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A Libertarian’s Lament On The Government Behemoth

January 9, 2019

A Libertarian’s Lament On The Government Behemoth

As it turns out, we don’t really need the government to take care of us.

If it were not for the government, who would build the roads? Who would educate the children? Who would keep the parks clean? These questions usually are posed by progressives who think they have taken libertarians to task. We have already seen pizza companies maintaining the roads and private schools and homeschoolers doing an admirable job teaching students. Now, we’re learning that the free-enterprise system can keep parks, including government-run ones, clean.

These tourist dollars are essential to the survival of small businesses…

Keeping Yellowstone Clean

Because the government has been partially closed for nearly three weeks, several national parks have been pretty much abandoned. Without staff on hand, the trash is piling up, and bathrooms look like they’re managed by an uncouth teenager working at 7-Eleven. Access is now free since no one is available to collect the $35-per-car fee. The trade-off, however, is a dirty park.

Well, except if you’re visiting Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming or Montana.

Yellowstone attracts roughly 30,000 visitors every month, even in the middle of winter, contributing $18.2 billion to the local economy. These tourist dollars are essential to the survival of small businesses, from restaurants to tour guides to snowmobile rentals. Just be careful of that guy in a wagon claiming that Yellowstone will be the epicenter of the apocalypse!

Residents near Yellowstone set up to help clean park during shutdown

In other words, private enterprises in the area have an incentive to ensure Yellowstone continues to be accessible to tourists. So, what are they doing? These companies, led by Xanterra Parks and Resorts, are gathering funds to ensure the roads are maintained, the restrooms are packed with toilet paper, and the trash bins are emptied. They are even paying staff to work in the park.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Public Is Being Looted By Privatization And Deregulation

February 23, 2016

The Public Is Being Looted By Privatization And Deregulation

The privatization movement and the deregulation movement have turned out to be failures.

Privatization in Britain under the Thatcher government had its origin in the belief that the absence of incentivized managers and shareholders with a stake in the bottom line resulted in nationalized companies operating inefficiently, with their losses covered by government like the big private banks’ losses today. Thatcher’s government believed that privatizing socialized firms would reduce the UK budget deficit and take pressure off the British pound.

Today privatization is a way that governments can reward cronies by giving them valuable public resources for a low price. When the UK government privatized the postal system, there were news reports that one postal property in London alone was worth the purchase price of the entire postal service.

Privatization is also a way that conservatives, who object to social pensions and national health, can stop “taxpayer support of welfare.” In the US conservatives want to privatize Social Security and Medicare. In the UK conservatives want to privatize the National Health System.

It looks like the UK Conservative government is taking a step in the direction of privatizing the national health system, one of the great social reforms in British history. https://www.rt.com/uk/333270-nhs-professionals-privatized-deloitte/ 

In the US there are advocates of privatizing the national forests. In some ways the forests are already privatized as private timber companies are allowed to “harvest” the trees at favorable prices, and often the government even builds the roads for them.

In the US deregulation has resulted in high prices and poor service. When airlines were regulated, they competed on service. They had spare equipment so that mechanical problems did not mean cancelled flights. Stopovers did not involve additional costs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Privatization Is the Atlanticist Strategy to Attack Russia

February 8, 2016

NOTE: Readers are asking to know who, in addition to the Western-financed NGOs, are the Fifth Columnists inside Russia. Michael Hudson and I left the description general as Atlanticist Integrationists and neoliberal economists. The Saker provides some specific names. Among the Fifth Columnists are the Russian Prime Minister, head of the Central Bank, and the two top economics ministers. They are springing a privatization trap on Putin that could undo all of his accomplishments and deliver Russia to Western control.  
http://thesaker.is/putins-biggest-failure/

Privatization Is the Atlanticist Strategy to Attack Russia

Two years ago, Russian officials discussed plans to privatize a group of national enterprises headed by the oil producer Rosneft, the VTB Bank, Aeroflot, and Russian Railways. The stated objective was to streamline management of these companies, and also to induce oligarchs to begin bringing their two decades of capital flight back to invest in the Russia economy. Foreign participation was sought in cases where Western technology transfer and management techniques would be likely to help the economy.

