the use of legitimate violence. I am entitled to kill you in self-defence.
Some states in the US have also privatised much of the civil justice system by inducing – and, at times, forcing – plaintiffs to resort to alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms, such as mediation and arbitration.Voters like the direction taken by the Supreme Court. We want inventors and tech mavens- like the guy who started Uber- to get rich because they make our life better. We don't want ambulance chasers to get rich. They make our life worse.
Legal theorists have argued that privatising the civil justice system stunts the development of common law, prevents public debate and denies parties their ‘day in court’.So, this affects the revenues of lawyers and maybe one or two hypocritical 'public intellectuals' who pretend to be fighting for the rights of the oppressed proletariat.
They have also criticised the privatisation of social welfare services, including foster care and adoption, which distances the state and its citizens from confronting acute social problems.We must emulate Comrade Ceausescu and the Romanian model of Public Orphanages.
By outsourcing its special power to inflict punishment, the state stamps prisoners as morally inferior people.But if a police officer kneels on your neck till you die, you get to feel morally equal to others similarly killed under color of law.
What values motivate people’s resistance to privatising the justice system?Hypocrisy and the desire to get rich suing Mommy or Teacher or the lady from Social Services for not preventing you turning into a cretinous sociopath.
Certainly, private entities can accomplish plenty of desirable public goals by exerting violence. Privately run prisons can contribute to deterrence; they can also contain prisoners, and perhaps offer retribution – to guarantee that criminals ‘get what they deserve’. However, it’s questionable whether private punishment can really be what it purports to be: namely, punishment for the public wrong that’s been committed. After all, sanctioning a wrongdoer is an expression of condemnation, a public way to convey disapproval of a criminal deed. Unlike deterrence and some other goals of punishment, public condemnation of wrongful behaviour is possible only if it’s performed by the appropriate agent – the public.Very true! We must all lynch criminals, not pay people to execute them under hygienic conditions.
On this view, the private provision of punishment in fact adds up to little more than one private individual imposing pain and suffering on another.Which is why we should get together in mobs to impose even more terror, pain and suffering on criminals. Why are we no longer allowed to gain healthful exercise stoning adulterers to death?
It fails to express the beliefs of the political community as a whole concerning certain wrongful acts. The person inflicting the punishment conveys her own personal judgment, but not the will of the state.Nonsense. The person inflicting the punishment is paid to do so. Whoever picks up the tab is conveying their judgment.
Yet her own judgment deserves no greater attention than that of the person who is receiving the punishment. Rather, it’s the public’s judgment that deserves attention.The public's judgment does not deserve attention unless the public is willing to put its money where its mouth is.
If we accept this argument,then we should be locked up if the public thinks us guilty of a crime, or a threat to public safety, whether or not we actually did or plan to do anything wrong. On this view, Hitler's Gas Chambers were perfectly legitimate provided the Public in the areas concerned had formed the judgment that certain classes of people did not have a right to life.
then it follows that privately incarcerating convicted criminals is a violation of their dignity.This does not follow at all. The public may, quite reasonably, judge there to be no essential difference between a private, for profit, prison and one which is directly funded by the tax-payer. Furthermore, the public may judge convicted criminals to be sub-human. It may hold that they have forfeited all claim to respect and dignity by reason of the heinous nature of their crime. Indeed, the public may derive great satisfaction from imagining the vicious rapist's fate at the hands of his horny cell-mates.
This isn’t because the private punisher is likely to be wrong in their judgment, but because they’re speaking in their own name, rather than with the voice of the state.A private punisher may claim to speak in any voice at all. The voice of the state has to be more circumscribed. But, precisely for that reason- viz. that it is mediated by the Law- it is not an expression of the General Will or that of the Public at large.
They lack the moral standing to act and speak in the name of the state.This suggests that the voice of the State has a separate, apparently superior, moral standing to that of the voice of a private person. This is a mischievous doctrine and not supported in law. We understand that a 'Mahatma' may have higher moral standing than the State's Chief Executive precisely because the Mahatma's voice is not constrained by any constitutional or pragmatic consideration.
Consider spiritual instruction, of connubial affection. We want people to have access to both. But it would be repugnant if either were supplied for a monetary consideration by a salaried employee of the State.
