Tag: privatization

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national politics & policies too much government

Trump Ponders Privatizing Post Office

USPS, Postal Service, public service, privatization, free enterprise

Donald Trump can’t turn the U.S. Postal Service over to private hands with a wave of his hand. But he can push to make it happen.

Three people “with knowledge of the matter” say that he has discussed the possibility with Howard Lutnick, his choice for commerce secretary.

USPS never makes money. It costs taxpayers billions every year. In fiscal year 2023, it lost $6.5 billion; in the next fiscal year, $9.5 billion.

If privatizing the agency does happen, the transition probably won’t be seamless, not even if we can surmount the opposition of the powerful postal union. 

Fortunately, we already have many private alternative ways of shipping information and packages, from encrypted email to UPS and FedEx.

The latter have come to rely on the post office to handle part of delivery, typically the last mile or two. They’ll have to find alternatives if a privatized USPS does not immediately assume these contracts. 

Thankfully, delivery services are already supplementing their local-​area shipping. For example, UPS has Roadie, a company that relies on independent drivers to provide same-​day delivery within a town for stores like Best Buy.

Roadie drivers are gig workers. So let’s hope that even as the federal government paves the way for a hostile private takeover of the Postal Service, freelance contractors are not being regulated out of existence. 

For some reason, Trump has named a person in favor of that sort of thing to lead the Labor Department. So expect bumps ahead.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets media and media people political economy too much government

Incredulity Doesn’t Cut It

dumpster fire, regulations, privatization

One of the objections people often make to the idea of private enterprise as a solution to government inefficiency is The Argument from Incredulity.

It’s not an argument at all, actually, just a harrumph and a guffaw: we cannot have free-​market police, or fire suppression, or … garbage collection!

But of course all those things are successfully managed in the private sector.

No media outfit has a longer history of pointing this out than Reason magazine. So when the editors of Reason brought us Joe Lancaster’s “Government Waste Monopoly Pits Private Dumpster Business Against Garbage Bureaucrats,” yesterday, I hope they took a moment to revel in a little nostalgia. For this is the kind of story that made Reason what it is today, one of the best sources for retail political economy.

The tale tells of Steven Hedrick, an Arkansas man who put together a business renting out dumpsters — like you often see on construction sites, but smaller — which he would haul away after customers filled them. He built the business without ever going into debt, and then … came the government. 

“[I]n April 2022, the City Council in Holiday Island passed Ordinance 2022-​004, which required all residents and businesses within the city to contract with the county sanitation authority, Carroll County Solid Waste (CCSW), for trash pickup and disposal services,” Reason informs us. “Anyone using private companies would have to switch, and anyone who did not have contracted trash service would have to sign up.”

And Hedrick’s little business must be … dumped.

What this is, at base? Sheer bigotry: preferring monopoly government to competitive private services.

For those of us who’ve been reading Reason for decades, it sports a familiar smell.

Just not a good odor, for the drive to monopolize everything stinks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets individual achievement

Not Just a Recycled Rocket

SpaceX, Space X, space exploration, private, privatization, Elon Musk, landing, rocket, spaceship

Last Thursday, SpaceX successfully re-​used a previously flown rocket to launch a payload into orbit.

Sure, NASA had re-​cycled rocket parts before. That is, the U.S. space agency had recovered spent rockets.* But those were rebuilds.

SpaceX’s most recent triumph was to launch a “stage one” rocket that had gone into space before —and returned. Last April it delivered a payload to the International Space Station and then safely touched down vertically** — just like in 1950s sci-fi!

You could see the evidence: the weathered look of the rocket fuselage. 

This Falcon 9 rocket not only placed its Luxembourg-​owned SES-​10 into orbit last week, it then returned — again! — to its ocean “drone ship” platform. 

A new age in space commerce thereby hit a new landmark. 

Or would that be “spacemark”?

Re-​using a rocket is like how airlines re-​use jet aircraft. Less waste, expense. Making the whole industry more viable. The technology and expertise to safely land and recover the rocket is astounding.

Alas, videocasting of the most amazing part of the effort, the landing and recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket, failed — noticeable by its lack in both the live Periscope feed and the YouTube archive. But we had seen that very same rocket land last April, onto SpaceX’s charmingly named droneship, Of Course I Still Love You.

Ocean mark? Drone mark? It hit the mark, whatever you call it.

Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, had every reason to breathe a sigh of relief, as well as engage in some apt exultation, after the mission.

We can, too. Space industry privatization and progress? Actually happening.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The Space Shuttle was a different technology entirely, a re-​usable spacecraft. What we are talking about today is the powerhouse stage-​one booster rocket, like the old Saturn V that the Apollo program famously exploited.

