Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/31/looters-r-us.html
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Just get a self-publicist like ■■■■■ von Lipwig to run the Post Office.
(Boing Boing is censoring the name of one of Terry Pratchett’s characters).
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The conservative/Libertarian formula has been the same for 35 years: say government can do no right with taxpayer dollars; cut taxes and defund “undeserving” government agencies (especially those that compete with private enterprise in the course of carrying out their mission); wait for the inevitable disaster to occur; say “see, we told you government is not the solution”; lather, rinse, repeat…
The difference, as you note, is that the assets of the most efficient agencies and institutions are now being privatised along the post-Soviet Russian model with all the results you’d expect when the enterprise is accountable not to the citizenry at large but to a handful of shareholders. If Dolt-45 gets a second term be prepared for the public sector to be pillaged in a looting spree unprecedented in the U.S.
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The unwillingness of the middle class to apply any pressure on the 1% explains most of how this can go about unaddressed. It’s some kind of hero worship crossed with Stockholm syndrome.
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If that number is “most”, then I’m not really surprised. But I’m a cynic.
Or they are hoping to one day join their ranks, once their ships come in. You don’t throw rocks at the windows of the house you want to move into.
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Or, you know, too fucking busy trying to stay above the poverty line…
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Big capital has little options of investment. If you have 1 million bucks, maybe you can be OK with the returns on a savings account, or invest on a McDonalds franchise.
If you have 10 billion bucks, you won’t keep it on a savings account or treasuries. The only business attractive enough is either mergers and acquisitions, of poaching profitable public services. Why will let the government run a business that covers 300 MM people and direct or indirectly gets a few hundred dollars from each of them?
Watch an hour less YouTube a week and spend it contemplating next steps.
Experiment in self-regulation: give a four year old a literal ton of candy and tell him to make it last until he’s eighteen.
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