Privatisation

Privatisation  (Neoliberalism)
Interest of	• Vittorio Barattieri • Boston Consulting Group • McKinsey & Company • Mont Pelerin Society

Privatisation is the transferal of organisations from public to private ownership. It is the reverse of nationalisation and a primary policy of neoliberalism.

Official narrative

Improving efficiency...
...it will be great!

De Facto

Reagan and Thatcher were leaders of the economic charge ... since then airlines, roads, railroads, postal services, electric and water utilities have been privatised. Throughout the most affected countries people tend to agree that services have not improved, often enough worsened, but prices have gone up significantly.

Criticism

Public utilities, roads, railway companies, etc. have all been built by the combined effort of the people of a nation state. This is the why these assets should have never been up for sale without debate/referendum.

Eastern Europe

Viktor Yushchenko called the privatisation in Ukraine during the 90s openly theft.

Intelligence privatisation in the US

Public private partnerships between the military, intelligence agencies and businesses have a history in joint engineering projects. However, the privatisation of the US intelligence and military sector took up speed after 9-11, leading to wholesale outsourcing of what was before understood to be key competence of a nation state. If one were to take the Snowden story as it is told by him, he should have not been employed a second time with that kind of network access since he was considered a risk. Yet he is able to walk out as a contractor with what the national security state considers highly classified material. If this is the true state of affairs with the agencies and their contractors, how likely is it that organised crime has access to sensitive information or can at will channel information out of these systems for the right price or through blackmail?

“I've got murderers who have access to classified information. I have rapists, I have pedophiles, I have people involved in child porn. I have all these things at the interim clearance level, and I’m pulling their clearances on a weekly basis.”
Daniel Payne (2018)  Director of the Defense Security Service at the Department of Defense

“[...]child pornography — as many as 1,700 names, according to a U.S. senator, on a list of 5,200 from an Internet sting operation overlooked the first time around four years ago. Only now are they supposedly getting a second look, and only after pressure from investigative reporters and the U.S. senator you're about to hear from, Republican Charles Grassley. [...]

According to DCIS documents revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request, out of that 3,500, investigators uncovered 264 employees or contractors, including staffers for the secretary of defense and contractors at the NSA. Nine people had top security clearances.

But only about 20 percent of those 264 people were completely investigated. Fewer still were prosecuted, and about eight months — after about eight months, the entire probe was halted. It left about 1,700 names totally unchecked, 1,700 alleged kiddie porn customers, an unknown number of whom may still work in some capacity for the Defense Department.

Late last summer, after investigations by "The Boston Globe" and Yahoo! News revealed the figures, a Pentagon spokesman promised to reopen the investigation, conceding that DCIS had stopped due to lack of resources. DCIS says it is now revisiting all 5,200 names, telling Senator's Grassley staff they have now identified 302 employees or staffers. [...]

But Senator Grassley says he is still not getting the cooperation he needs from the Pentagon.”
Anderson Cooper (2011)  CNN

Other effects

Full article: Revolving door

With increased privatisation the effect of the revolving door has become very common, which can lead to regulatory capture.

Weblinks

Does Privatization Serve the Public Interest? - by John B. Goodman and Gary W. Loveman - Harvard Business Review November-December 1991 Issue

 