By outsourcing its special power to inflict criminal punishment, the state actively stamps prisoners as morally inferior people – people who are subject not to the rule of the state, but to the tyranny of other individuals.Why incarcerate our moral equals or superiors? Surely, there is an assumption that prisoners have acted immorally in violating some relevant law. There may be a case for treating 'prisoners of conscience' differently from other law-breakers. But, if a punishment is to be meted out, how is a malefactor morally degraded by being under the supervision of people who get their pay-cheque from a private corporation rather than directly from the State? It may be that a private prison treats prisoners worse than a Government run institution. But that affects their material, not moral, status.
Let us now consider the implications of accepting this argument. In some countries, the homeless have a right to adequate accommodation. Is their dignity impaired if their rent to a private landlord is paid by the Government? Must they live in accommodation owned by the State?
Suppose you serve on a Jury. Is your dignity compromised if the sandwiches you are offered for lunch were made by a privately owned and operated cafe rather than a Civil Servant?
It may be argued that incarceration is somehow different from accommodation. Criminals have superior rights to law-abiding citizens. It is a scandal that a rapist is sleeping in a cell owned by a for-profit Corporation whereas his homeless victim's rent to a private landlord is paid by the State.
Now, one might argue that since private prisons are heavily regulated and monitored by the state, this means that the public does have a say in the conditions and treatment of prisoners. But there’s a fundamental difference between regulation and monitoring, on the one hand, and public management, on the other.The purpose of regulation and monitoring is to constrain management such that the outcome is as desired. There is no fundamental difference between a manager directly employed by the State and one employed by a Contractor of the State. One reason for this is that the State has the power to change its mind, even retrospectively, whether someone was or wasn't a State Employee. This may be subject to Judicial Review. But the Legislature may over-rule the Judiciary or so pressure it that it eventually acquiesces.
Ultimately, decisions such as whether to perform bodily searches, whether to place prisoners in solitary confinement, whether to discipline them, and what sort of conditions they live in are made by private actors, not public officials.But public officials respond to the same incentives and fear the same penalties as private actors. It is not the case that the soul of man is altered in some way when he changes employment. Of course, there may be exceptions to this rule. Donald Trump never got a Government pay-check till he became President. He used to be a lying cheating opportunist only concerned with his own self-aggrandizement. Look at him now! He is verily an angel in human form.
Those decisions require moral deliberation, and making private actors responsible threatens to undermine prisoners’ dignity by subjecting them to the judgments of other private citizens.The British National Health Service sometimes sends seriously ill patients to private hospitals. This undermines their dignity. Decisions regarding their life and death are being made by private citizens.
An even greater scandal is the fact that new born babies are abandoned by the State to the tender mercies of a class of private citizens called Mommies. This undermines their dignity. They should be cared for by salaried employees of the State.
One easy way to dispose of arguments of this kind is to pass a law saying everybody is an employee of the State with a zero salary.
To the extent that one of the main purposes of punishment is the public condemnation of wrongful behaviour, punishment is an intrinsically public good.This is nonsense. We publicly condemn behavior we can't punish. That may be a public good. Equally it may be a public nuisance- as is the case with rabid condemnations of the State of Israel.
Sadly, we stukk punish types of behaviour which should not be condemned but should be properly understood and empathised with. Sometimes such behaviour should be de-stigmatized and de-criminalized. What is wholly irrelevant is whether such behavior is punished by a guy paid by a contractor or one paid directly by the State.
Its goodness, however, depends on its being performed by the right agent: a public official.Just as Mummy's kisses are only good if she is a public official. It is beneath the dignity of baby to receive caresses from Mummies of lower rank than Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Mummy type Activities.
Ultimately, then, the privatisation of punishment is, by its nature, self-defeating.Just as Mummies kisses, unless she is of Joint-Secretary rank or higher- are self-defeating. Babies grow up and stop being cute and kissable- except to Mummies who still think them lovable though they are fat and losing their hair and keep getting passed over for promotion at work.
Beyond the justice system, what are the implications of the widespread privatisation of goods in general? It does nothing short of transforming our political system and public culture, replacing shared responsibility and political engagement with fragmented and sectarian decision-making.Very true! Babies should be confiscated from Mummies and brought up in State orphanages by salaried Sairey Gamps.
In a democracy, citizens govern their own fate.Which is why none die save by their own will and pleasure.
That’s why decisions taken by public officials are meant to be made ‘in our name’, on behalf of us as members of a political community, in the promotion of the public interest.Only if that is what is specified by law. A democracy may change the law or otherwise tolerate public officials speaking in God's name or that of the International proletariat or some other such abstraction.
