Privatization of Government Services

[Martin Hash]

Governments are, by definition, socialist, meaning their obligation is to do what is best for everybody. Identifying what is "best for everybody" requires centralized control, which, unfortunately, can be easily exploited by special interests. Public employees are primarily a vestige of the old patronage system where winning politicians rewarded their followers with plum jobs. Teddy Roosevelt was responsible for implementing civil service testing to at least ensure a minimum level of public employee competency, but that was clear back at the end of the 19th Century, and now we require a complete transition to market-pressures performance, called privatization. Government sets the objectives that must be met for payment. Politicians define what those objectives are but businesses implement them.

Privatization also fits into the concept of a government based on Debit economics. Market-pressures economies grow because of increasing productivity. When a business is paid for one pair of shoes but figures out how to make two pair for the same cost, they get to keep all the money from the second pair. For every dollar government spends in a market-pressures economy, it multiplies due to productivity. Currently, this productivity multiplier is about 4: $1 government spending leads to $4 GNP. Obviously, the bigger the multiplier, the better our lives. Since public employee services do not have “profit” as their goal, their productivity can only be 1.

p.s. Of course It would be dangerous to privatize the military.