However, the Russian economic outlook deteriorated as the United States pushed Western governments to impose economic sanctions against Russia and oil prices declined. This has made the Russian economy less attractive to foreign investors. So sale of these companies will bring much lower prices today than would have been likely in 2014

Meanwhile, the combination of a rising domestic budget deficit and balance-of-payments deficit has given Russian advocates of privatization an argument to press ahead with the sell-offs. The flaw in their logic is their neoliberal assumption that Russia cannot simply monetize its deficit, but needs to survive by selling off more major assets. We warn against Russia being so gullible as to accept this dangerous neoliberal argument. Privatization will not help re-industrialize Russia’s economy, but will aggravate its turn into a rentier economy from which profits are extracted for the benefit of foreign owners.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Records Show More US Involvement in Mexico Oil, Gas Privatization Efforts as Mexican Government Says “100%” Its Idea

August 21, 2015

New Records Show More US Involvement in Mexico Oil, Gas Privatization Efforts as Mexican Government Says “100%” Its Idea

New records obtained by DeSmog shed further light on the role the U.S.government has played to help implement the privatization of Mexico’s oil and gas industry, opening it up to international firms beyond state-owned companyPEMEX (Petroleos Mexicanos).

Obtained from both the City of San Antonio, Texas and University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA), the records center around the U.S.–Mexico Oil and Gas Business Export Conference, held in May in San Antonio and hosted by both the U.S.Department of Trade and Department of Commerce, as well as UTSA.

They reveal the U.S. government acting as a mediator between Mexico’s government and U.S. oil and gas companies seeking to cash in on a policy made possible by the behind-the-scenes efforts of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s U.S. State Department. State Department involvement was first revealed here on DeSmog, pointing to emails obtained via Freedom of Information Act and cables made available via Wikileaks.

The records also call into question the claim made by Mexico’s Energy Secretary, Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, that the privatization policy was “100 percent made in Mexico.” Coldwell said this in reaction to DeSmog’s investigation showing heavy State Department involvement in ushering in the policy.

“It is absolutely false that Hillary Clinton or any other United States government entity had anything to do with the Mexican energy reform,” Coldwell stated.

If the U.S. government had nothing to with creating the policy architecture to begin with, and its own records tell the opposite story, then it sure is shocking how involved it is now in the attempt to help U.S. companies build their profits from the new policy regime.

 

“Want to Grow Your Business?”

Indeed, event organizers boasted of the convening as a business opportunity for U.S. companies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Greece and the Marxism of Syriza

June 30, 2015

Greece and the Marxism of Syriza

Has the Leopard Really Changed its Spots?

Back in February, a brief article at the BBC remarked on the seeming transformation of Syriza from a bunch of Marxist dreamers into (shudder..) quasi-“Blairites”. To be sure, we also approved of the signs of pragmatism that emerged at the time. The party had seemingly ditched its previously implacable opposition to privatizations and didn’t even try to tax the country’s shipping magnates. The tax exemptions enjoyed by the latter strike many as unjust, but the fact is that they provide around 7% of Greek employment and their assets are out at sea. It is up to them under which flag said assets are sailing and it would be self-destructive to chase them away.

 

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Given the stunt Mr. Tsipras just pulled (note that the Greek negotiators learned of his referendum announcement via Twitter – they were not privy to what was about to happen), we are not so sure that the leopard has really changed its spots. We are not critical of a referendum as such, on the contrary. However, the timing and the way Tsipras has gone about it, suggest that he is really trying to arrange for a “Grexit” and one cannot help getting the impression that this may have been the intention all along. As noted previously, a referendum could have been held months ago already – why wait until it is almost too late for all practical purposes?

A reminder was provided by a mail correspondent of ours in Spain, who pointed out that the parties voting in favor of Tsipras’ plan were Syriza, ANEL and Golden Dawn. As to the Stalinist KKE, he noted “[the] KKE is against everything (as usual), but I still have hope in their “No” vote, closing the circle: from the Nazis to the Communists, all united against a free Europe, in a “Molotov-Ribbentrop v2.0″.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

Austerity in Greece – What Has Gone Wrong?

March 31, 2015

Austerity in Greece – What Has Gone Wrong?

A Brief Update on Recent Developments

On Friday, the Greek government has submitted its latest reform proposals to the EU. According to press reports, these are supposed to raise €3 billion and consist of the following:

“[…] moves to combat tax evasion, more privatizations and higher taxes on alcohol and cigarettes. […] The Greek government said the 18-point reform program did not include any “recessionary measures”.”

In the meantime it has also emerged that the privatization of the port of Piraeus, which Syriza had previously reportedly opposed is about to go forward after all, and is expected to bring in proceeds of around € 500 m. Pressure on the Greek government has recently increased, not only due to the fact that it is expected to run out of money soon, but also as a result of a downgrade of its credit rating by Fitch late last week to a lowly CCC rating. This makes it even less likely that the government will be able to roll over maturing treasury bills.

Below are the most recent updates of domestic deposit outflows and central bank credit to the banking sector, showing the situation as of the end of February. Note that we have adjusted the data on deposit outflows by deducting all government deposits from the domestic deposits time series, so that only the deposits of Greek households and business are shown.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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