Different jurisdictions have different rules re. the justiciability of decisions made by the State. The 'doctrine of political question' can be quite elastic and dependent on exigent circumstances. What is or isn't in 'the public interest' is scarcely obvious under conditions of Knightian uncertainty. At best, we can question the prudence of decisions, not their optimality. Hence 'regret minimization' is germane. But this is a movable feast.
Citizens’ responsibility for the acts of the political community is a byproduct of their power – and duty – to govern. But without this power and duty, there can be no shared responsibility.Nonsense! Failure to Exit is enough to establish shared responsibility or joint enterprise. Voice and Loyalty may be additional, but not essential, ingredients in determining culpability.
Imagine, for example, going to a publicly funded, high-profile national museum, and thinking that the art displayed there is pretentious, kitschy or even politically questionable. As a citizen (and a taxpayer), it’s plausible that you might regard yourself as partly accountable for the museum’s failure of taste in selecting its collection. Perhaps you’d send an email to the central inbox or complain about the curation on social media, given that you, as a citizen, are a partner – even a funder – of the museum’s activities (by means of your taxes). In contrast, you might be equally frustrated by the artwork in a private museum, but you’d probably find it easier to distance yourself from the decisions of a private collector. After all, it’s not me, as a member of the public, who made the artistic decision, but him or her, as a private collector – and ultimately the decision is the collector’s prerogative.History shows that it is easier to change the laws, or otherwise harass and intimidate, private collectors of material to which prudes take exception. In contrast, salaried employees of the State can dismiss the objections of 'philistines' and 'deplorables' secure in the knowledge that their chums in the higher echelons of the Bureaucracy will protect them.
When private actors take over state functions, they’re authorised to act for reasons beyond the public interest – to make money for themselves, for example, or to improve the value of their stock for shareholders.But individuals discharging state functions as direct employees too may unjustly or unconscionably enrich themselves. It may be impossible to sack them because Public Sector Unions can be very powerful. Systemic, racist, police misconduct in the USA is a glaring example.
Within the boundaries set by law, private entities don’t need to defer to the state.Public servants can defy the law with impunity if other public servants, charged with implementing the law, have a Trade Union mentality and stand in solidarity with them.
Indeed, privatisation presupposes that companies and other private entities are empowered to act in their own interests, within the terms of their contract, to perform a service for citizens.So long as there is competition, these contracts- which, by their nature are incomplete- can be the subject of 'regret minimizing' mechanism design. This facility may be lacking in the Public Sector by reason of 'Trade Union' type solidarity between public officials concerned to exert a collective monopoly power.
In the absence of this power there would be no difference between private and public entities.The only relevant power is that of a monopolist or a monopsonist. If there were a free market in employment contracts within the Public Sector- i.e. a 'hire and fire' culture- then outcomes would be the same as those that arise by privatization on open markets.
By its very nature, then, privatisation deprives the public of control.So does bureaucratization. In either case there is an intermediary. Renewable contracts subject to competition increase 'residuary control rights'. This is the subject matter of incomplete contract theory. Speaking generally, the Coasian, the Mechanism Design, and the 'Econ & Law' traditions have a univocal representation.
Talking shite about 'dignity' has a lunatic representation. The same argument can be used to take babies away from Mommies as to oppose the privatization of prisons. That means it is not a good argument. It is a stupid availability cascade which attracts public obloquy to the worthless Academic Departments which jump on that bandwagon.
By privatising the provision of a good or a service, the state distances itself from the activity, or, at least, from the decisions of a company (or another private entity) acting within the limits set by law.Nonsense! It still has to do due diligence on the Contract. That is 'close association'. It is not 'distancing' at all. One alternative, for Governments who don't want to tackle tricky problems, is to let an activist Bench step in and provide the remedy itself. That is 'distancing'. In India, the Courts are clogged up with motions brought by Government Departments against each other. Every rustic politician knows the Latin phrase 'sub judice' and passes the buck to the Courts by pretending that the Law does not permit her to comment.
In contrast, by acting as a unified public – by using civil servants to perform certain tasks – citizens remain responsible, and are more likely to regard the acts of the political community as their own.Perhaps Israelis feel this way about their bureaucrats. But, if so, Israel's bureaucracy is rather different from what obtains in other Democratic countries. 'Go fight City Hall!' is an idiomatic expression of the public's distrust and disavowal of the actions of public officials.
This is mad. We feel as responsible if a crime is committed by a Civil Servant or an employee of a Government contractor. Our response is the same. We want the guilty party to lose monetarily and perhaps see the inside of a nice prison cell. But we know it is easier to dismiss a contractor than to get rid of a civil servant who belongs to a powerful Union.
