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this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Privatisation is the result of capitalists looking at everything and asking themselves "how could someone profit from this"? It's not about running services more cost-effectively or making things easier on clients - it's about filtering taxpayer money into private pockets.
Private companies aren't naturally more efficient or less wasteful than government-owned entities - the streams of taxpayer money going to big banks, resource companies and others as subsidies should disabuse anyone of that notion. And arguably a large part of perceived government 'inefficiency' is due to the fact that they contract government projects out to private companies which then keep extracting money via "cost blowouts" and delays.
Most privatized assets are already very profitable - the rich wouldn't be trying to take it if it wasn't valuable. Balance sheet aside, public assets profit society as a whole.
I would say privatisation is the rich asking how fewer people could profit this.
This isn't about assets though - it's about government services. Things that aren't designed to be profitable, that naturally will cost money to operate while not generally making money. By privatising these, they are now entities that have to make a profit, and that generally happens by extracting taxpayer money, as well as cutting cost, by reducing staff, service levels, equipment et al. That doesn't make it more efficient - just more painful to use for clients. $9.5bn per year? Someone's laughing all the way to the bank.