Privitization

2 Pages 557 Words

The normative theories justifying privatization as a direction for public policy draw their inspiration from several different visions of a good society. With the rise of conservative governments in Great Britain, the United States, and France, privatization has come primarily to mean two things: (I) any shift of activities or functions from the state to the private sector; and, more specifically, (2) any shift of the production of goods and services from public to private. The second, more specific definition of privatization excludes deregulation and spending cuts except when they result in a shift from public to private in the production of goods and services. Second, in the definition I am using, privatization refers to shifts from the public to the private sector, not shifts within sectors. Thus the conversion of a state agency into an autonomous public authority or state-owned enterprise is not privatization, though it may well put the enterprise on a commercial footing. When privatization is a demand-driven process, it does not require an absolute reduction in publicly produced services. If one shifts attention from the sphere of production to the sphere of consumption, one may alternatively define privatization as the substitution of private goods for public goods. A public good need not be produced by government. Any shift toward these forms of nonbroadcast television represents a privatization of consumption, even if the local cable service is municipally owned.
In regard to production, "privatization of health care" might mean a transfer of medical facilities from public to private ownership; regarding consumption, it might refer to a shift in expenditures from public health (environmental protection, vaccinations, etc.) to individual medical care. Otherwise, I take privatization to mean a shift in the locus of the production of services from public to private.
First, the cessation of public programs and disengagement of ...