On this view, privatisation undermines an important dimension of our moral practices: the taking of responsibility on the part of citizens.
In particular, privatisation downplays the political dimension of responsibility by absolving citizens of their duty to be involved in important choices.This is true of Bureaucratization. It isn't true of 'outsourcing'. We are reluctant to criticize 'experts' who work for the State. We holler blue murder when we have been cheated by a private firm.
This doesn’t rely on a particular view of human psychology, but stems from the fact that being involved in political decisions is part of what facilitates collective responsibility.This is not a fact. The Germans had collective responsibility for Hitler's war-crimes even though the whole point of the Fuhrerprinzip was that political decisions were his prerogative alone. If this Professor really believes this nonsense, he should demand that Israel hand back reparations it received from the Federal Republic.
Spheres of activity that are privatised are excluded from this collective undertaking and are hidden away behind a corporate veil; they become the exclusive business of the private entity tasked with making the decision.Spheres of activity that are monopolized by the Government may be hidden away behind more effective veils. The American Supreme Court gives the President greater powers to shield internal communications than is available to a Corporate C.E.O.
Regulation and monitoring can alleviate some of these concerns. Often the contract between the government and the company includes provisions and conditions that must be met. Typically, there’s some degree of cooperation between the public and the private entity. Even so, regulation and monitoring differ from public control: they inevitably leave the private entity discretionary powers and, when acting within the scope of its discretion, its decisions remain beyond the reach of the public.But this is also true of Executive privilege.
In the court case concerning private prisons in Israel, it was argued that the state maintains powers of regulation over the prisons. Yet the court identified that certain essential powers – in particular, powers to search prisoners’ bodies and impose disciplinary punishments – are inevitably left to the discretion of private employees, and are therefore not done by, or in the name of, the public.Israel is an exceptional country. This is reflected in its Constitution. The Israeli Bench may well hold a different view in this matter, because of what happened during the Shoah, but then Israel holds other views- again because of its peculiar history- which other Nations find discriminatory or even racist. In particular the notion of 'commodification of inmates' chimes with atrocities like medical experimentation on kids in the Nazi Death Camps which have no similar resonances in other countries.
Extend the museum case to parks, beaches, social services, roads, adoption agencies, forests and more.Stuff which belongs to the public was paid for by the public in one way or another. Stuff which belongs to you was paid for by you. Do you want me to be able to use your garden in the same way I would use a public park?
What scope will remain for us, together, to make decisions – rather than for me, for you and for her, separately?The scope will be what it is- the public has a say in deciding what happens to stuff it paid for. You and you alone have a say in deciding what happens to stuff you bought.
Will there be room to make decisions collectively – and, if not, will there be an ‘us’ left at all?Yes. Nothing will have changed.
Typically, advocates and opponents of privatisation don’t talk about the desirability (or undesirability) of privatisation as such; instead they weigh up whether or not a private-sector entity will do something better or more efficiently. My point, though, is that assessing privatisation requires us to ask broader questions about whether stripping the state of its powers erodes civic responsibility.So, one bunch of guys say 'the answer depends on objective facts readily discoverable about the world'. This guy however says 'this question requires us to ask broader questions which are utterly foolish.' Stripping somebody or something requires power. It doesn't happen just by itself. Civic responsibility may rise or fall or stay the same irrespective of who or what is being stripped or just getting naked for shits and giggles. I may say eating felafel erodes Civic Responsibility coz it makes everyone toot. You may say eating felafel goads Civic Responsibility into finally coming out as a tranny who will win Eurovision by tooting La Marseillaise with its shapely derriere.
That's the trouble with talking high-minded nonsense. It can be too easily turned into low-minded nonsense.
The process doesn’t just concern the transformation of detention centres, trains, tax-enquiry offices, forestry operations and so on, on a case-by-case basis; privatisation has the potential to transform public culture from a political community that is politically engaged into a society marked by fragmented groups, simply competing with one another to pursue their own interests.If the above is not nonsense then there is a 'Structural Causal Model' at the back of it. But that Model predicts that Nationalizing everything in sight would reduce factionalism and internecine conflict in our polity. Why stop there? Why not say babies must be taken away from Mummies and brought up salaried Sairey Gamps in Public Orphanages?
The fact that privatisation minimises citizens’ responsibility isn’t necessarily a problem when it concerns goods and services that aren’t intrinsically political.How a baby is brought up is intrinsically political. In Israel, some babies are brought up to be Muslim Arabs. That's pretty darned political.
