Destroying Democracy Is Central to the Privatization of Public Goods
The obsession with privatization isn’t just about turning public goods into profit generators for a small handful of wealthy people. It’s also about trampling on democracy.
Ronald Reagan’s economic advisers recognized they would never succeed in convincing voters to give up basic government services. With privatization as their tool, they didn’t have to. (Dirck Halstead / Getty Images)
Privatization happens because it’s part of a broad political strategy, because of unequal access to power, and because of plain, simple greed. Privatization also happens when rights, freedoms, and democracy get in the way.
In 2017, Kansas City, Missouri, faced a serious problem with gun crimes and gun violence in the popular Westport district. Legitimately concerned over an uptick in firearms incidents (not all of them involved a shooting), business owners wanted a cordon placed around one particularly problematic intersection, running a block in each direction, that would prohibit entry unless patrons agreed to a search for weapons. That was the only way they could think of addressing the violence.
What the businesses wanted was plainly unconstitutional: you can’t stop people on a public street for weapons searches without probable cause. But what if the streets weren’t public?
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