Independent Rant

All of you fans of privatization should take a look at the story in yesterday's London Times that reports that trains in the UK have been a collective 11,000 years late since the system was privatized in 1997. That's right -- 11,000 years according to the Strategic Railway Authority. Oh, in case you haven't guessed, profits for the private operators have been up while service levels have gone down.

It is time to acknowledge that private enterprises aren't always paragons of efficiency and public operations are not always wasteful and slow. Without proper incentives and oversight, privatized public services aren't likely to perform better than predecessors. Instead you get a monopoly (or duopoly) with powerful motives to boost profits and little recourse for market forces to drive service improvements. Think of your local cable company.

In this country the Bushies are pushing hard to privatize government services. There are plenty of improvements that can be made in these agencies and programs, but let's make sure we actually make improvements and don't just give private companies a license to enrich themselves.