
Privatization is often just change for the sake of change
An unnamed senior official might’ve just written that the president often defies his national security advisors, but Trump has so far stayed the course in Afghanistan.
That’s not to say that U.S. warfighting there is a good thing. But it does mean that Erik Prince, founder of the notorious military contractor Blackwater, hasn’t been able to convince the White House to privatize the war.
Prince is in the news again pushing to hand the keys over to private equity-owned contractors. “I’m tired of America wasting our blood and treasure when there is another way, a better way,” he says in a new interview with Vanity Fair.
But the real news is that someone, anyone, is listening to Erik Prince, whose company killed 17 Iraqi citizens in a now-infamous 2007 massacre.
I think this demonstrates a recurring theme in arguments for privatization — of warfighting, of prisons, of schools, of water. People are willing to entertain the idea of privatization — to hear folks like Prince out — because at least it would be a change.
Take charter schools. They’re often pitched as the answer for struggling public school districts, particularly in urban areas. (Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, an advocate for charter schools, is Prince’s sister.) While charter schools allow some families a “choice,” evidence that they perform better than traditional, neighborhood schools is mixed at best. Run by unelected, private boards, they actually take away the most important choice of all, the chance for parents and residents to hold democratically elected officials accountable. And they exacerbate lack of resources by taking funding away from neighborhood schools.
But at least they’re something different, right? Let’s just ignore that in 38 states, the average teacher salary is lower in 2018 than it was in 2009. And that, since 1990, state and local spending on prisons and jails has increased more than three times faster than spending on schools. And that 10 million students are in schools with police and no social workers.
In such conditions, at least we’re changing things up by handing over schools to shadowy, unaccountable organizations. At least we’re trying something, anything.
Otherwise, it’s hard to find evidence to support privatization. It’s often not cheaper — as proponents endlessly claim — and sometimes it’s costlier over the long run. It takes decision-making power from the public. It enriches the wealthy few at the expense of the many. And it hurts women and people of color most.
At the end of the day, arguments for privatization — change for the sake of change — serve to distract us from the one thing we’re apparently not allowed to change: taxes. Well, we’re allowed to lower them. Raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy will crash the economy, wipe out jobs, and turn us into that dreaded word, “socialists.” So, we keep spinning round and round getting in the same old arguments about policies and partisan politics without calling out the elephant in the room.
Until we increase government revenues and reprioritize spending, the only tool we’ll have is privatization, which is like putting a fresh coat of paint on a sinking ship.
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Jeremy Mohler is a writer and communications strategist for In the Public Interest, a nonprofit that advocates for the democratic control of public goods and services. He’d love to hear from you: jmohler@inthepublicinterest.org