Even in a public prison, the cleaning and catering are often privatised; such privatisation doesn’t really pose moral questions or trade-offs, for instance, between the efficiency of supply and equality of access. The value of the state providing such services can be justified only instrumentally – that is, it can be justified only if the function in question works better when provided by public officials. But widespread privatisation of goods remains troubling when those functions do raise major political and ethical concerns.This is the root of the problem. I believe that no 'major political and ethical concerns' are involved. This is just virtue signalling or careerist propagation of a worthless academic availability cascade. We have just seen that Police officers abuse their powers in a systematic way. We know why this happened- the Police Union is too powerful. We want Police Departments to be treated like Private Contractors. If they fuck up, they lose the Contract. As happened in Camden N.J, the service is outsourced.
Privatisation can mean that we no longer feel responsible for whether or not our prisons run well, whether our parks are well cared for, or whether healthcare is available to those who need it most.So can Nationalization or just being a big fat jerk.
It leads to fewer decisions being made in the name of the political community, and undermines the value – and perhaps the very existence – of the political community itself.This is true of Bureaucratization. Renewable 'incomplete contracts' however can increase our residuary control rights. I now get a much better phone and broadband service than I did 10 years ago though I am paying less. Why? I can switch supplier. Competition has improved quality and lowered costs.
None of this means that we need to rule out privatisation categorically. Privatisation can sometimes – even frequently – be desirable for any number of reasons, including instrumental ones. My point is only that questions of citizens’ political engagement and sense of responsibility should be balanced against conflicting considerations.Your point is that shysters and worthless academics like yourself should gain obligatory passage point status because of your bogus concern with 'human dignity'. We disagree. A guy who ran a prison which successfully rehabilitated a lot of prisoners is the guy we want to reward with a Contract to run the local penitentiary. Tossers who talk of 'human dignity' can go fuck themselves.
Privatisation on a large scale distances citizens from direct and immediate control over the things that affect their lives, and comes at a grave cost to their sense of sharing in a broader political community.There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this view. Britain has had privatization on a large scale. Competition between utility companies has made things better for everyone. It has reduced systemic racism. When the telephone company was a Government monopoly, I taped an operator who made fun of my Indian accent and refused to register my complaint. I got a little money off my bill after I kicked up a fuss but my telephone service remained terrible. I talked to BAME people working for the company. They confirmed that Racism was rampant. Employees would boast of having cut of the phone service of a 'nigger' or a 'Paki'.
That work-culture has now gone. If I make a complaint and switch supplier, I get a call from Management. They sack racists. Why? Because Racism is bad for the bottom line.
Currently, a lot of people are talking of defunding the police. Contracts may be awarded to Community based security providers. It seems our distinguished author is on the wrong side of history. His faith in the angelic properties of Civil Servants seems misplaced.
While these costs might be unquantifiable, they shouldn’t be ignored.Stuff that hasn't happened yet is as yet unknown. What a marvellous discovery!
Maybe a weakening public sphere is slowly being replaced by private individuals, NGOs, protestors and activists. Perhaps, for instance, we are losing the sense that museums ought to serve public purposes. Indeed, the more that privatisation undermines political community, the more that we can expect individuals to assert control over private and privatised bodies. The proliferation of consumer boycotts and principles of corporate social responsibility suggest that market activism might replace or compensate for the loss of shared civic responsibility. However, the moral implications for how people will relate to one another as free and equal beings, in public or in private, are as yet unknown.
The truth is only one thing matters-not cost but opportunity cost. It is 'regret maximizing' to have competition such that if the Agent fucks up, you switch Agent. This overcomes Agent-Principal hazard. Talking shite about 'human dignity' and 'Civic Responsibility' does not help anyone. Yet more cretinous gobshites will shoulder you aside to talk about the sacrality of the soul and Man's duty- as the shepherd of Being- to the Cosmos entire. Man must overcome himself to rise up to the status of the Superman! The path beckons and it is our duty to go forth, in the gloaming of the Gods, to claim our Promethean destiny. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer!
What is it that prevents polities from rushing like lemmings over the cliff-edge of reason in the manner that the Germans did?
The answer is that sensible people follow a 'regret minimizing' strategy. We may listen and nod our head as some gobshite waxes eloquent about some supposed grave ontological threat to 'human dignity' and 'Civic Responsibility'. But we ignore the fool. Why? We may greatly regret following his counsel. By contrast, doing what saves us money and improves our lives, does not commit us to any type of mischegoss. We can always change our behavior as circumstances change. Why get personally invested in wordy virtue signalling?
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