Examples

Page name	Description
Clinical Commissioning Group
HCRG Care
Integrated Care System
NHS Long Term Plan
Private finance initiative
UK/Health and Care Act 2022
United States Intelligence Community/Privatisation	The US has outsourced much of it's intelligence capacity to private companies.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Tony Blair	“Thatcher deliberately and cruelly wrecked the social democratic society in which I grew up, with the aim of destroying any ability for working people to be protected against the whims of the wealthy. But Thatcher never introduced privatisation into the NHS or state schools – that was her acolyte Blair. She maintained free university education in England and Wales. That was destroyed by Blair too.”	Craig Murray Tony Blair	25 July 2019
Mark Rutte	“Vision is like an elephant that robs your view. (...) When I think of the word "vision" I immediately think: go see an ophthalmologist!.”	Mark Rutte
United States Intelligence Community/Privatisation	“I've got murderers who have access to classified information. I have rapists, I have pedophiles, I have people involved in child porn. I have all these things at the interim clearance level, and I’m pulling their clearances on a weekly basis.”	Daniel Payne	2018
United States Intelligence Community/Privatisation	“[...]child pornography — as many as 1,700 names, according to a U.S. senator, on a list of 5,200 from an Internet sting operation overlooked the first time around four years ago. Only now are they supposedly getting a second look, and only after pressure from investigative reporters and the U.S. senator you're about to hear from, Republican Charles Grassley. [...] According to DCIS documents revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request, out of that 3,500, investigators uncovered 264 employees or contractors, including staffers for the secretary of defense and contractors at the NSA. Nine people had top security clearances. But only about 20 percent of those 264 people were completely investigated. Fewer still were prosecuted, and about eight months — after about eight months, the entire probe was halted. It left about 1,700 names totally unchecked, 1,700 alleged kiddie porn customers, an unknown number of whom may still work in some capacity for the Defense Department. Late last summer, after investigations by "The Boston Globe" and Yahoo! News revealed the figures, a Pentagon spokesman promised to reopen the investigation, conceding that DCIS had stopped due to lack of resources. DCIS says it is now revisiting all 5,200 names, telling Senator's Grassley staff they have now identified 302 employees or staffers. [...] But Senator Grassley says he is still not getting the cooperation he needs from the Pentagon.”	Anderson Cooper	2011

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Antidote to Privatisation is Public Ownership	Report	19 September 2022	Prem Sikka	"The report recommends progressive taxation and democratisation of corporations, so that they serve the interests of communities and people rather than just shareholders and executives. It recommends that essential industries, such as energy, be brought into public ownership. It shows that there is very little cost associated with bringing energy, and other essential industries, into public ownership."
Document:How to Keep Going During the Next Energy Crisis	Article	25 September 2021	Mike Small	The social chaos unwinding on your forecourts and timelines is the long-term consequence of decades of privatisation, core industries run for profiteering with no thinking about the socio-ecological consequence. As people face mass fuel poverty, the dark irony is that all of these “British” institutions were sold off by the Tories, now desperate to defend the very concept of Britishness they’ve sold.
Document:Margaret Thatcher Ruined Britain	blog post	30 December 2021	Clifford Thurlow	Margaret Thatcher ruined Britain with her hard-right policies and the five Conservative prime ministers, since her party knifed her in the back the Tory way, have carelessly kicked over the remains. Each has been worse than the last in descending order – John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May, liar Boris Johnson and finally Liz Truss, a puppet with a wooden heart and personal photographer.
Document:Privatization for Dummies – The Nuts & Bolts of The World's Biggest Scam	article	21 March 2019	Ronald Thomas West
Document:The Kiss of Death	article	2005	Leuren Moret	Insight into where privatisation of the US Nuclear weapons program and military/weapons/surveillance developments are leading the world. It also provides shocking information about the extent of the apparently quite deliberate and calculated radiation contamination resulting from ever-expanding use of depleted uranium munitions.
Document:The Notional Health Service	Wikispooks Page	17 October 2024	Craig Murray	"Today is my 66th birthday, so I am hoping that you will forgive an article that is at core the anecdotal ramblings of an old man. Sixty years ago or so, when my siblings or I were sick enough to be in bed, my mother would phone the surgery and the GP would come to our home to see us. This was perfectly normal. It is probably difficult for Generation Z to believe this really used to happen."
Document:The Terrorists Among US- Traitors and Terror 3	article	21 June 2019	George Eliason Michael Jasinski	George Eliason interviews professor Michael Jasinski about the dire effects of outsourcing intelligence gathering and information dissemination.
Document:The great con that ruined Britain	Article	3 April 2016	Peter Hitchens	Peter Hitchens, the repentant Thatcherite, has second thoughts about privatisation: if it’s all been so beneficial, why do so many of the containers that arrive in British ports, full of expensive imports, leave this country empty?

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