"Privatizing profits and socializing losses"
On the Tragedy of the Commons
EROSION OF THE MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS: "Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended as the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has developed, the highly organized and specifically interested groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency administrators from the ranks of the regulated." [p.p. 60-61]
More on the origins of Capitalism from George Monbiot.
Excerpt from video above:
Hedges: ...They have accelerated exploitation, especially of the most vulnerable. I teach in a prison. So, everything's been privatized in the prisons. These are the poorest families in the country and their phone rates, their money transfer rates, are exorbitant. Far higher than you or I pay. So, let's talk about that with the consolidation of wealth, and the consolidation of political power. Especially in the United States, which is at this point just a system of legalized bribery. It comes with a turbocharging of what you call rent or roner (louer) in French. The French, the economists, will use the French term often. So explain that.
Monbiot: So what Neoliberalism claims to be is an Entrepreneurial Society, but what in reality it creates is a Rentiere Society. Because it has stripped away the protections, the social protections, which prevent our gross exploitation by Capital, and that gross exploitation, in a monopolistic situation, is effectively rent. And rent is the unearned income you get from monopolizing an asset which people need for their survival, or for their well-being. So, a classic case you've just discussed, of Communications in prisons. You know, if you've got a corporation sitting on that erecting a toll booth through which everyone must pass in order to communicate. They can charge pretty well whatever they want for that. And everything above what could be seen as a normal rate of profit, 5% or so on Communications, everything above that is rent. It's just the money that you can take because you are in a monopolistic position, and there's no one to stop you taking it.
The same goes with privatized Public Services of all kinds. Prisons is one example. Here in the UK, our water has been entirely privatized, and the companies which own our water supply can charge exorbitant fees while investing as little as possible. With the result that they are instead, now using our Rivers as open sewers, whilst still charging people through the nose for the water that comes out of their faucets. We have no choice, we have to use the water. There's only one supplier in each region of the UK, so we have to go with that supplier. So they can charge pretty well what they want. There is a Regulator which is supposed to limit that, but the Rgulator, as so often happens with neoliberalism, has been completely captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate. That's another aspect of the neoliberal approach. And everywhere, we see this tremendously rich class of oligarchs emerging out of the Rentiere economy and using their exclusive capture of assets, assets which the rest of us need, to ensure that we pay way over the odds to them in order to you use those assets. And and that has that's "mission accomplished" for neoliberalism. Those figures you cited for the transfer of wealth away from the poorer sections of society into the hands of the richest people, that is exactly what neoliberalism exists to do.
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