Why privatizing public goods is bad for democracy (with Donald Cohen)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Even in the middle of a pandemic, trickle-down politicians still love to claim that the free market is the best way to resolve human problems and that the government can't be trusted to serve the public good. But when we privatize public health, utilities, and other shared necessities, we hand over control of those public goods—the things that we all need and that we need everyone to have— to for-profit entities that don’t answer to the public. Donald Cohen, an expert on privatization, shares examples and talks about the consequences of privatization in America. Donald Cohen is the founder and executive director of In The Public Interest, a national resource and policy center on privatization and responsible contracting. He's also co-author of the new book The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back. Twitter: @donaldrcohen12 The Privatization of Everything: https://bookshop.org/books/the-privatization-of-everything-how-the-plunder-of-public-goods-transformed-america-and-how-we-can-fight-back/9781620976531 Why Privatization is Worse Than You Know: https://publicseminar.org/2022/01/why-privatization-is-worse-than-you-know/ Opinion: The pandemic proved that privatization can’t provide enough public goods—like vaccines, education, justice, and a sustainable planet: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-pandemic-proved-that-privatization-cant-provide-enough-public-goodslike-vaccines-education-justice-and-a-sustainable-planet-11640027547 The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back: https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/privatization-everything-plunder-public-goods-transformed-america-can-fight-back-bookbite/31594/ A Conversation With Donald Cohen, Author of ‘The Privatization of Everything’: https://capitalandmain.com/a-conversation-with-donald-cohen-author-of-the-privatization-of-everything Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s Twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, pitchfork listeners, we're working on another Ask Me Anything episode and we need
0:04.8	your questions for Nick and the team. What do you want to know? Call us at 731-388-9334.
0:12.7	Leave us a voicemail asking your question and we might just answer it on our next AMA episode
0:18.4	of pitchfork economics. Again, that 731-388-9334. Looking forward to hearing your questions.
0:27.2	You know, we've privatized a crapload of stuff and I think it's safe to say that the quality
0:33.2	of life in the country certainly has not improved. Privatization is one of the key strategic
0:39.1	approaches to dismantle government, you know, to make government cash cow for the private sector
0:44.8	and corporate interests. If there's one thing I've learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that we
0:49.7	live in the best of all possible worlds, right? The market has totally fixed it.
0:58.2	From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics,
1:05.3	with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
1:16.9	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures. I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
1:27.6	And today's episode, we get to talk about privatization of public goods with our old friend,
1:33.4	Donald Cohen. And, you know, it's a really interesting subject area and has been, you know,
1:41.1	one of the main trusts of the neoliberal takeover of government and policy. This idea that the
1:46.9	market is always right. The market solutions are always superior to public solutions. They're always
1:53.9	more efficient. The quality of the service is always better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
1:58.5	And the pursuit of private profit always serves the public good. The public good, the public interest.
2:03.6	The invisible hand in all. Exactly. Exactly. If there's one thing I've learned from the COVID-19
2:08.8	pandemic is that we live in the best of all possible worlds, right? That's right. The market has
2:14.9	totally fixed it. Exactly. And, you know, we've privatized a crapload of stuff and I think it's
2:20.9	safe to say that the quality of life in the country certainly has not improved. And, you know,
	...

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