Toon: How privatization really works

[n2doc]

[RKP5637]

1. Maybe people will be able to understand this toon outside of DU. n/t

[freshwest]

2. Been trying to tell folks this! Privatizing reduces oversight and accountability, not their taxes.

Eventually the taxpayers pay for it all, one way or the other.

In the meantime, the corporate fatcats fly in their lobbyists to each state legislature and get contracts to destroy systems that have worked for generations and no one asked them to get rid of.

The media is always complicit, tossing out a press release to cover up the scam. Usually some old story of something wrong, some imagined fear or else slandering public workers in general.

After a while, the meme becomes reality and the crime goes forward, abetted by legislators who don't even write the law that gives the money away, the corporate lawyers write them...

[TheMadMonk]

3. Something else, most "Privatisation" ventures come with Revenue Guarantees.

The buyers of a public utility are guaranteed a certain amount of revenue per "domestic" customer for a set period of time (often twenty years or so).

Our town water (and not water any more) utility is a prime example of how these guarantees can be and are abused. In a drought they sold off most of the region's water supply to the state capital. Then with no water to sell to their customers, they invoked their revenue guarantees to jack up sewerage rates to glory to compensate for their "loss" in water sales.

Electricity suppliers are another. The more customers that go on "deals" and/or save energy, the higher the default tarrifs are permitted to rise in compensation. Throw in something like a carbon tax, such as is being contemplated here in Australia, and they'll charge like a bloody wounded bull.

Insurance? The whole point of acturial tables in the first place was to establish population wide averages for the purposes of what amounted to taking a fair bet from the policy holder. By allowing the insurers to do fancy things like split their bets, and subdivide the tables into a myriad of overlapping sub-populations, the bet suddenly becomes decidedly unfair for the insured.

It may well be that "The bookie's wife wears the fur coat." But to present her with a diamond tiara and necklace on a velvet cushion to go with it? FFS how did we get that stoopid?