** The Space Shuttle, remember, landed horizontally, like an airplane. Future re-​usable manned spacecraft will no doubt do this. A private return-​entry spacecraft, like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two, put into orbit by a re-​usable Falcon 9 rocket, would be the next logical new achievement. Though, obviously, these are different companies with tech that is not, I think, meant to work together.

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Accountability crime and punishment responsibility

Do-​It-​Yourself Policing

New Orleans, crime, police, Common Sense, illustration

While crime was plummeting throughout the country, last year New Orleans experienced a surge — rapes up 39 percent and armed robberies up 37 percent.

Having reduced its police force by 500 officers due to budget problems, the Big Easy called in Louisiana State Troopers to assist a force “historically mired in corruption.” Yet, there was scant progress in keeping citizens safe.

Then crooks broke into Sidney Torrez’s home and Torrez, known as the “trash king” because he made a fortune hauling trash out of the city after Hurricane Katrina, responded with a $100,000 television ad campaign. “The French Quarter is under siege by criminals,” his TV spot declared; it encouraged citizens to “hold the administration accountable.”

Mayor Mitch Landrieu wasn’t pleased, shooting back that, “If it’s so easy, maybe [Torrez] should just take some of that money and do it himself.”

So, Torrez did, teaming up with Bob Simms, a retired aerospace engineer.

In no time, they developed a downloadable app for smartphones, allowing folks to contact police much like we use Uber to contact a car ride. Torrez donated $500,000 and the Batman and Robin-​esque duo hired off-​duty policemen outfitted with Polaris golf carts to patrol the French Quarter, the city’s “golden goose.”

Other private donations arrived to support the effort. In just months, crime dropped 45 percent in the Quarter. Now the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau is paying the monthly cost.

Torrez notes that the effort allows “the community a way to self-​police,” adding, “I think it can work anywhere.”

“It’s not rocket science,” says Bob Simms … the former rocket scientist.

It’s citizen-​led government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
national politics & policies property rights Tenth Amendment federalism

Land Un-​Grab?

When I took up the Cliven Bundy story, just before Bundy spewed his racist farragoes, I concentrated not on him, but on the broader issue: too much federal government ownership of real property in “the tiny state of Nevada” and elsewhere.

Since then an expert has weighed in on my side: Terry Anderson of the Property and Environment Research Center.

Sorta.Barbed Wire Fences in Grazing Lands - a technological way to establish private property on the range

I supported privatization of grazing lands. But I mentioned that forest land should “at least be ‘state-​ized,’” that is, transferred to the states. And that, it turns out, is what the current crop of Sagebrush rebels want for grazing land.

But there’s a downside to such a transfer. Grazing fees would likely go up.

Anderson titles his piece “Careful What You Ask For.”

And that cuts both ways. The environmentalists who want to centralize even more control in Washington, D.C., think that booting out privately owned ungulates would accrue benefits to the ecosystems. They are wrong, Anderson explains:

But “no moo” may mean fewer tweets, clucks, and bugles from wildlife. As private ranchers demonstrate, good land management can control noxious weeds, improve water quality, sequester more carbon, and generate more wildlife habitat.

Yes, “cattle grazing has improved the ecosystem.”

Anderson prefers privatization.

But that remains politically unlikely. The Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole suggests a compromise: fiduciary trusts, where the feds retain land title. Centuries of common law bolster the idea, says O’Toole, who assures us, under this form of oversight, “trustees preserve and protect the value of the resources they manage, keep them productive, and disclose the full costs and benefits of their management.”

Both of these alternates are better than current government mismanagement and overkill.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

They’ve Got Mail

Three hundred seventy-​eight years of service — that’s a long time. And yet, after that epoch, Great Britain’s Royal Mail is headed for privatization. Times have changed.

News stories can’t help but mention that this is the biggest British privatization move since the unloading of British Rail back in Margaret Thatcher’s day.

Privatization details are notoriously hard to get right. It’s not obvious what to do. But the details are important. And so is the necessity for the privatization: the mail service has shown a profit in recent years, but is prevented from further profitable avenues by capital limitations.

Only as a private company can Royal Mail avail itself of private capital markets.

Were Congress to completely untether the U.S. Postal Service in similar fashion, there would still be the live issue of protection: several classes of mail are still only allowed to the USPS. But the Royal Mail lost its monopoly back in 2006, in part to comply with EU rules. The legislation enabling its privatization was passed two years ago.

The details?

The plan is to give mail employees “10 percent of shares as part of a stock market flotation” in what Business Secretary Vince Cable swears is “the biggest employee share scheme for nearly 30 years.” Might nice — almost as generous as the Oregon owner of Bob’s Red Mill, who gave his company to his employees. It has to “go to someone,” right?

But even with Royal Mail workers being handed a 10 percent stake in the soon-​to-​be private enterprise, the union for the currently government workers is adamantly opposed to the move.

Who’s surprised?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.